I AM from England and my wife and I had a very happy stay in Bolton recently.

We live in New York. We saw the thick clouds of smoke and the brave people risking their lives to help others. We want to urge your readers to do all they can to STOP the US from going to war, by calling MPs, the Prime Minister, the US Embassy. And it is urgent, as talk of retaliation fills the airwaves, for people to know that the cause of cruelty has been understood by Eli Siegel, founder of the education Aesthetic Realism.

It is contempt "the lessening of what is different from oneself as a means of self-increase as one sees it." Contempt, which makes the feelings of another person unreal, impelled the persons who committed and assisted in that unspeakable act on September 11.

And we urgently need to be courageous critics of our own contempt, both personal and national. We need to see that millions of people across the world are angry at the US -- and Britain -- because of the way we have seen and exploited them. Lashing out, killing more innocent people in the Middle East with contempt of our own, will only add to their fury, and to our danger.

The one thing that will put an end to the terror is the international study of Aesthetic Realism. This includes seeing what other people in this world are hoping for, a grandmother in Baghdad, a little Palestinian boy in Gaza -- it has now become a matter of self-preservation. Class Chairman, Ellen Reiss, writes: "There is another kind of seeing which must be now. It begins with our trying to think about people this way: Here is a person. He or she is as real as I am. What does this person feel? What, as Mr Siegel put it, does he or she "deserve by being a person"?

Christopher Balchin

New York City