The Bombing

Sir: What absolute horror and senselessness is involved in the bombing of guiltless children--each a child of God, and of its mother and of our country. These are our children, bound to us in a multihued humanity!

And above all, this is our guilt for allowing such atrocity to take place.

ROSEMARY SOLE OLSTOWSKI

Freeport, Texas

Sir: In the atmosphere of unrestricted violence that has existed in Alabama, the bombing of the children at Sunday school was almost inevitable. Although the Governor's consistent and thoroughly predictable attitude has certainly contributed to the disgraceful situation, the ultimate authority, and therefore responsibility, has always been President Kennedy's. His spineless, "politically expedient," too-little-too-late policy can only have encouraged the extremists and fanatics.

RALPH KEEMEYER Mexico City

Cinema's New Status

Sir: My compliments to Mr. Darrach for his superb article "A Religion of Film" [Sept. 20]. It leaves only one thing to be desired: the names of the young lovers in Knife in the Water. How could TIME put an attractive couple on the cover and fail to mention their names?

ROBERT ORESKO

Tenafly, NJ.

> Poland's Jolanta Umecka and Zygmunt Malanowicz.--ED.

Sir: With one or two exceptions, the films you covered are cheap, shabby productions with cheap, shabby stories about cheap, shabby and mostly immoral people.

JOHN PETER DURAK

New York City

Sir: You should have fired Movie Critic Brad Darrach the day he slept through The Horse Soldiers and killed off John Wayne. We saw the flick, and Darrach was never again consulted.

KEN SCHULTZ

Weston, Conn.

Sir: "A Religion of Film" is a timely analysis of the emergence of a real 20th century art. The sensitive director is given the opportunity to express his feelings about life, about death, about man. Truly this must be essential in these times, for if people can see and comprehend how others feel and act and react, cannot they better understand themselves and humanity?

ALLAN R. FOLSOM

Beverly Hills, Calif.

Fallout & the Eskimos

Sir: Congratulations on your sensible article discussing the potentially dangerous problem that the Alaska village of Anaktuvuk Pass has with fallout [Sept. 13].

The contamination in the Arctic is not only an American problem. Similar high levels of cesium 137 have been found in Scandinavia among the Laplanders. These countries have kept close watch on the problem for several years.

Until last year, our knowledge of the contamination of the Arctic food chain was nonexistent. There is now before the AEC for approval a proposal for a comprehensive program of research on the contamination of Alaskan Arctic fauna and flora. This proposal has been pending for months. It must be approved and shortly.

E. L. BARTLETT U.S. Senator (Alaska) Washington, D.C.

Sir: I personally know Simon Paneak (head of the Eskimo village of Anaktuvuk Pass), and I have high respect for him.

It may interest you to know that this Eskimo kept daily records for 15 years on the number and behavior of all the different species of migratory and nesting birds in his area.

HENRY S. FORBES

Milton, Mass.

Schuman in Luxembourg

Sir: In your article on Robert Schuman [Sept. 13] you stated that he was "reared in Lorraine."

Mr. Schuman was born in Luxembourg, his parents having emigrated from Lorraine after 1871. He received his primary and secondary education in Luxembourg's public schools.

GEORGES HEISBOURG

Ambassador of Luxembourg

Washington, D.C.

Kennedy's Coup?

Sir: Regarding your gratuitous credit for inspiration of our CIA expose [Sept. 13], we wish to inform you that the inspiration came not from Mme. Ngo Dinh Nhu but from the widely witnessed overt-covert games of coup promoters themselves, and from some of those who got interesting offers. Many people here believe that if Kennedy is trying to solve his own problems--special forces, brother, religion and social-disturbances--by blowing them up in Viet Nam and then knocking them off with a coup d'etat, he will fail on both sides of the world.

ANN GREGORY Acting Editor The Times of Viet Nam Saigon

Romper Room

Sir: For 30 minutes each morning our two-year-old daughter enters the world of Romper Room [Sept. 13].

She thinks the pledge of allegiance ends with "Thank you for holding our flag," and can't be convinced that "Now we can have our refreshments" isn't the last line of a prayer.

I wonder what can possibly remain for a Romper Room student to learn when he or she finally reaches that mysterious something called "big school."

(MRS.) NORMA EPPINGA Grand Rapids

Dove Shooting

Sir: Congratulations on a lively and readable story on the opening of dove season in the Imperial Valley [Sept. 13]. I was there, and your article captured the spirit of the occasion admirably.

A discordant note was struck, however, when you commented that "the only sour face belongs to the game warden."

Nearly all our game wardens are expert hunters themselves on their off-duty days. They have a feeling of respect and comradeship for honest sportsmen, and they enjoy the atmosphere and activity of a hunting-season opener. They try to keep it accident-free and successful for the hunter.

SIMON NATHENSON

California Department of Fish and Game

Los Angeles

Sir: The Imperial Valley ranchers hate dove shooting for the damages done to people, pets, wildlife and clothes hanging on the clotheslines. The villagers stay away from the country through fear of being "winged" by trigger-wild Davy Crocketts from the city.

Yet this crazy "war" goes on, in the name of sport, because the sporting-goods, beer and motel interests encourage the ignorant male ego to drive into the countryside and pick off our wild birds as they rise from nests at dawn.

JEANNETTE O'DAY

Claremont, Calif.

Burke in Commons

Sir: Contrary to Senator Dirksen's statement in his Senate test ban treaty speech [Sept. 20], Edmund Burke was never Prime Minister of Britain. Though a brilliant orator and M.P., the closest he ever came to being even a Cabinet member was paymaster of the forces in the Rockingham Ministry of 1782.

F. M. WILHOIT

Professor Drake University Des Moines

Funerals: The Pain & the Profit

Sir: Many thanks for your revealing article on "The Business of Dying" [Sept. 20]. The undertaking business needs to be exposed for its abuses of the emotions and pocketbooks of millions of American families who do not know what to do. Rarely are ministers asked to help plan burials--just to give the funeral service. Much of the high cost of burials comes from pagan adoration of the dead in open caskets. Let's hope reforms are on the way.

(THE REV.) WARREN C. McCLAIN Westminster Presbyterian Church Pasadena, Calif.

Sir: When I told our undertaker that I wanted my mother buried in a plain wooden coffin, he told me, "Only bums and nuns are buried in them."

MARY O'MALLEY CASTELLANOS Chicago

Sir: TIME writers compounded their ignorance of funeral service by putting Mitford in a mortuary (temporary), whereas she's in a mausoleum (permanent).

WILLIAM BERG Publisher Mortuary Management Los Angeles

> TIME thanks Reader Berg for his cryptic correction.--ED.

Pressies

Sir: After reading the pressies [Sept. 20], I was stunned not to see "March, of TIME."

MRS. WILLIAM ROUSE Providence

Sir: "Noyes, from the Bugle."

JEROME S. GROSS

Miami

Sir: "Sick, of the News."

MRS. EDWARD HIRSCHMAN Irvington, NJ.

Sir: "Mann, of the Hour"; "Spice, of LIFE"; "Lowering, of the Standard."

JANE AND IRA AVERY

Noroton, Conn.

Sir: "Merrimac, from the Monitor"; "Plato, from the Republic"; "Pontius, from the Pilot."

SCOTT HARRISON

CRAIG BURNS Los Angeles

Sir: We don't have to think up pressies. We are pressies.

MARY G. FERN

(Society Editor)

CHARLES J. FERN

(Publisher)

MIKE FERN

(Editor)

The Garden Island Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii

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