The Morality Issue
Sir: As the American version of the Profumo scandal comes from the White House, the future of this nation requires some truthful and objective answers. If the 1959 morals arrest that is now revealed indicates Jenkins' vulnerability to Soviet blackmail during these years, and if this dangerous fact has been concealed by President Johnson, then the fitness of this Administration not only to govern but to defend this nation from its enemies must be examined.
BILL DEMING
Hollywood
Sir: Re Walter Jenkins: I wonder how many more unsavory characters are in the Johnson Administration.
(MRS.) MARY CRUNKER Savage, Minn.
Sir: I trust that the American people will be able to evaluate and vote on the real issues whatever malicious scandal Dean Burch succeeds in dredging up. However shocked we may be about the private morals of public officials, the U.S. cannot be persuaded that the public moral problems of civil rights, nuclear war, poverty and prosperity are better understood by Goldwater than by President Johnson. JEAN BAKER Minneapolis
Sir: It is with great disappointment that I see America's "leading clergymen" have thought it ethical to use their power, pulpits and journals as instruments for influencing politics [Oct. 9]. This action appears even more ludicrous in view of the scandals that have been characteristic of the Johnson Administration. Why has there been no mass clerical denunciation of the Bobby Baker scandal? Certainly the respectable clergy cannot be blind to the lack of morality in high offices and widespread disregard of the law that are now so prevalent in our country.
EDWARD HERNANDEZ Los Angeles
Sir: So William Sydnor says that those of us who are voting the Goldwater-Miller ticket are not Christians and are committing the sin of ardent nationalism. Since when, may we ask, is patriotism a sin? Evidently he believes that there is only one way to achieve brotherly love and world peace—by voting the Democratic ticket. May we suggest that he check into the personal integrity and character of both Mr. Goldwater and Mr. Johnson.
We think that he will make some startling discoveries.
BARBARA B. PUCKETT ELIZABETH H. BABB Richmond
Sir: What a commentary on the mixed-up American way of life that practitioners of medicine, entrusted with the job of ministering to our mentally ill, should allow themselves to be a pawn in the cheap journalistic efforts of Ralph Ginsburg [Oct. 9]. That professional men of such stature should be taken in by such an obvious political smear is indicative of the days in which we are living—days of compromise and diluting of principles, days when sin is labeled as "error," when morality is relative and when materialism emphasizes the values of expediency and the shirking of responsibility. God help us to choose wisely Nov. 3.
H. L. BAILEY
Chicago
Mr. Humphrey's Wet Peanut