With Decency and Hope

Sir: Thank you for the beautiful picture and cover story on Ali MacGraw [Jan. 11]. To begin the new year with such decency and hope will not only affect our youth but their parents too.

(MRS.) MYRTLE HUNTINGTON Rochester, Vt.

Sir: Your article on "the return to romanticism" is the best historical study of the last decade and prediction of the next that I have read. Arise, America! You inspire a culture to settle about you.

DANIEL D. GERSTEIN Durham, N.H.

Sir: The hip generation is just beginning to find out what grandma always knew: sex without love is a big zero.

JANE M. CHRISTMAN Norwalk, Conn.

Sir: Love Story has a few tender moments. The rest is sarcasm, one-upmanship and slang. People must be starved for tenderness to rate the story so high in romance.

DOROTHY PIERCE Dallas

Sir: Segal had to kill off Jenny; their marriage was doomed. What love can survive "never having to say you're sorry"?

(MRS.) MARILYN Ross Madison, Wis.

Sir: Once upon a time, when 90% of the material offered by the media was romantic, some concerned people suggested that perhaps the media should give us something more relevant and realistic.

Then everyone in the media began to create relevant things, until 90% of the material offered by the media was relevant.

The moral of the story is obvious: the American people are human beings who are common in their diversity, who like relevance and romanticism, and who have not gone anywhere from which to return. ROBERT B. MARTIN JR. North Hollywood

Is It Treason?

Sir: Chancellor Willy Brandt is indeed Man of the Year [Jan. 4]. At last Germany has a government that accepts the realities of World War II. It is very important that we, the Germans, come to terms with our neighbors, especially our eastern neighbors, who were the victims of criminal Nazi terror. The organizations of refugees from the former German territories always condemn Brandt's new Ostpolitik with such ominous terms as "treacherous." I ask only, "Is it treason to accept the realities?"

HANS-WALTER HOJNICKI Nettetal, Germany

Sir: A perfect choice! When a Protestant German Chancellor falls to his knees in Catholic Poland before a monument to slain Jews, there is hope for all of us in this young world.

JAMES J. GARRETT San Francisco

Sir: It is a basic fact that the weight of orthodox, conservative German militarism has always been for a shared hegemony, with Russia, over Europe. Only the grandiose ego of Hitler, who tried to deprive his fellow conspirator, Russia, of its share of the loot, led him to fight the Soviets against the plan and advice of his general staff. Germany and Russia have been the top culprits in the bloodletting of the past 50 years. It is naive to think that their men of power want peace for the sake of peace.

MOREY R. BENSMAN Milwaukee

Sir: The old wise man of the West, Konrad Adenauer, is dead and forgotten. Forgotten also is his pearl of wisdom: "Only the silliest calf chooses its own butcher."

KORNELIYS PURGALIS

Seattle

Building Womanpower

Sir: As a mother of two and wife of a physician, I read your article about women in medicine [Jan. 11] with great interest. Being 11 1/2 years out of an internship at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, where I not uncommonly worked 128 hours a week--and at least 90 hours--with no days off, I have some insight into the problem. Most women are not only willing to work as hard as men but often do more than their share to "prove" their sincerity. The part-time training programs will help alleviate some of the obstacles. This is certainly a more realistic approach than losing our womanpower entirely.

(MRS.) RUTH G. RAMSEY, M.D. Chicago

Sir: Hospital residencies are designed to provide 24-hour care for the ill and to provide residents with the maximum patient exposure needed to produce a wellrounded, intelligent and capable physician. The problems of medicine do not cease to exist on nights, weekends and holidays. Indeed, there are some experiences that can be gained only by being on duty during the odd hours. To allow female residents the opportunity not to work these hours would be to produce a physician who is not as well trained as her male counterpart. This is something neither the hospital, the patients nor the physician herself could or should tolerate.

JEFFREY V. RABUFFO, M.D.

Georgetown University Hospital

Washington, D.C.

Sir: Perhaps the patients could be deep-frozen holidays and weekends.

(MRS.) ANN LESLIE N. MOORE Quincy, Mass.

Sir: Male medical students also need to spend time with their families; their irregular and grueling schedules no doubt play an important role in doctors' infamously high divorce rates. And 36-hour shifts are hardly conducive to good medical practice. A reformation should attract not only qualified females but qualified males who previously have also been reluctant to make such spartan sacrifices. HELEN W. REMICK Davis, Calif.

No More

Sir: A loud ovation for Congress on their recent ban of cigarette advertising from television [Jan. 11]. No more disillusionment of springtime in winter, tasteless bad grammar, tar and nicotine counts, special filtration and Micronite filters, cigarette-holder comparisons, dancing and singing cigarette packs, smokers who would rather fight than switch, etc. Now let's eliminate smoking in public places.

THERESE E. NOVAK Chesapeake, Va.

