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Sir: I note, with a considerable amount of amusement, your footnote to the sad story of Sir Roger Casement, whose body was disinterred from its prison grave [March 5]. The footnote states that "because of an unexplained chemical reaction, the quicklime had not destroyed Casement's corpse." Of course the quicklime had not destroyed the corpse, just as it fails to do this in every case where it is used for this purpose—except in detective stories. Poor Sir Roger's body was probably in a better condition than it would have been otherwise, since quicklime actually preserves rather than destroys bodies. This same "mysterious" failure of quicklime occurred in the Bobby Greenlease kidnaping and murder in St. Louis and, more recently, in the Anthony Biernat murder in Kenosha, Wis. This revelation may cost the lime business some tonnage, but it just ain't so.
C. E. LAGERMAN
The Western Lime & Cement Co.
Milwaukee
Slam
Sir: Why does TIME waste TIME by writing articles on Willem de Kooning's new women [Feb. 26]? His nudes are sensuous? They are hateful and macabre-looking, painted by a third-rate news reporter who reports his own feelings.
INA ANDERS
Los Angeles
Boom
Sir: If those four who conspired to blow up the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument, and the Liberty Bell [Feb. 26] had been content to level the new Rayburn House Office Building, I know of a few Congressmen who would have supplied the dynamite.
ART GLICKMAN Arnold, Md.
Prison Chaplains
Sir: If there is a prison chaplain who is genuinely interested in improving the attitudes of imprisoned criminals [March 5], I suggest he try setting a personal example. In the course of serving almost seven years as a prison inmate, every prison chaplain I met was a sanctimonious bureaucrat who was more interested in saving his job than in saving souls.
JAMES G. CAREY Detroit
Who Will Do?
Sir: The name Adam Clayton Powell is a mockery to the cause of civil rights, representative government, and responsible ministry, if certainly mocks the idea of creative originality. His stirring statement [Feb. 26] on the House floor—"I am only one. but I am one, I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, that I ought to do, and what T ought to do, by the grace of God, I will do!"—was not his at all. It was made about 1880 by Frederic William Farrar (1831-1903), canon of Westminster and later dean of Canterbury.
ROBERT KOLOVSON
Derby, Conn.
The quote is also attributed to Author Edward Everett Hale.
Over the Bounding Main
Sir: Ondine [March 5] has consistently beaten Stormvogel, including the Rio race, 1962. and the Bermuda race, 1964. I believe that Ondine has won more races in class or overall than any other modern yacht. All ocean races are handicapped events, depending on the size of the yacht.
W. H. TRIPP
Port Washington, N.Y.