As owners of 49 per cent of the shares and as loan stock holders Mr and Mrs Jeffrey have always had power over the board, which has never acted without consulting them.As a 20 per cent shareholder and a director, I have not resigned and have no intention of doing so. Journalists then went on to pass a vote of confidence in their NUJ representative on the board and her continuing board membership.While Mr Jeffrey is not a director, he and his wife were on the board until late last year. After the staff and board had been informed of Mr Jeffrey’s decision, it was suggested to the staff that they might like to pass a vote of no confidence in the board This the staff refused to do. From Ms Vicky Hutchings

Sir: May I correct a few errors in your article “Board sacked as ‘Statesman’ chief steps into the fray” (30 September).
Philip Jeffrey did not take his decision to appoint himself chairman of the board, and ask the board to resign, because the staff were “on the point of passing a vote of no confidence in the board”. From Mr Maurice O’C. Walshe

Sir: Would it not be fitting to mark Humphrey’s return to 10 Downing Street (“Happy returns for Maggie and moggie”, 27 September) by making him Sir Humphrey?
Yours sincerely,Maurice WalsheBerkhamsted, Hertfordshire27 September.

He sailed through every examination and qualified as a medical practitioner five years later at the age of 65. Thereafter he did several locum jobs at Guildford hospitals and also served as ship’s doctor on at least two luxury cruises, to South Africa and Australia, until the age of 72.Yours faithfully,F B ManleyRichmond, Surrey. Manley

Sir: You suggest (leading article, “Is young Brian too old to be a doctor?”, 27 September) that “the medical profession should realise that it is possible and desirable to teach older dogs new tricks”.
My father, the late Dr W B. Manley, Barrister-at-Law (about 1920), retired in 1945 from 20 years’ distinguished practice at the Bar and, aged 60 years, enrolled at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, as a medical student. From Mr F B. But attitudes are changing.The Sierra Leone army now recognises that it must treat these rebel children as the victims of the conflict and not as “enemy troops” in the normal sense of the term. This is why young Musa Kpaka now stares out at Independent readers, where others of his kind occupy unmarked mass graves in the forest.

Despite understandable civilian bitterness at the way an apparently meaningless war has wrecked rural communities, if this newer sympathetic approach holds then it may be the key to the long-awaited and sorely needed peace process in Sierra Leone.Yours faithfully,Paul RichardsProfessor of AnthropologyUniversity College LondonLondon, WC1. Summary execution was, at times, the fate of young rebel suspects rejected by their communities. Villagers are hard- pressed to understand why their own children have turned against them. Sometimes they consider this an irreversible product of rebel “sorcery”.Elsewhere, therapists use the term Stockholm Syndrome to account for the bond that develops between hijack victims and their captors. These orphans were pressganged by the RUF to join their movement. With little idea how to combat sub- teenagers fighting on crack cocaine, the Sierra Leone army, or its proxy militia, began to adopt similar tactics.Local communities know that youngsters captured by the RUF soon develop a sympathy for their captors. The technique of recruiting under- age combatants was introduced into the region by Charles Taylor’s rebels in Liberia, but spread to Sierra Leone with Taylor’s allies, the Revolutionary United Front.
The fighting in both Liberia and Sierra Leone bore down heavily on rural civilians and left many youngsters as orphans.