Letters: When the nation needs the Church to unite it, Justin Welby divides it – Telegraph.co.uk

SIR I sympathise with those who had to paint the prime-minsterial aircrafts tail-fin flag (report, June 26). These things need to be right.

In 1956, British Railways introduced a new emblem for its locomotives. It was a dignified thing, with a rampant lion emerging from a crown, holding a wheel in its paws, based on the heraldic achievement of the British Railways Board. Thousands were ordered, in two sizes. Each was left- or right-handed, so that the lion always looked towards the front of the locomotive.

The Garter King of Arms is said to have seen the emblem on a locomotives tender at Euston. He was impressed and toddled round the other side, but had an apoplectic fit when he saw this lion also facing forwards; according to heraldic convention, it should have faced left.

BR quietly used up the stocks of transfers and, from 1959, only used the heraldically correct version. This fact is useful for dating pictures of steam trains, if youre so inclined.

David PearsonHaworth, West Yorkshire

SIR Nikolai Tolstoy (Letters, June 26) draws attention to the indifference with which, after the war, the British delivered millions to be killed or enslaved by Stalins henchmen.

Harold Macmillan was responsible for turning over the Cossacks. But why? I doubt it was simply to demonstrate we were reliable allies.

Macmillan believed (as did many of his contemporaries) in world government. This was to be organised through regional governments under a new United Nations Organisation. Western Europe was to be one region; Eastern Europe under the Soviet Union another. America gave up on the idea under Harry S Truman. But Macmillan did not. He clung to the ideal, showing little concern about the Soviets running Eastern Europe.

As late as November 7 1957, one of his Foreign Office ministers, the Earl of Gosford, could still declare that Britain was fully in agreement with world government. In 1961, the Future Policies Committee, set up by Macmillan under Sir Frank Lee, concluded that, by 2000, it was questionable whether Britain would still be an independent state. By then it would be simply a province of a united Europe. The EU had an unhealthy history from the very start.

Professor Alan SkedLondon School of EconomicsLondon WC2

SIR In 1944, shortly after turning 20, my husband drove his tank on to the beach at Arromanches on D-Day.

During the campaign his sergeant was killed at his side. Later he lost comrades whose tanks were hit.

After the ceasefire, he had to drive a truck full of refugees to the Russians and hand them over. Even with everything else he had experienced, he found this greatly upsetting. He never forgot it.

May NuttallGreat Bentley, Essex

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Letters: When the nation needs the Church to unite it, Justin Welby divides it - Telegraph.co.uk