Sir, - The page opposite your Editorial, "Naked Hatred in North Belfast" (September 5th), carries a powerful and disturbing photograph. Brilliantly focused and cropped to draw us to the tiny, crying face of a little girl between two armoured RUC officers - her gay hair-ribbons and neat uniform, like those of so many other children here who have headed off to school this week in eager anticipation only slightly tinged with anxiety - this photograph surely deserves serious consideration for an award.
But it is slightly marred by its caption: "A terrified Catholic child runs a gauntlet of abuse on her way to Holy Cross primary school." A better caption would have been: "A Catholic mother leads her terrified child through a gauntlet of abuse. . ." - because that was what was happening.
I cannot for the life of me imagine why she was doing this. She must have known that a blast bomb - such as the one that was thrown on the morning the photograph appeared - was a possibility, and that her child might have paid with her life, or a limb, for exercising her undoubted right to take the shortest route to school.
What was already happening to her child was quite bad enough, however. I am glad I am unable to read the expression on the woman's face: there are some things I don't want to understand, even if it is necessary for me to know that they exist. - Yours, etc.,
William Hunt, Harold's Cross, Dublin 6W.