Long Live!

Sir: Your story on Bach [Dec, 27] was the best Christmas cover story for a long, long time. Every word brought illumination and joy; you had the symmetry, the inevitable Tightness in every part. You have an art of your own. I left a reading of every word with a sense of completeness; the Bach violin partitas began sounding through my mind as I got up. You caught the heart of the Bachian Restoration in a magnificent end-of-year cadenza. What is better for space travel than the accompaniment of Bach? Long live Bach'

HAYDN LEWIS GILMORE Tunkhannock, Pa.

Sir: I don't know the author but: My hat is off to Johann Bach. For whom my sentiment is ach; Not once, but twice, a model spouse. With twenty children in the house.

Some fathers would have walked away In what they call a fugue today. But he left no one in the lurch And played the stuff he wrote in church. RICHARD H. WANGERIN President American Symphony Orchestra

League,Inc Vienna, Va

Fuel to the Fires

Sir: Hurray to those brave Arab Commandos [Dec. 13] for their daring attacks on unarmed civilians, women and children. The fedayeen can sit by their campfire basking in the glory of blowing up school buses. Meanwhile, the U.N. adds fuel to the fire by censuring Israel for trying to preserve its very existence. What country in the world will come to the defense of Israel? Or is their fantastic progress in democracy and self-achievement too much for a mediocre world to tolerate?

WALTER SIMPSON, O.D. Westfield, Mass.

Sir: The article implies that Arab governments cannot oppose the will of their peoples. This smacks of sophistry since the will in question is largely a product of the 100% government-controlled news media. Were these media to preach peace rather than hate, it is highly probable that public opinion would change.

The Israel that the commandos want to "liberate" has a population of 90% Jews and 10% Arabs. One is strongly reminded of the recent liberation of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union.

PHILLIP EIN-DOR Pittsburgh

Sir: In 1947, instead of self-determination and a plebiscite, a minority group of a country was given carte blanche, and it now runs a political state based on religious theology--a "democracy" only to Jews, not to Moslems or Christians.

After 50 years of lack of understanding and duplicity on the part of Britain, France and then the U.S., culminating in the partition of Palestine, the Arabs have given up hope of equitable treatment by the West. In desperation they are resorting to tactics similar to those used by the Israeli terrorist groups over 20 years ago. Those of us who have actively fought anti-Semitism ought to be able to recognize injustice when it is directed toward others.

SYLVIA A. DE FREITAS Manhattan

Right or Wrong?

Sir: Your article "Welfare and Illfare" [Dec. 13] is repugnant to me. No citizen has a right to any wealth except what he produces. There is no "national abundance" for anyone to claim. There is only the wealth of individuals produced by individuals. The Constitution guarantees political, not economic rights. I have the right to pursue happiness, not to happiness itself

Even if a majority of the people in the nation want to help the poor, they have no right to use democracy to force their "morality" on others. I have worked hard to earn a better than average income. I was born with the right to use it as I please. I am being robbed of both. Competence is made the slave of incompetence, work the slave of lethargy, mind the slave of body. How stupid, immoral and inhuman is "humamtananism,"

RAYMOND A. ZACHARY JR. Richardson, Texas

Sir: Daniel Patrick Moynihan must be totally unaware of the fact that the population of the U.S. is doubling every 35 years. Children's allowances! The allowance should be to those who either have no or few children or to those who volunteer to be sterilized. The population explosion is the most important problem faced by man today, Idiotic schemes such as "family allowance" will serve no purpose but to compound the gravity of the situation.

WILLIAM S, LINDSAY Pacific Grove, Calif.

Sir: We do not eliminate the sickness, of which poverty is a symptom, by charity. The $55 billion used to keep these dropouts existing could be used to eliminate the sickness: create training schools and work camps where these people could develop a useful skill and the necessary discipline for useful living, boarding schools where their children could absorb the necessary attitudes for a responsible life in the American community.

