Quoting Rommel

SIR – The University of Exeter’s apology for using a quotation from Erwin Rommel in a careers service email (report, June 21) is ridiculous, and shows how it is pandering to the over-sensitivity of modern university students.

The quotation – “One cannot permit unique opportunities to slip by for the sake of trifles” – is very apt for management today. The fact that Rommel was an enemy of the British when he said it has no bearing on its truth.

Is it going to be necessary for

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations to be fully revised to exclude all those quotations by people who now might be considered undesirable? Merrik B Brown

Middlesborough

SIR – If Exeter University is to apologise for anything, it should be for its apparent ignorance of Rommel’s role in the Second World War.

Rommel was not a Nazi. He was one of Germany’s finest generals, who won the respect of his great adversary Bernard Montgomery. Jeremy Prescott

Southsea, Hampshire