TIME and D-Day Sirs: YOUR COVERAGE OF INVASION [TIME, JUNE 12] WAS TERRIFIC, ESPECIALLY AS A LAST MINUTE JOB THAT I KNOW IT MUST HAVE BEEN. I CONSIDER MYSELF A GOOD WRITER AND SOME OTHER PEOPLE HAVE ALSO SAID THE SAME, BUT YOUR ECONOMY AND PROFUNDITY OF WORDS HAVE ME STOPPED. THANKS A MILLION. " EDWARD THOMPSON Glendale, Calif. Sirs: . . . Only two days after the event, I am reading about it, and the best account I have seen or heard yet, at that. . . . W. C. SHIVELY New Orleans

Sirs: . . . Even three days later the story seems as up-to-date as some newspaper accounts. . . . MARY KELLY KING Cayucos, Calif. Looking Forward Sirs: TIME continues to make statements which disturb me greatly. I speak in reference to your repeated comments about military strategy for World War III. I certainly am not interested in participating in any future war and believe that, if we are to plan an enduring peace, TIME should not entertain its readers with such "potential propaganda." (PFC.) BAXTER S. SCRUGGS Fort Huachuca, Ariz.

P: Some TIME readers once found discussion of prospects for World War II equally distasteful (see below).--ED.

Sirs: Your reply to John F. Walther (TIME, June 5) was a masterful bit of reticence and understatement. As a ten-year cover-to-cover reader, I can recall without referring to your files that you did your very best to depict the seriousness of the international situation not only after Pearl Harbor and before Bataan. You outlined with a dark editorial pencil the sinister threat of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis to the democracies in general and the U.S. in particular long before Pearl Harbor.

TIME was ridiculed in its own letters column by readers who thought the war in Europe in 1939 was phony while TIME believed that a major crisis was facing our civilization. . . .

TIME has not foretold any event [I hope it never does], but TIME has described with amazing accuracy the news which foreshadows the future. Perhaps we would be wise to send more of TIME'S family to Congress and thereby place them in Mr. Walther's unenviable position. It was later than we thought. PAUL D. HARWOOD Ashland, Ohio

Vulgar Light Sirs: Dewey's remark (TIME, June 5) to newspaper men, on entering the Hershey Hotel, sheds new and vulgar light on the Republican white hope.

May your many readers be enlightened, as I was, to see this side of the man who would be the respected highest official of our great country. JOHN H. WOODS Atlanta

"For Which He Died" Sirs: I have read H. Frederick Petersen's letter (TIME, June 5) and I am shocked that people who have lost a son in this war should have so little respect for the cause for which he died. [Said Reader Petersen: "For all the years that are left to me, I shall loathe every Jap. . . . I shall want them scourged from this our blessed America."]

American citizens of Japanese ancestry are no more to blame for that ancestry than is Mr. Petersen for the Scandinavian ancestry which his name indicates. Let the Petersens remember that boys of Japanese ancestry have given and are giving their lives for America too--for the Petersens as well as those who really believe in the American way of tolerance. MILDRED ESTELLE CARSON Monmouth, Ill.

Sirs: I do not mean to minimize his loss and grief, but let Mr. Petersen remember that his son was not his to give. . . . If men must die that victory be ours, let them die feeling that our goal of brotherhood is possible. Mr. Petersen asks us to go backward, begs us to insure that all these deaths will be in vain. . . . (SERVICEWOMAN'S NAME WITHHELD) Kingsville, Tex.

Sirs: The attitude of H. Frederick Petersen arouses neither hate nor contempt on my part. He, like his son, is a war casualty. . . . ROBERT F. McCune, PH.D. Hartford, Conn.

"Like Love, or Good Beer, or Dying" Sirs: It is two years and a couple of days since I left the States with a whole hatful of company on the war's leeching business. During the ten-minute breaks in Africa and Italy we have devoted a lot of effort to trying to realize in the imagination what life is like at home. . .

Today a magazine (TIME, April 24) comes to the beachhead and . . . tells a story, and these pleasant images become hideous and confused. According to the story five Japanese, including one Frank Kitagawa, are sent to Great Meadows, NJ. from an Arizona relocation center to help Ed Kowalick run his 600-acre farm. . . . Ed Kowalick's neighbors mount a blind patriotism against this five-man Oriental menace within their gates. . . . A building on Kowalick's farm is burned; and Kowalick, being one man, is forced to send the offenders away. This is, as I said, a little thing. Nobody killed, nobody mainied. To show they hold no hard feelings, the farmers present Ed Kowalick with a box of cigars, and the incident is closed. . . .

It is the schoolhouse, I think, that sticks in my craw. Presumably the small fry of Great Meadows are taught in this schoolhouse: study algebra; and Archimedes' principle; and nouns; and learn that Lincoln called them "the last best hope of earth. . . ." This is the schoolhouse where hundreds met to hunt down five, who had committed the crime of discarding their ancestry for the ties of a new country.

