I AM sure many of your readers will have been as astonished as I was by Charles Graham’s assessment (Poppy plea, Postbag, October 19) that the reasons for going to war are “to solve political ambitions and generate corporate profit”.

Silly me! I thought the reason for WW2 was to save us, and incidentally the rest of Europe, from a psychopath who was responsible for the slaughter of millions of his own people and would no doubt have done the same to us had he been allowed to set foot in our country.

Mr Graham does not tell us exactly how we could have defended ourselves by “peace building and conflict resolution” but I doubt whether these would have been a deterrent to Hitler.

READ MORE: Why not wear a white poppy and a red poppy this year?

It would be interesting to learn how these ideas would resonate with Kim Jong Un, another psychopath whose own people are starving while he spends more and more on armaments with which he threatens the world, and even more interesting how Mr Graham proposes we should start peace building with ISIS whose sole reason for existence is to destroy the West and anyone who does not share their views.

His suggestion that what he describes as “militaristic manner of celebration” - an unfortunate and very inappropriate word - is somehow glorifying war is so outrageous as to be totally incredible.

Does he really believe that those of us watching or taking part in these acts, not of celebration but of remembrance, and wearing a red poppy, are hoping for the next war to start, or that we are not praying for peace?

So Mr Graham, I shall not be wearing one of your white poppies.

I do not need it to prove that I hope never to live through another war.

I shall be wearing a red one with great pride and gratitude for all those who gave their lives so that the rest of us could survive.

DIANA WILSON
Taunton