With the onset of autumn, football reigns supreme in the hearts of millions of our countrymen. It is not only a sport, a fall festival, a weekend way of life; it is also a billion-dollar business. Football is perhaps the most obvious manifestation of the American obsession with sports, an obsession that has produced the doctrine of "Winning is everything." In the pursuit of this doctrine, contends Burling Lowrey, our values have become debased, and the old adage about not whether you win or lose but how you play the game has been destroyed. A native of Syracuse, N. Y. and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell, Mr. Lowrey has been teaching at Montgomery College outside Washington for the past 19 years. Having played football and baseball during his youth and having achieved "some success as a sprinter" on his high school track team, Mr. Lowrey has maintained a lifelong interest in sports.

It was three years ago this fall that the Arabs imposed their embargo on oil exports to this country, and Americans finally began to realize the implications of the energy crisis. One of the many questions still unresolved about this crisis is the role of the multinational oil companies, a role discussed by Mason Willrich in this issue. Mr. Willrich has recently become director of the Division of International Affairs for the Rockefeller Foundation. He is on a two-year leave from the University of Virginia Law School, where he is the John C. Stennis Professor of Law. He is the author of Energy and World Politics and Administration of Energy Shortages: Natural Gas and Petroleum. Much of the research for his article was undertaken while Mr. Willrich was a visiting research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.

John Berryman's posthumous poem, "Washington in Love," arrived unsolicited and certainly unexpectedly one day last spring. It was sent to the magazine by Mr. Berryman's widow, Kate, and will appear in a collection of his poetry to be published next year by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. "I do remember his feverish enthusiasm during the days he was writing the poem," Mrs. Berryman recalls. "He talked about Washington's human qualities and didn't like the cold image he has for most people." Mr. Berryman's last book of essays, The Freedom of the Poet, is also reviewed in this issue,