There are crosses with Japanese names in the American cemeteries in the bitter Italian hills. These men are worthy to bear arms; how then are they not worthy to grow tomatoes?

Since I began, a score of shells have dolloped into the vicinity. They threaten my life, for which I have a high regard, but not the things that give my life sustenance. Now I feel that these things are threatened and I do not know where to go to find a clean picture of my country. It is not the matter of Great Meadows alone. Lord knows, that is only the latest and one of the least striking of the items on a long list. Somewhere in the confusion is the central matter of what is true and what is not true about our national life.

This is a very personal matter, like love or good beer or dying, and I should like someone to give me an answer. THOMAS RIGGS JR. 2nd Lieutenant c/o Postmaster New York City

D-Day Excitement

Sirs: Invasion-day stories will be many. Here is one:

On one Southern station an announcer, his nerves obviously affected by D-day excitement, said: "We now return you for a complete invasion of the news coverage." (Sgt.) WILLIAM MOFFITT Fort McPherson, Ga.

P: Another: NBC's veteran John W. Vandercook, broadcasting from London on D-day morning, said: "This is John W. Vandercook returning you now to John W. Vandercook in New York."--ED.

Trouble in Cambridge

Sirs: . . . We should like to clarify the position of The Harvard Service News in relation to the wartime University.

When our predecessors, The Harvard Crimson, suspended publication in May 1943, after 70 years, the Crimson editorial staff devoted itself to the publication of The Service News, a paper designed to present the news of the University as adequately as possible to the student population at Harvard, which is now roughly in the proportion of six thousand naval and military trainees to six hundred civilian undergraduates. With a large proportion of our staff in uniform, we commenced publication with the idea that we would avoid such issues as would involve us editorially.

The implications of your article [race riots and anti-Semitism in Cambridge--TIME, June 12], that our failure to publish a letter regarding the disturbances along the Charles River was the result of pressure by officials of the University, are therefore based on a misunderstanding of our purposes and position. The decision not to publish the letter to which you refer was made by us in accordance with our general policy, prior to any consultation with Dean Hanford. . . . DANA FERNALD Editor ROGER H. WILSON Managing Editor RUSSELL K. HEADLEY Photographic Chairman The Harvard Service News Cambridge, Mass.

Dinkum

Sirs: TIME (June 12): "Curtin . . . gave . . . Mr. King a dinkum lesson. . . ."

What is a "dinkum" lesson? JACK FORBES Beverly Hills, Calif.

P: Australian slangsters apply "dinkum," meaning "genuine," "the real thing," to anything from a sermon to a race horse. Nearest U.S. equivalent: "the McCoy."--ED.

Catholics and Spain Sirs: If TIME'S "experienced, serious observer" (TIME, May 29) is as ignorant of Spanish affairs as he is of the Catholic Church, we think that General Franco need hardly fear a revolution on his testimony. It is rather difficult to understand the mentality that can characterize as "serious" a correspondent who accuses the Catholic Church of selling indulgences, exploiting the people, collecting its 10% or fomenting civil wars.

Such charges are utterly untrue, as anyone knows who has studied history and observed the Church as she is in the world today. To print them as news, on the unsupported word of an anonymous correspondent, can scarcely be classified as factual, unbiased reporting; that TIME has done so evidences either a cynical disregard of truth, or an inexcusable lack of information. ELEANOR & AGNES KENNEDY Minneapolis

Sirs: . . . Indulgence is forgiveness--and can neither be sold nor bought. True--that certain acts of faith result in voluntary contributions, but that gift is not an essential concomitant of the indulgence itself. J. B. CLARK Jacksonville

Sirs: It is with gratification that I note your continued objectivity. I should emphasize that I am not a Catholic-baiter, a Jew-baiter, or anything else that smacks of intolerance. But as a student of modern European history there are some facts I cannot fail to note.

Your brief reference to Spain is an example. The Catholic Church continues to support that farce, Franco, and will part with him only when he no longer aids and abets the policy of the Catholic Church. The "Church" has consistently been an exponent of reaction. It is authoritarian, and today, as in the past, aligns itself with authoritarian governments. And we do not have to look across the waters to see it. The Latin-American countries are spheres of influence--Catholic influence if I read correctly, and I think I do. . . .

Your comments were in italics, I see, by an experienced observer returned from Spain. Let us have more of these observations. America has been great because she grew up without the restraints which have held Europe in an abyss these many centuries. . . .

I salute you, gentlemen, your magazine, your excellent reporting. CHARLES W. Cox College Place, Wash.

P: TIME nodded in permitting its "experienced, serious observer" to use the obsolete phrase, "sale of indulgences." TIME regrets that it is not at liberty to reveal his identity. But TIME believes his report. Canonical laxity among the Spanish clergy is not new. Nor is religious apathy among the Spanish people--a result of the indifference of many Spanish clerics to the noble social precepts of the Papal encyclicals.--ED.

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