Silence is regarded as a sort of sin now, and it has to be filled with a lot of gossip and soundbites.

A genuinely democratic Iraq might well act as a fresh spur.

Diplomacy is unfashionable in the world of knee-jerk reaction and the dogmatic sound bite on television.

No military timetable should compel war when a successful outcome, namely a disarmed Iraq may be feasible without war, for example by allowing more time to the UN inspectors.

Men like Hitler and Stalin and their immediate lieutenants cannot plead in defence of their actions that these were justified by the accepted values of that time.

We should be wary of politicians who profess to follow history while only noticing those signposts of history that point in the direction which they themselves already favour.

But Germany will always suffer, I fear, from the intensely dramatic character of the crimes of the Third Reich.