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

Of all the thousands of Americans who entered Manila with General MacArthur this week, only a handful could share his feelings fully as he made good his promise: "I shall keep the soldier's faith . . . I shall return."

Those few were the men who had been with MacArthur through those days of heroic humiliation when the Japanese hordes were driving him back step by step from Lingayen to Manila to Bataan--and who somehow, like him, had gotten away from the Philippines to join him on the long road back.

Among these men was Carl Mydans of TIME and LIFE.

Mydans was one of the only three American correspondents aboard MacArthur's own flagship when he returned to Luzon. And ever since Bill Chickering was killed by enemy action in Lingayen Gulf, he has been doing double duty for LIFE and TIME in reporting MacArthur's triumphs at the scene of his 1941 retreat.

On New Year's Eve 1941 Mydans elected to stay behind in burning Manila while TIME'S other correspondent in the Philippines, Melville Jacoby, took off on a little island freighter to follow the action across the bay to Bataan and Corregidor. Two days later Mydans and his wife Shelley were herded with some 3,500 other Americans into the internment camp at Santo Tomas University. They spent the next 21 months as prisoners of the Japs.

Mydans and his wife remember the months of internment at Santo Tomas as "an atmosphere of constant, oozing fear and unrelieved physical discomfort. All of us found ourselves losing the power to keep perspective and to remember who we were and the lives we used to lead. With no purpose and no future we were overcome with the feeling of futility . . ."

Hundreds of the Americans rescued there this week are his personal friends from those internment days; and when Carl went back to Santo Tomas with our triumphant troops it must have been a very special moment for him.

Correspondent Frank Hewlett, whose own wife was still a prisoner at Santo Tomas, rode into Manila in the same jeep with Mydans and this is what he cabled to the United Press:

"As we moved down Avenue Rizal civilians mobbed our vehicles, cheering and offering us portions of their meager food supplies. The women were weeping while the men saluted and children squealed in delight. But the Santo Tomas reception was even more delirious.

"Major Gearhart led his men into the 55-acre University grounds, warning them to hold their fire and not endanger the lives of the internees. Creeping along the buildings for what seemed an eternity, Mydans and I reached the main building where the windows were filled with excited faces. The internees were yelling so loudly we couldn't distinguish anything they were saying.

"We entered the building and were mobbed. The women kissed us and then these thin, starved people lifted us on their shoulders--an honor that should have been reserved for Colonel Conner and his men. But Colonel Conner's forces were still busy outside killing Japs."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.