To answer some of the questions our subscribers have been asking about how TIME gathers, verifies, writes and distributes its news.

Dear Subscriber

Have you ever seen your Congressman? Have you ever seen him face to face, watched the way he shakes hands or smiles at newly introduced strangers or the way he teeters up and down on his toes when he speaks?

If you have, all his acts and speeches must have a different and a sharper meaning for you now. Every time you see his name in the papers you can see his face, hear him rolling his "r's" or slurring his "g's." Everything you read or hear about him is colored by those visual impressions of weakness or strength, ignorance or knowledge, charlatanism or statesmanship you received when you last saw him. And when you see his name in the papers, he is not just a name any longer.

That is why TIME goes to such lengths to tell you how people in the news look and sound and act (even when they are "viper-thin" or "hen-shaped"). We think by helping you size up the actors we can also help you size up the news. And we think that giving you a visual handle by which to remember the actors also helps you remember the news in which they played the leading part.

Of course the printed word is never a completely satisfactory substitute for a face-to-face encounter--a front-row seat at the performance. But behind almost every description of a person that you read in TIME stands a man on TIME'S editorial staff who has actually had that front-row seat.

In London, for example, more than one of 12 TIME and LIFE editorial people there knows what it is like to walk and talk with the Archbishop of Canterbury (he has a laugh that rattles windows)--or knows the inside of H. G. Wells' house near Regent's Park (he likes to play charades, brags about his diabetes)--or what it is like to dine with Labor Minister Ernest Bevin at the Trades Union Club (he drops cigaret ashes on his front, wears colored shirts, talks about crossing carrier pigeons with parrots so they can deliver verbal messages).

Out in Africa TIME'S resident correspondent in Cairo, Harry Zinder, knows practically every newsmaker in the Middle East, from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (who claims descent from Mohammed but has blue eyes and a blond beard) to stern, Bible-quoting General Montgomery of the British Eighth Army (who can't stand having his soldiers cough when he speaks and has a picture of Rommel pinned over his bed). Jack Belden, TIME'S roving correspondent in the East, probably knows General "Uncle Joe" Stilwell better than any other correspondent alive (he was with him on that long, nerve-racking, bug-bitten trek out of Burma into India)--and he can also tell you about the personal characteristics of most of the American flyers in China, from the youngest pilot to cribbage-playing Brigadier General Claire Chennault and his Flying Tiger mascot--dachshund Joe.

And one of the most fascinating evenings I ever spent was listening to Felix Belair of our Washington office describing the mannerisms of U.S. legislators: how Carter Glass pounds the table when he gets riled, how Louisiana's Ellender whips off his glasses before he speaks, how Oregon's McNary shoots his cuffs, how Cotton Ed Smith is a dead shot at a cuspidor.

There are 200 people all over the world working for the TIME & LIFE News Bureau; there are 55 editors of TIME in New York. That makes 255 altogether--and if each of them knows an average of only 40 men and women important in the news, that gives TIME (and its readers) a close-up focus on the personal characteristics of over 10,000 newsmakers.

Cordially,

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