The most frightening news pictures of the year have come not from the "strife-torn" Congo, but from the cultural capital of the American South. The good women of New Orkans, who so fear four small girls that they must shout obscenities at those who fear ignorance more, may well turn more stomachs and cause more alarm than any massaore at Sharpeville.

It doesn't matter that the responsible people of the city--from the mayor and Board of Education on down--are standing up as best they can for education and the law. The hatred and stupidity chat can keep children (who know no better) out of school and can find its only real expression in profanity and acts of violence, must sober even the hard bitten cheap politicans that surround Governor Jimmie Davis.

New Orleans once again shows the nation (and the all to smug North) how dirty America's house really is. The situation should teach the President-elect the truth of what he has said: that the moral force of the Presidency must be enlisted behind the law as expressed in the Supreme Court decisions on desegregation. But what is most remarkable about New Orleans is how faintly the American message, which so many try to hard to export, has been heard at home.