is too painfully reminiscent of the anti-union taunt, so smugly widespread in the days before the Wagner Act-"so if ya don't like the working conditions or the pay-go work someplace else. Nobody's stopping ya!" This was no answer to the Coal Miners, or to men with family responsibilities. whose roots went deep in a given region-even as its opposite is no answer to a large plurality of the currently unorganized members of the Homophile Minority.

How can we not recognize this-when we presume to otherwise conceive ourselves as socially-minded or compassionate? We, as keepers of our socially or geographically shut-in brothers seeking Pedersen's Daniels and winning Lambert's Dinos-hardly are absolved of responsibility by retorting "sick, SICK, SICK!" We have published too much in our own beloved ONE Magazine to longer blind ourselves to the reality that the sickness which produces the Dinos and the Jims and the Geralds-which emotionally dislocates the Svens and Millards and Pauls-is that same hysteria-andpressure-producing Civic hypocrisy which exhibits and nourishes the moribund penal codes and parasitic police-statism under which the entire Minority variously languishes—be it here or Canada or Australia.

We believe that, beneath the surface of a comfortable plurality of the Homophile Pen-Pal pleas, lurks a healthy and constructive (even if but dimly perceived) desire for some measure of social identity and social responsibility. We believe Pen-Palism should be seen as a symptom rather than as a crux of the shut-in's need. We feel, therefore, that the responsible issue lies rather in bringing the horse and the trough within scenting distance of each other. Whether he drinks (or whether it is drunk from) or not is quite another matter entirely. We suggest that, in the cold realiy of the present social climate, the sesame lies neither in the condoning of Pen-Palism nor in the negation of it.

We suggest that ONE, proceeding also on the perception of it as a symptom rather than as a crisis, resolve the symptom as a means-to-a-socially-productive-end rather than as a controversial end-in-itself to be heatedly yea-ed or nayed.

"Meeting compatible people, whether for life-partnership, for friendship, or mere sex, is one of the hardest problems for some homosexuals." Pedersen. Mr. F. H. J. of Texas writes: Please do institute a Pen Pals club!

DER KREIS/LE CERCLE

Monthly magazine in German, a few pages in French, also in English. Liberally illustrated with photographs and drawings. Articles, stories, poetry. Oldest of homophile publications. $11, first class. 1953-57 volumes available at $8.

Postbox 547, Fraumunster, Zurich 22, Switzerland.

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