Letter: Pax Romana?

Sir: When Nato leaders launched their insane air campaign against Serbia, it seemed a clear case of the inmates taking over the lunatic asylum.

Now I realise that what has actually happened is something considerably more dangerous: it is a case of the sixth form taking over the school. If Tony Blair's naive idealism can only turn a nasty little case of tribal warfare into a major international catastrophe, let us be guided in future by a cynical pragmatist.

Principle, my father used to say, is like a tiger: a noble beast, but safest when stuffed and mounted in a glass case. In Kosovo, Nato has Blair's tiger by its tail. Will it ever be able to let go?

P A BEVAN

Witney, Oxfordshire