Warren Investigation

Sir: By devoting your cover [Feb. 14] to showing a picture of the wife of the man who assassinated our late President, you are glorifying the most despicable crime--assassination.

MRS. F. A. STRAUB Los Angeles

Sir: To encourage people to come to a conclusion before the commission has announced its findings is to undermine one of the basic principles of our legal system.

The more the evidence seems to point in one direction, the more important it is to remind ourselves that everyone must be assumed innocent until proved guilty. To do otherwise is to adopt the logic of a lynch mob.

JOHN T. ENNIS New York City

Sir: TIME has become so melodramatic! Your story of Marina Oswald's life made me feel like the "constant weader" who "fwowed up" in Dorothy Parker's remark. The plastic roses on Oswald's grave were just too much.

MRS. RICHARD H. DICKSON Indianapolis

Sir: For the first time since those dreadful November days, I felt a pang of pity for Lee Harvey Oswald. Imagine having something like that for a mother.

MRS. DON GARGARO Detroit

Sir: An excellent story. I wish it were possible for every mother--and father--to read your report on Marguerite Claverie Pic Oswald Ekdahl, mother of Lee Harvey Oswald. Through her seemingly warped personality, her failure to provide a modicum of healthy home environment, her unwillingness or inability to cooperate with professional people and public officials, Marguerite Claverie Pic Oswald Ekdahl plays an unenviable role in the circumstances leading to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. She wants to go down in history? Well, history is replete with unsavory personalities.

ELIZABETH V. PARKER Randolph, Vt.

Who Shall Not Be Moved?

Sir: Transporting children across school-district lines [Feb. 14] is unreasonable, unrealistic, chaotic, unwise, expensive, an unwarranted favor to any group, and a subversion of the primary purpose of the schools, which is to educate, not to integrate. Integration is a result of or at most a secondary purpose of the system.

(MRS.) JOAN Y. TUCKER Kenmore, N. Y.

Sir: As a native Atlantan, I found your article extremely shortsighted and biased. Tokenism does not exist in Atlanta, but racial exhibitionism does, thanks to your ready cameras and dripping pens [Feb. 7]. Atlanta has gone much farther than was necessary in lowering all racial barriers. Atlantans have repressed their own feelings in a conscientious effort to give the Negro his equality, and now they face disgusting demonstrations in spite of this. The Negro deserved civil equality, and Atlanta gave it. The current demonstrations are unwarranted and indicative of the irresponsible, militant youths leading them. Their behavior is evidence of this. J. LARRY SANDERS University of Virginia Charlottesville, Va.

Sir: I read the article under "Civil Rights," and I hung my head and cried from shame. I am a Negro. "Demonstrators rushed into his place, urinated on the floors when he locked his rest rooms"-no wonder they don't want us in their schools, hotels and restaurants. All Negroes are not filthy, dirty and immoral, but as long as any of our people act in this manner we will be considered so.

MRS. E. L. ESSOUND Pasadena, Texas

Couve & Grandeur

Sir: Your wonderfully elucidating story on France's Foreign Minister [Feb. 7] reminds me once again that Americans "love France and hate the French." The U.S. has been "achingly slow to learn" that popularity is not diplomacy.

M. D. GALL AW AY Richmond

Sir: A vital factor in any consideration of the foreign policy of France is that Frenchmen never forget that their country is one of the oldest states in Continental Europe, and has played an important role as a great power continuously from the Dark Ages up to the Second World War. Now they believe that France is potentially a great power and will become one again in fact. Only in this context can we grasp De Gaulle's politique de grandeur.

C. LAWRENCE HUANG New York City

Sir: In contrasting France's small resources with her diplomatic power, allow me to quote an old Chinese saying: "Do not try to borrow a comb from a shaven monk."

V. S. PAN Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Sir: Cheers for France, De Gaulle, and Couve! Would that the U.S.A. could take a hint and realize that spending vast sums for diplomacy demands skill and not the bungling of do-gooder politicians. (MRS.) ESTHER MONTGOMERY STRONG Englewood, N.J.

Poverty in the U.S.

Sir: Your article about Michael Harrington's book, The Otlier America: Poverty in the U.S. [Feb. 7], was enlightening. Many people seem to believe that the situation in America is as John Galbraith described it in his book The Affluent Society. I feel that Harrington's view is more accurate and should be required reading for all.

NANCEE SEITZ Michigan State University East Lansing, Mich.

Sir: Michael Harrington hit the nail on the head. There are a lot of Americans who aren't really living, they are just existing. I wonder if the tax cut will favor poor people more than millionaires.

This past year we spent approximately $1,000 for doctor and hospital bills, which we paid with borrowed money. Now, as I understand it, they are trying to pass a bill that would have us pay taxes to help pay medical bills for my neighbor, who is over 65 and worth over $50,000. Thank God I could still borrow money to pay my medical bills.

CLEMENT MARTIN New Holland, Pa.

Sir: I am damn tired of hearing and reading about the tribulations of the poor and unemployed in our country. If an individual doesn't have either the intelligence, or drive or fortitude to get off his posterior, then he deserves what he gets. If technology has made the job obsolete, then find another one; unless my eyes deceive me, newspaper want-ad sections are still asking for short-order cooks as well as physicists.

