Could I just add a couple of points in response to Trevor Royle's excellent piece on the Japanese war (A Time To Forgive?, Essay, August 16)? The first is that in Japan, religion has failed in its essential purpose which should be to improve human relations and sanctify human life. Instead, the Shinto-Buddhist mythology turned the Emperor into a living god, glorified war and became in itself fascist. It was totally remiss on the part of the Allies not to treat Emperor Hirohito as a war criminal, as he were somehow "detached" from the horrors he presided over and encouraged as Japan's religious leader. The second point is to note that religion also failed the Germans. In the Third Reich, the Protestant churches in the main allowed themselves to succumb to Nazi ideology, while in signing a Concordat with Hitler and withdrawing from politics in Germany to enable Hitler to come to power, the Roman Catholic church in effect colluded with that regime.

There is a stark warning for us here, in the present world of sectarian religious violence, that religion itself cannot be trusted; and that for humanitarian reasons, as well as to maintain a level playing field all nation states should have secular constitutions. "Good" religions would not be prejudiced by this restraint of their powers, and "bad" religions would be kept at bay.

Randolph Murray

Rannoch