MAGGIE Chetty (Letters, March 24) seizes on the vicious and cowardly attack on innocent people in London to ask what kind of country we wish to be.

I would suggest that we should be one that celebrates the success of our shared capital as the greatest and most successful post-colonial and multi-racial city in the world, and does not turn its back on our fellow citizens who live there when they come under attack.

Peter A Russell,

87 Munro Road, Jordanhill, Glasgow.

MAGGIE Chetty produces a very selective list of possible UK “causes” of the recent terrorist attacks but ignores the prime creators of our modern world.

Europe enjoyed 99 years of (admittedly relative and not unbroken) peace from 1815-1914. Imperial Germany and Austria/Hungary then converted a Balkan conflict into a European war; Germany’s ally Turkey extended it to the Middle East; and Germany made it a world war by its submarine attacks on United States vessels.

Germany facilitated Lenin’s return to Russia from Zurich, thereby destroying Russia’s fledgling democracy and creating the USSR, which later created Maoist China and Kim’s North Korea. The First World War also prematurely destroyed four empires, including the Ottoman, leading to today’s Middle-East/North African shambles and its perceived effects on European cities. Germany continued its malign path under the Nazi regime, starting the Second World Wear, leading to the Holocaust and Hiroshima, and bringing the USSR into eastern and central Europe for 45 years.

Germany’s more recent naïve policies in the EU – Schengen’s open borders, eastern expansion, the Euro, the attempt to bring Ukraine into the EU without a thought for Russia’s inevitable reaction, and promoting mass immigration – were all wrong or grossly premature, with disastrous consequences for the EU and the West in general; and greatly contributed to our inability to eradicate the terrorist hordes swarming over the Middle East from 2013 onwards.

Finally, I agree Amritsar was disgraceful and Suez unwise, but the 1916 Easter Rising reprisals were largely inevitable in the middle of a war; a successful Korean war would have prevented its current Orwellian nightmare; and it is simply untrue to say Mrs Thatcher supported apartheid, as Nelson Mandela himself and others, have made perfectly clear. Nor do I want a country “where all cultures are valued” – but only those which adhere to basic norms of civilised behaviour.

John Birkett,

12 Horseleys Park, St Andrews.

I'M struck by the difference in tone in the letters published today (March 24) from Ruth Marr and Ian F Mackay. Ms Marr is an avowed supporter of the SNP and Scottish independence, while Mr Mackay's allegiances are not known to me.

Ms Marr urges friendship and co-operation with our southern neighbour while maintaining our right to run our own affairs in the way the people who live here see fit. Mr Mackay, on the other hand, reckons that running our own affairs is a “teenage dream” and that the SNP Government is making a mess of running the country.

I am myself far from being a teenager. I was born while the Battle of Britain was being fought in the skies above the south of England and I am deeply grateful that it was won by the “Brylcreem Boys” of the RAF. However, in spite of an education that deliberately deprived me of my own country's history and a long-standing former allegiance to the Labour Party, I am now firmly of the opinion that Scotland needs to break free of this stifling Union.

As for the claim that the SNP is mismanaging the country, the merest glance at the statistics shows that it is doing better in many ways than the Westminster Government. Our children are more literate than those in England and our NHS is doing better than the ill-judged NHS trusts in other parts of the UK. I acknowledge that there is room for improvement but the idea that improvement can be achieved by following the failed nostrums of the Tory government strikes me as a ludicrous notion.

I thank Ms Marr for her mature, well balanced letter and urge Mr Mackay to follow her example. It is perfectly possible to set forth firmly held opinions without resorting to insult and exaggeration.

David C Purdie,

12 Mayburn Vale, Loanhead, Midlothian.

IN the immediate post-Westminster tragedy the illuminated colours of the UK's Union flag on Berlin's Brandenburg Gate was shown (“World leaders join forces to show their solidarity with UK”, The Herald, March 24). What an irony that Britain's former wartime enemy should acknowledge the unity of that flag when sadly in Scotland many are intent on rendering that unity obsolete.

Allan C Steele,

22 Forres Avenue, Giffnock.

IN the immediate aftermath of the horror of the Westminster terror attack I find myself encouraged and reassured by the professional and brave response of police and security services, by the dignity, restraint and resolution shown by leaders of our main political parties and also by the media coverage and analysis.

We may have our UK differences but overall still have much to value.

R Russell Smith,

96 Milton Road, Kilbirnie.