Sir: I can assure you that Philip Morris has no plans to get around the law by arranging telecasts of the Virginia Slims Invitational Tennis Tournament. As for the Marlboro-U.S. Auto Club Championship Trail, the fact is that Marlboro agreed to sponsor this major series of auto races long before ABC and the U.S. Auto Club arranged coverage of some of the races on Wide World of Sports. And that arrangement was made solely between ABC and the Auto Club--without Marlboro participation.

The last paragraph of the article is literally unbelievable in its flat statement that "tobaccomen are also discussing the potentially heady market for marijuana." The simple fact is that marijuana is an illegal product. As a responsible company, we have no interest here at Philip Morris in anything that is illegal and we have held no discussions nor made any plans concerning the marketing of such a product. JOSEPH F. CULLMAN III Chairman of the Board Philip Morris Inc. Manhattan

Sir: The sponsorship of sporting events by our company is emphatically not for the purpose of gaining broadcast-audience exposure for any R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. product that cannot be advertised on radio or television. With respect to marijuana, Reynolds is not now considering --nor have we ever considered--the eventual sale of any product containing marijuana in Puerto Rico or any other place in the world.

W.S. SMITH President

RJ. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Winston-Salem, N.C.

Sir: Lorillard is sponsoring no sporting events of any type in the U.S. We have no intention of sponsoring any type of event, sporting or otherwise, which would result in our circumventing the law banning cigarette advertising on the broadcast media. We will live up to the letter and intent of the law.

We have on numerous occasions categorically denied any interest in or involvement with marijuana. We confirm that denial again today.

CURTIS H. JUDGE President

Lorillard Corporation Manhattan

>Other major companies in the cigarette industry have also denied any part in the rumored involvement with marijuana, and TIME is glad to accept their assurances.

Patient Too Long

Sir: Long live the Jewish Defense League [Jan. 11]. Your article was most enlightening, and to me reassuring. However, comparing the J.D.L., a purely defensive organization, to the Black Panthers is ludicrous and misleading.

We have been patient for too long. In all social upheavals we have been sacrificed to other peoples' causes. At this time the black militants have allocated to us this role, reasoning no doubt that no catastrophe has befallen us here as yet. But never again! Jews who disagree with the J.D.L.'s ideology are the hypocrites, probably the very same who urged their co-religionists to silence in America while the European Jews burned.

But at last we are no longer willing to play the Gentile's game, be he a religious white bigot or black militant. We won't be anyone's passive victim.

CORINE SKORSKI Oak Park, Mich.

Sir: Sad. All through the centuries, the Jews were the people of the book, scholars and sages, exalting mind over muscle. But the bravos came only after the dubious victory of the Six-Day War.

Sad also that now that karate may rate as high as culture, Jewish blows will be aimed, even though defensively, at ghetto blacks and browns, who like czarist peasants release pain via scapegoats. In the ghettos, the chosen scapegoats are part of the result rather than the cause of the plight of poor people, who would get no better break from black shopkeepers.

(MRS.) GLADY FOREMAN Los Angeles

Sir: It is worthwhile to ponder Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's comment, that when peace will come to the Middle East, she will forgive the Arabs for everything except the fact that they have forced Jews to kill in battle.

(RABBI) MARVIN J. SPIEGELMAN Cleveland

Rate Increases

Sir: The statement in your Press section [Jan. 18] that second-class mailing rates will be raised by at least 50% this year is at variance with published statements of present Post Office Department officials as well as provisions of the new law under which the recently appointed Postal Rate Commission will operate.

Postal officials have indicated that they will ask the rate commission for the maximum allowable across-the-board temporary rate increase -- 33 1/3%.

STEPHEN KELLY President

Magazine Publishers Ass'n Manhattan

Required Reading

Sir: Your welfare article [Jan. 4] should be required reading for all welfare people in our federal and state bureaucratic hideouts.

The cure for this is to add Mayor Lindsay and all the city officials and welfare personnel on federal and state levels who have contributed to this situation to the ranks of the permanently unemployed.

JAMES F. MORTINSON Glendive, Mont.

From Howard to Johnson's

Sir: General South must be kidding. Does he honestly find something tragic in a lot of "crummy, small highways" [Jan. 11]? I found the roads perfectly maintained and the scenery gorgeous.

Tourism in beautiful New England could only be hampered by an interlocking network of interstate highways. To enhance it, they need only advertise more "crummy, small highways."

We all know that snow-skiing thrives in this area despite any conditions, bad or good. And can you imagine going from Howard Johnson's to Howard Johnson's on a scenic trip of beautiful, untouched New England?

MRS. THOMAS M. PHILLIPS Columbus

Sir: With so many of the major cities of this country depressed up to their eyebrows despite highways unlimited, it makes no economic sense and even less conservation sense to support a program that will cost the Federal Government millions of dollars and do damage to the one outstanding feature of the states in question --their unspoilt beauty--to bring some mythical industry to some nonexistent city. If the ports of New York City and Boston are dying economically, it must be from lack of use, not from lack of highways.

PATRICIA HEARD Lexington, Mass.

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