I HAVE enjoyed the great privilege of being able to share my thoughts with you in this newspaper every week for the last ten years. I have written on a hundred and more topics: some light-hearted, many routine and occasionally momentous - such as the Gulf War, the death of Princess Diana and very recently the attack on New York. I hope that the time may come when I can pen a humorous or satirical piece for you again, in the hope that you may have something to smile about over the marmalade; but I ask you to bear with me, for, while this war goes on, I shall write about the war every week...

Here in the City of London the mood is vaguely apprehensive. Never mind the scares about an anthrax or bubonic plague attack: those are remote and grotesque possibilities to which no one has the foggiest idea of how to respond. Instead, there is just this uneasy sense that we are vulnerable - as our colleagues in New York were vulnerable - and so everyone is rather subdued. The pubs and wine bars are still doing a roaring trade, but the humour in the pub talk is distinctly black and, when it gets to serious conversation, the mood is sombre.

I stopped off at the Railway Inn, near Liverpool Street station, last Saturday and watched the last 15 minutes of the England-Greece match on the big screen. Everybody was pleased as Punch we'd won, of course; but when the whole thing was over people came up to me and asked me to pray for their families and friends in the armed forces or in countries where it seems likely that this war on terrorism will be most acutely focused.

I have had two very instructive conversations this week, and I should like to give you the gist of them in outline.

First I spoke with a retired Nato General at a dinner in the City. I have met him quite a few times since I came to London in 1998 and he is always, as you would expect, highly instructive when it comes to military affairs. With a dark shadow across his face, he said simply this: "When we go into this war, we have to do the job properly. I reckon we have four years to root out the terrorists and to incapacitate the states that sponsor them. If we don't finish them, they'll be back next time with nuclear weapons".

The second conversation was at an academic conference in Canterbury. The opinions were flying across the table as you might expect. A Cambridge historian said: "The most terrible confrontation in the history of mankind was the Cold War between the USSR and the West". An English sociologist - always hitherto known to me for his mild manner and his extreme courtesy - came as close as I have seen him to losing his temper. He said: "That's rubbish. The Cold War lasted 70 years, and now it's over. The real struggle has been going on for 1400 years. In 1745 the Muslims were at the gates of Vienna and, if we give them chance, they will be there again".

In a climate of political correctness, it's nearly impossible to say these sorts of things. You get accused of racism and you find yourself condemned for religious prejudice.

But I am not a racist. I have spent years of my life teaching in multiracial schools. I have made friends with children and parents from many races and creeds. I have been invited to Diwali celebrations, to Hindu weddings and to Jewish feasts. As Chaplain to the Stock Exchange, I work in a multiracial business community and I number among my friends people from a variety of racial and religious backgrounds.

Nevertheless, facts are facts, and it does no good at all to pretend that reality is other than it is. Not all Muslims are terrorists. Nor were all 1940s Germans Nazis. But it remains true that, since the attacks on Jewish athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, most terrorist attacks upon western countries and interests have been perpetrated by those who would call themselves faithful followers of Islam. And it is also true that Muslim nations - such as Saudi Arabia and Iran - have blamed the United States for the atrocities of September 11, and have claimed vociferously that the western powers deserve the sort of "punishment" that the terrorist outrages have inflicted upon them.

Against this background, let me just add that an extremely unstable, corrupt and undemocratic Muslim country - Pakistan - has possession of nuclear weapons; and that Iran backs the terrorist Hezbollah movement and Islamic Jihad.

Entirely without prejudice, I simply bring before you a few unpalatable facts. If journalists are ever banned from rehearsing unpalatable facts out of misplaced political correctness, then truth itself is truly the first casualty of war.