Dear Tatiana,

I watched Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” again. There is a scene where there is a philosophical dispute between priests and friars as to whether Christ offered the clothes he wore, in other words whether the Church should be poor. It struck me that when men argue, the argument is often an excuse for a kind of power play to promote themselves, but not openly.

In recent weeks we have been arguing about the Euro but how genuine is the argument and how much is positioning for position?

On Remembrance Sunday we remember men killed but also the victims in war of men’s arguments: of women and children. In the Second World War 62,000 British civilians, 187,000 French civilians, 800,000 German civilians, 3,000,000 Polish civilians, and 2,500,000 Russian civilians died.