article emphasizing the vital importance of the homosexual's seeking prompt private medical attention in any case of suspected venereal infection. This article also stressed the homosexual's moral responsibility in this area by citing Sec. 3198 of California's Health and Safety Code, which makes it

misdemeanor for any person knowingly carrying any venereal disease in an infectious state to have sexual intercourse. As any reasonably well-informed person knows, venereal diseases can cripple and kill, and moral turpitude hits bottom both in kind and degree in the person who thinks more of his sexual satisfaction (or of a dollar) than of the health or life of another.

MORE ON POSTAL PRACTICES

In theory, the privacy of firstclass mail is inviolate, BUT . your "pen-pal" may be a postal inspector and this is not the only Occupational hazard for anyone exercising his or her right to read, or otherwise make use of eyesight, or to conduct a private life unannoyed by governmental Peeping Toms. In an article on 'Mail Snooping, the NEW REPUBLIC for 8/21 /65 reports: -"The Post Office, alert to violations of obscenity laws, now routinely visits employers of persons suspected of receiving 'obscene' mail. Recently, an official of the Pennsylvania State Dept. of Highways was forced to 'resign' after postal inspectors had called on his superior. The material was published by the Janus Society, and other groups interested in homosexuality. The postal inspectors never talked to the man himself; nor did they bring criminal action against him. But the supervisor thought it imprudent to keep the man around any longer. It was never shown that the mail

in question was obscene. . . . In another case, on June 23, postal inspectors got in touch with a Maryland college professor and asked him to identify three 'obscene' letters which they said he had sent to a male 'pen pal' who was being investigated by the department. He admitted writing the letters to a man who had run a personals ad in a magazine for homosexuals. Several days later, the inspectors approached the president of the college and showed him the letters. The professor was asked to resign 'for the protection of the college.' Postal authorities say that in general they do not contact an employer unless it is necessary to flesh out an investigation. They would not, in other words, call on him for the sole purpose of informing on someone suspected of dealing in obscene mail. But there are numerous exceptions to this. A spokesman for the department admitted that a superior may be contacted in cases involving government employees and persons working for private government contractors, where a 'security risk' may be involved. Also, should an inspector find a 'scoutmaster or teacher' receiving what he thinks is obscene mail, he will go to the employer as a matter of course."

However, not all postal inspection is devoted to such sordid, Gestapo-like, and unconstitutional practices. Postal surveillance covers many areas where real, not mythical, sectors of public welfare are involved. Frederic Sondern, Jr., writing for the October, 1965 READER'S DIGEST, describes briefly but comprehensively how postal inspectors stand guard over many billions of dollars of public and private funds yearly transmitted through the mails, and how