What they need is a guaranteed job, not a guaranteed income

(MRS ) DENISE DOEBBELING Salt Lake City

Sir: It is hard to believe that you do not think Americans are willing to take something for nothing, for certainly every promotion outfit and private company that wants to spur sales knows differently. Our nation is paranoiacally coked up on getting something for nothing. I even find myself lusting for gold as I open my Mobil gas sealed coupon, and if I get assaulted by many more such contests (the dollar for the lottery is tempting me no end) I'll be paranoiac too.

No, we might have had the you-can't-get-something-for-nothing myth back when myths were easy to perpetuate and people were harder to bend, but not today. Anyway, you say it is an American belief, which hints that other nations have the opposite belief. I truly know of no nation past or present that is running a giveaway show.

CLIFFORD F. DAVIS JR.

Newburgh, N.Y.

Mission: Impossible

Sir-Your article on the investigation of auto repairs [Dec. 13] was quite interesting. I was once a mechanic, and it is my opinion that the high cost of auto repairs is primarily due to one thing: these cars were not designed to be repaired. In almost every late model car you cannot remove the oil pan without lifting the engine! Look under the hood of any new car and imagine how long it would take you to get to each spark plug. Shock absorbers could easily be mounted where it would take no more than three minutes to remove each one. Just look where they hide 'em on some models. Changing a dashboard panel light can be Mission: Impossible. What about radiator and heater hoses? Had one replaced lately? It should be a five-minute job. It's not.

It would benefit everybody if the manufacturers would put a mechanic next to every drawing board. It would not only save everyone money, but it'd prevent a lot of profanity and skinned knuckles.

ROBERT W. SCHAEFER Kansas City, Mo.

Sir: The struggle of Homo sapiens to survive the automotive era might well be entitled Lemon Squeezes Man.

ALBERT M. JACKSON

Becket, Mass.

Shear Rubbish

Sir: If I didn't think you were serious, I would have laughed uncontrollably at your statement about Australian shearers [Dec. 13] having "legendary" status in this country Down Under. Australia is undergoing an unprecedented industrial boom, and most Aussies are engaged in secondary or tertiary industry. In fact, 90% of Australians have never seen a sheep being shorn or couldn't care less anyway. National hero, rubbish! You typify the attitude of most overseas visitors, summed up by the American tourist who, arriving in Sydney, immediately looked around and said, "Ah cain't see any kangaroos." Wake up to Australia's new image. And it's not riding on a sheep's back.

ALAN HOLMAN

Victoria, Australia

Sir: If the Department of Agriculture can peel a sheep and would share its secrets with the Department of Urban Development, one wonders if certain areas of Los Angeles and San Francisco could not be beautified considerably by mixing that antitumor drug with pot.

R. C. RICE Los Angeles

Cumulative Effect

Sir: TIME speculates about a "reverse tolerance" to marijuana [Dec. 20]. No claims for reverse tolerance have been made by responsible persons, even though the lack of response to marijuana in initial trials is well known. I prefer the statement of a pot user, published by the columnist Helen Bottel in April: "Marijuana, contrary to narcotic drugs, has a cumulative effect, and each time it is smoked it will take less and less to feel high, but it may take as many as four or five tries before you get off the ground,"

My search into the matter has convinced me that the explanation is not that kids are too scared to let the drug take effect at first or that the pot reaction is the result of suggestion and conditioning or a reverse tolerance. There is no precedent for a reverse tolerance. There is much precedent for accumulation of chemical burdens, and it seems to me that this is the most likely explanation--a lasting and accumulative effect of marijuana on the brain.

HARDIN B. JONES Professor of Physiology and Medical Physics University of California Berkeley

Ends and Means

Sir: Your article about the yippies and Mr. Hoffman's book [Dec. 20] was grossly misleading. You claim that they are nonviolent. In view of their actions in Chicago, doesn't that seem a misjudgment? I have read Hoffman's book, and he never disavows the use of violence. He brags about hitting a cop with a bottle and threatening to kill the deputy superintendent of police if the yippies were not allowed to march to the amphitheater. He and the yippies seem willing to use any means necessary to further their revolutionary aims, including violence. Wake up.

PAT MCNEIL

The Bronx, N.Y.

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