Liberal Democracy gathered here in Glasgow is unsure how to respond

Liberal Democracy, gathered here in Glasgow, is unsure how to respond. With the self- confidence of the moment's man, he has leaned across the Liberal Democrats' conference and offered them a sweet taste of power. As far as I know, this remains the Swedish attitude to this day.Yours etc,Nicholas FaithLondon, N7. Tony Blair is a seducer, a very poet of entrapment.

It was, he said, not a matter of government concern, and he refused to put any pressure on the banks to look for the victims' money. Unfortunately, in the 1950s and early 1960s, when the Israeli government started to inquire into lost accounts, the then Swedish minister of justice was far less helpful than the Swiss authorities. But he, and indeed the Jewish researchers, could usefully also put pressure on the Swedish authorities. Before the war many Jews in northern Germany and, more particularly, the Baltic states, entrusted their money not to Swiss banks, but to those in Sweden, nearer than Switzerland, and also famously neutral in both wars. From Mr Nicholas Faith Sir: In his article on Jewish accounts in Swiss banks ("Lost treasure of the Nazis' victims", 16 September), David Horovitz concentrates on efforts over the years to persuade the Swiss banks to examine their archives (and their consciences?) more thoroughly. and the Defence Secretary would love it!Yours sincerely,Stephen WeaverCatholic Chaplaincy and Centre for the students of theUniversities of LondonLondon, WC118 September.

Our little baby was born after an induced labour.Yours faithfully,Tom DalzielNottingham15 September. From Fr Stephen Weaver Sir: Viewed from the park, the Royal Naval College at Greenwich already provides a frame for that monstrous monument to Thatcherism, Canary Wharf Tower. Could there be a more grotesque solution to the grotesque dilemma the Government has set itself, than to turn the building into the Margaret Thatcher Museum?It's grandiose, it recalls distant maritime glories, it's off the beaten track ... Furthermore, there are ways of terminating a pregnancy other than "suction" and "dismemberment". To continue with the pregnancy would, however, have been quite irresponsible, knowing what we did about the way in which he had developed.We are not alone in having had to endure this heart-rending agony, and it is quite incorrect for Mr Lawson to present such decision-making in the stark way he does. This was not an easy decision, and was certainly not one taken on the basis of love vs abortion.We loved our baby, we had such tremendously high hopes for him; he was very much wanted and we will never forget him. Any "life" that might have been afforded him would have been of extremely low quality.We decided that the only course of action was to have the pregnancy terminated.

Sometimes such a choice does not exist. Last October, my wife and I learnt, from a detailed scan of our baby after 17 weeks' gestation, that such were the abnormalities apparent in his spine and internal organs that he would have stood little chance of survival should the pregnancy have continued to full term. From Mr Tom Dalziel Sir: I was saddened to read Dominic Lawson's Another View ("Choose love, not abortion", 14 September). You may as well advise the black youth of our cities to play the National Lottery as a way "out of the ghetto", for their chances of becoming a Linford Christie are about the same and the financial rewards significantly greater.If we want, as you claim, to start a serious discussion about the over- representation of certain ethnic groups in particular sports, we should begin by examining the well-documented channelling of black youth into sports at school; the presence of discrimination against non-white groups in some sports; the effects of socio-economic conditions on people's lifestyle choices; and, of course, the misguided belief among some white athletes that they will never succeed in certain sports because of the genes of their ancestors.Yours sincerely,Ben CarringtonSchool of Leisure andSport StudiesLeeds Metropolitan UniversityLeeds15 SeptemberThe writer is a sports sociologist.. The historical material we have available, however, reveals that those who survived the "middle passage" and the subsequent horrors of plantation life and slavery did so by recourse to their cognitive capabilities and not their brute strength.Your final comment that "sport has always been, and still is, one of the few ways out of poverty for members of some minority communities" is one of the oldest lies. In fact, we have a sales team in the US that is dedicated solely to work with this very important sector of society. Yours sincerelyBrandon O'ReillyGeneral Sales Manager:UK and IrelandHounslow, Middlesex18 September. From Mr Ben Carrington Sir: Roger Bannister remarks (report, 14 September) that "black sprinters, and black athletes in general, all seem to have certain natural anatomical advantages", and he asserts that the "black race" (not defined) has through some magical evolutionary process, coupled with some hot weather, produced a "race" of ready-made sprinters.