Bank Withdraws Anti-War Photos

The Cambridge Trust Company has removed from its display windows an exhibition of photographs of Vietnamese children injured by napalm explosives.

The exhibition -- prepared by Mrs. Philip Donham, executive secretary of Massachusetts Pax, an organization opposed to the war in Vietnam -- was taken down two days after its installation because of two customer complaints.

Last night Mrs. Donham reported that Ernest Klein, minister of the Old Cambridge Baptist Church, had asked her to let him display the pictures in his church. She said she will give him copies of the prints that appeared in the Trust window.

"We were told when Mrs. Donham asked for space that this was to be an appeal for funds for medical help," H. Gardner Bradlee, president of the bank, said yesterday.

Mrs. Donham claimed last night however that she had told the bank that her display would consist of pictures of Vietnamese children -- but she did not tell them about the anti-war angle.

Explaining his position, Bradlee explained the windows are not intended for displays of a political nature. It is not the job of the bank to express its opinions in this way on questions of national policy, he added.

And, Bradlee said, the message of Mrs. Donham's photographs "was clearly that we should stop the bombing in Vietnam. Unless the opposite point of view is also expressed, then it obviously shouldn't be in the window."