JUDGE JOHN J. SIRICA'S lenient sentences last Saturday for John Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Robert Mardian show that two and a half years after the Watergate break-in, justice is still a long way off. Giving three of the most powerful men in the Nixon administration no fines, and only 30 months in jail--less if they exemplify "good behavior"--constitutes, in comparison to their crimes, little more than a slap on the wrist.

Before he read his sentences, Judge Sirica said that he took four points into consideration: the protection of society, the possibility of rehabilitation, the effects of the sentences on defendants and their families, and "the deterrent effect that the sentence might have on others who may be tempted to commit the same type of crimes for which these defendants now stand convicted."

Certainly these sentences will have a bad effect on the defendants and their families but they will have little or no deterrent effect upon others. Nor will they rehabilitate these criminals. Most important of all they will not adequately protect society from three of the most insidious criminals of this century.

Mitchell, former attorney general and a vociferous hardliner on law and order, deserves more than two and a half years simply for the immense hypocrisy of his sense of justice. Mardian is a lawyer, too, and he should be given stronger punishment for the same betrayal of justice. Haldeman and Ehrlichman, former chief advisors in the White House, both deserve to be tried, along with Nixon, for possible collusion in, or at least prior knowledge of, crimes related to the war in Vietnam, the coup in Chile, administration impoundment of funds appropriated by Congress, and CIA domestic spying. But in this trial, their positions as two of the most important people in the White House, and Mardian's and Mitchell's positions as well, demand that the example all four set as deterrants be especially strong.

Before Sirica handed down the sentences. Haldeman's defense counsel, John J. Wilson, gave the traditional statement on an appropriate sentence. He claimed that he hoped Sirica "considers whatever Bob Haldeman did, he did not for himself but for the President of the United States; that the virtue of loyalty is not to be forgotten when evaluating all the attending circumstances." This same argument was used to defend fascist killers at Nuremburg.

But if loyalty should count at all in considering the sentences, it should be loyalty to basic principles of justice and not to any particular egomaniac. That Sirica's sentences were some of the stiffest in the entire Watergate nexus of crime and corruption attests to the gravity of this particular trial and its consequences. Enough of Watergate has already been obfuscated and forgotten for four of its most active participants to be mildly scolded and sent off to resume high social, if not powerful, positions in American society again.