JEROME A. YOUNG Houston

Sir: Most of the families I come in contact with are in the $3,500 bracket. Maybe we don't have the luxuries of the Bakers and the Washington set, but our children go to college, are well dressed, well fed and have excellent medical care.

MARGARET HENRIKSON Dunseith, N. Dak.

Matter of Libel

Sir: I feel that everyone must hear the liberal and conservative side to every issue in order to have a sound basis upon which to form an opinion. However, your article concerning the Goldmark case [Jan. 31] was just a little too liberal for even me to stand. You are in essence saying that to call a political candidate a Communist or a Communist sympathizer in print is libel. How ridiculous can you get?

(MRS.) SANDRA K. LITTERAL Carmel, Ind.

> The fact is that it's libelous to call anyone a Communist unless he is one.--ED.

In Idol

Sir: That was a fine article on Humphrey Bogart [Feb. 7], one of America's greatest actors. Never has the idolatory of such a cult been so deservedly bestowed. The uncommon good sense of the Harvards is very encouraging.

JOHN S. FORD Yale University New Haven, Conn.

Sir: We think that the somewhat feverish Bogey revival now being enjoyed by the Harvard-Radcliffe sect should be placed in its more proper perspective. Bogey has been a byword at Bryn Mawr for years. Bogart Week on the Late Show has always drawn capacity crowds in the TV rooms here, and yet our appreciation is not confined to faddist imitations.

SUSAN DEUPREE, '64 Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr, Pa.

Sir: So what else is new? The Circle Theatre in Washington, D.C., has run several Humphrey Bogart film festivals in the past five years. There are those of us in this provincial capital who were looking at 'em, kid, long before Our Hero was discovered by the Harvard Yard.

JANET C. JACEWICZ Arlington, Va.

Sir: I am appalled at the ability of 'Cliffe dwellers to take such fare seriously. Let Radcliffe girls return to their theses on Algerian Urbanization and Old French Literature and save their energy for civil rights demonstrations, Peace Corps recruitment, identity crises, and other activities more worthy of their breed.

PETER A. REICH (M.I.T. '62)

University of Michigan Graduate School Ann Arbor, Mich.

Sir: You say it's worth a few points among Harvard's Bogart-film lovers to know that Dooley Wilson played the piano player in Casablanca. Is there a bonus for knowing that Dooley Wilson couldn't really play?

TOM PRINGLE San Francisco

> Well, in a way. Dooley could play, but didn't in Casablanca. The ghost player was Elliott Carpenter.--ED.

Sir: Apparently your writer has surpassed Harvard's adulating Bogartophiles by crediting him with that classic line, "I don't have to show you no stinking badge." It was actually spoken by Alfonso Bedoya, Bogart's assassin in Treasure of Sierra Madre.

YVONNE LEWIS Baton Rouge, La. >TIME forfeits these points.--ED.

Ghost No More

Sir: TIME can be very timely at times. Not two days previous to receiving the Feb. 7 issue, I searched the back of my An Affair to Remember album in vain for information on the fascinatingly beautiful voice listed only as "soprano--Marnie Nixon." The big question then became "Who is Marnie Nixon?" Thank you for not letting such a voice go unsung!

MRS. WILLIAM B. GLENN JR. Morgantown, W. Va.

Rearview Mirror

Sir: Mr. Lamb may be an expert in accumulating money, but his naivete and disregard for precedent and the lessons of history are appalling, particularly for a onetime lawyer [Feb. 7]. If man did not occasionally look "backward through a rearview mirror," he would still be trying to invent the wheel and discover fire.

WILLIS ROKES Attorney and Professor of Business Administration University of Omaha Omaha

Sir: As a student of the law, Mr. Lamb should have acquired insight into the judicial process, respect for its refusal to render judgments that may be popular but not just, and appreciation for the manner in which it subtly, but dynamically, responds to the needs of society in flux.

As a businessman, Mr. Lamb should know that, but for the existence of precedent and its probabilities, no executive could make decisions affecting his company with any degree of certainty.

ALLAN E. CONE Beverly Hills, Calif.

Bootstrapper

Senor: Muchas gracias for your wonderful article on Puerto Rico's progress [Feb. 14]. We Puertoriquehos in the city of New York are so proud of the work that our leader Luis Mufioz Marin has done. JAIME LILLY New York City

Affirmation Within Grief

Sir: Leonard Bernstein is right in thinking of the Kaddish "as less a lament for the dead than an affirmation of life in the face of death" [Feb. 7].

Originally, the Kaddish prayer had nothing to do with death. It was recited by ancient scholars who wanted to hallow God's name when they completed certain portions of their sacred studies.

Somewhat later these sages recited the prayer when one of their own died--to suggest that a portion of their work had been ended. Still later, it became a universal prayer. Much later, literal references to death were introduced.

The heart of the person who recites the prayer today may be heavy with grief, but the prayer itself is still a heroic affirmation of life.

JOSEPH R. NAROT Temple Israel of Greater Miami Miami

Women of the World

Sir: As a regular reader of TIME Magazine and as a great admirer of Senator Margaret Chase Smith, I was more than impressed when I read that she has announced she is going to run for the G.O.P. presidential nomination. This is great news! It is high time the great U.S. had a woman President.

(MISS) M. W. GITHARA

Nairobi, Kenya

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