Migrants should stay and fight

Sir, - I am bewildered that the governments of Western Europe believe they can staunch the gaping wound of the migrant crisis with the sticking plaster of acceptance of a few hundred thousand of these desperate people.

The reality is there are millions if not tens of millions of the current populations of African and Middle Eastern countries who envy our way of life and will surely follow those already here if our governments do not hold firm and, setting aside the natural feeling stirred by the women and children involved, recognise this is a crisis where the head must rule the heart.

Only by sending a firm message of rejection now can we hope to avoid the trickle becoming a torrent and then a dreadful tsunami which will change our way of life for ever.

Very significant numbers of those seeking to enter Europe and specifically the United Kingdom are patently economic migrants rather than true refugees.

The situation in Syria and elsewhere has strong parallels with the Europe of the Second World War.

A desperate enemy seeking to overwhelm all we believe in. Then it was fascism and anti-Semitism. Now it is the equally dangerous enemy of Muslim extremism in the

shape of IS. Where would our country be now if the young men and women of the time, instead of manning the tanks and ships and aircraft had simply upsticks across the Atlantic to stay with our colonial friends?

Hard-hearted it may seem but the huge numbers of very fit young men now teeming into Europe have a responsibility to save their countries and if that means the sacrifice which our young people made 70 years ago then so be it.

Sandy Green. The Old Rectory, Cupar.