Letters: Aug. 10, 1962

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IN A WEAK AND QUIBBLING REPLY TO LORD BEAVERBROOK [TlME, July 27] WHO POINTED OUT THAT YOU WERE WRONG IN STATING THAT NO BRITISH PRIME MINISTER IN "MODERN TIMES" HAD BEEN A BACHELOR, YOU, SIR, SUGGEST THAT 1911 MAY NOT BE CONSIDERED 'MODERN TIMES." YOUR LAME DEFENSE FOR YOUR ERROR MIGHT HAVE BEEN A TRIFLE LESS LAME IF YOUR GIFTED RESEARCHERS HAD TOLD YOU THAT MR. BALFOUR CEASED TO BE PRIME MINISTER SIX YEARS EARLIER IN DECEMBER, 1905. THIS WOULD STILL HAVE BEEN A QUIBBLE: BUT LESS MISLEADING THAN WHAT YOU WROTE.

RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL SUFFOLK, ENGLAND

≫ Gifted researcher says lamely that Balfour was a member of Parliament until 1911, but concedes to Quibbler Churchill.−ED.

New Africa

Sir:

You scored a bull's eye with your superb summarization of the new, independent Africa [TIME, Aug. 3].

My hearty and grateful congratulations for this amazing information about the 27 countries.

If I were a geography teacher, I could hardly imagine anything about the new Africa more comprehensive, instructive, and helpful.

WILLIAM B. LIPPHARD Yonkers, N.Y.

Sir:

What purpose does TIME have in mind in publicizing cannibalism in the Gabon Republic? And the incidence of female circumcision is infinitesimal. Such practices are far from common there and are considered by the citizenry as a shocking aberration to be ceaselessly combatted.

From two years of anthropological research in that hospitable republic, I can assure you that a Kinsey Report on the Gabonese people would reveal far less sexual abnormality than is the case here.

JAMES W. FERNANDEZ Instructor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Smith College Northampton, Mass.

An Artist's Revenge

Sir:

If the stone caricature of the Rev. Mr. Foeken is allowed to remain on the Eusebius Church steeple [TIME, July 27], perhaps he will be consoled to discover that he is not the first churchman to be preserved to immortality by a revengeful artist.

While Michelangelo was working on the fresco The Last Judgment, he was criticized by Pope Paul Ill's master of ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, for placing so many nudes in a sacred picture. Infuriated, Michelangelo retaliated by putting a portrait of Biagio on the body of Minos, the ruler of the farthest section of hell (the right-hand lower corner of the painting). The offended prelate complained to the Pope, who replied, "Had the painter sent you to Purgatory, I would have used my best efforts to get you released; but I exercise no influence in hell ubi nulla est redemptio."

ELWOOD W. THORNTON JR. Memphis