THE estimable John Phillpott (Phillpott File, Monday, March 24) asks fair questions about comparing the Iraq situation to the 1930s.

With respect, though, the fact that he can't think of the answers doesn't mean there aren't any.

The point is not that Saddam "wants world domination" but that the world, if it had acted early enough against Hitler in the 30s, would have saved itself the terrible later consequences of not doing so.

Defectors and commentators alike have referred for many years to Saddam's wish to set himself up as some kind of pan-Arab leader, with weapons of mass destruction and his jackboot on the neck of the Gulf.

Nobody can seriously doubt that, if he achieved such an objective, we'd have to act against him - or that doing so would by then have become much more costly and difficult.

I wish, just as much as John Phillpott or anyone else does, that there had been a real alternative to what's happening now. As Jack Straw said at the UN, it's Saddam's choice and his alone that there is not.

JULIAN THAKE,

Worcester.