and-pray-for-your-success" letters,

it's because we do receive quite a lot of letters of that type, and because, as the editor of that department is acutely aware, the money we receive from newsstand sales and subscriptions doesn't nearly cover our operating expenses. No, we're not a "front for getting cash', but without contributions from a small group of faithful members, we couldn't stay in business at all. I hope you will drop in, as you suggested, and see what we're doing here. And I also hope you'll keep on sending in news reports. We need them . . .

After the brutal slaying of 6-yrold Ben Wagner in Milwaukee, Dr. Charles Landis, director of mental health of county psychiatric hospital and clinics, said that murderers of children are not usually known sex deviates, but individuals who are committing their first criminal act, persons with mixed sexual urges who "until this time have been acting normally." A few weeks later, Harold McLaughlin, 28, suspect in the case from the start (his alibi had been covered by his tattooed mother and step-father"Harold didn't do it," she sobbed, "Him didn't do such a thing. Him. home all day. I don't know how they got him to say it. Somebody wanted the money.") confessed to the killing after a young friend of the victim identified him as the man Ben Wagner had gotten into a car with. Harold frequently changed his story during several days of confessions, varying his account as to whether he'd had sex with the boy, whether he'd intended to kill him before hearing a radio broadcast of the abduction, whether he'd bought him a meal . . . Harold, the "baby" of a fast-growing family, had a long record of commitment to various institutions, for stealing, sexual offenses, and being of sub-

one

normal intelligence, and repeated premature release due to shortage of facilities. Assuming that overzealous prosecutors haven't used a half-wit to get an easy confession. and close a case, this seems to be a clear example of a murder that might well have been preventedtho the easiest preventive probably would have been birth control.

Missed this story last year-Mt. Vernon, Ohio: Kenyon College instructor Edgar Bogardus, 30, recently named managing editor of Kenyon Review, and praised in TIME as one of most promising young men in literature, was found dead of carbon monoxide in his home along with a senior student, Daniel Ray, 22, of Cincinnati. Mr. Bogardus had taught at Carnegie Tech and the Univ. of Connecticut before coming to Kenyon in 1956. His book of verse, "Various Jangling Keys", had been published in 1953 as the 50th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets . . .

A new national group aiming to protect the morality of whiteblooded youth from dangerous or corrupting literature, the "Citizens for Decent Literature" got under way recently in Cincinnati, after an earlier meeting in Cleveland. They were told by Cincinnati's topcop, who welcomed popular support for police efforts, that "citizens should leave to police and prosecutors the job of determining what literature. is objectionable". Why not leave that up to readers? The steering committee of the new group includes Mrs. C. R. Addington of Coral Gables, Fla.; Robert Bowers, Memphis; Mrs. Walter A. Craig, Philadelphia; James M. Flannagan, St. Louis; Mrs. John B. Hoffman, St. Paul; Leo C. Renaud, Boston; Paul S. Rose, Salt Lake City; Sherman Titens, Cleveland; and Robert Foy and Charles H. Keating, Jr., of Cincinnati.