BURNS THE PENTAGON
A religious magazine aimed at nine- to twelve-year-old children is in trouble with the Pentagon because of a poem it published. And the author of the poem, twelveyear-old "Pitt" Beidler has zoomed to instant fame in the United States because her poem got under the skin of the arrogant Washington brass.
The magazine, Venture, is published in Philadelphia by the Presbyterian Board of Christian Education. It has a circulation of 130,000 of which about 13,000 copies are used in Protestant Sunday Schools of American military bases around the world. A spokesman for the religious group said that the Defense Department had canceled the 13,000 subscriptions as a result of publication of the poem. A Defense Department spokesman, however, implied that the statement of the Presbyterian representative was not in accordance with the truth. All the department did was to take the magazine off its recommended list. Chaplains, he said could still order the magazine "if they so desired."
The poem that caused all the trouble is entitled, "Afterthoughts on Napalm Drop on Jungle Villages Near Haiphong." As quoted in the press it reads in part:
"Then there was the flash -- silver and gold
Silver and gold.
Silver birds flying,
Golden water raining.
The rice ponds blazed with new water.
The jungle burst into gold and sent up little birds of fire.
Little animals with fur aflame.
Then the children flamed.
Running -- their clothes flying like fiery kites.
Screaming ~- their screams
Dying as their faces seared.
The women's baskets burned on their heads.
The men's boats blazed on the rice waters.
Then the rains came.
A rag, fire black, fluttered.
A curl of smoke rose from a rice stem.
The forest lay singed and seared.
A hut crumbled.
And all was still.
"Listen Americans,
Listen clear and long. .
The children are screaming in the jungles of Haiphong."
"Pitt" is the pen name chosen by Barbara Beidler. She frequently submits verses and other writings to magazines but the press did not report whether much had been published before Venture accepted this effort of hers and sent her a token payment of $1.
Barbara's father is an elder of the Presbyterian Church and is a director of Indian River County mosquito control in Vero Beach, i#lcrida, where the family live.
Barbara is reported to be a straight. "A" student who is "extremely interested in world affairs.
; . She is opposed to the U.S. war in Vietnam, she said, "because I think it's wasting lives for an unworthy cause. It seems like this ought to be left up to the South and North Vietnamese."