L SPITERI, as a member of our democratic society, has a right to express his opinions publicly.

But he also has duty to ensure they are based on fact, not fiction. The Second World War was not the result of UK rearmament.

It was caused by the interplay of two factors during the period 1933/39.

First, in 1933 Hitler became German Chancellor and established his Nazi dictatorship. He began secret rearmament and in 1936 reoccupied the Rhineland. Both acts contravened the 1919 Versailles Treaty.

He then began the expansion of the Third Reich by annexing Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938.

Secondly, although international relations continued to deteriorate with German reoccupation of the Rhineland, craven UK and European political leaders adopted appeasement instead of taking the obvious action that would have prevented the Second World War.

Stanley Baldwin, who had approved the Hoare-Laval pact allowing fascist Italy, Hitler's Axis partner, to annexe Ethiopia, refused to re-arm. Neville Chamberlain signed his "peace in our time" pack ceding Sudetenland to Germany. He was finally forced to re-arm when Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and was quickly replaced by Winston Churchill.

Without that belated re-armament and without Churchill, our country would be part of the German Third Reich - and all of us, including L Spiteri, would have no human rights.

I M JARVIS, Worcester.