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

LUZON PRESS WIRELESS, FEB. 23 URGENTEST

DELIGHTED TO INFORM YOU TIME IS FIRST MAGAZINE TO PUBLISH IN MANILA. FIVE THOUSAND COPIES OF OUR FEBRUARY 19 PONY WERE DISTRIBUTED HERE FRIDAY (FEBRUARY 22, U.S. DATE). QUALITY GOOD.

WHILE THEY WERE BEING BOUND IN A BATTERED PLANT HALF A MILE FROM WHERE THE BATTLE FOR INTRAMUROS STILL RAGED A JAP SNIPER WAS HIDING IN A SCRAP PILE 50 YARDS AWAY. OCCASIONALLY POT-SHOOTING AT PEOPLE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. GUERRILLAS GUARDING THE PLANT ARE STILL UNABLE TO ROUT HIM OUT. WHEN THE PRINTED PAGES WERE BEING TRUCKED TO THE BINDERY IN A WEAPONS CARRIER, THE JAPS FIRED ON US A FEW MILES OUT OF THE CITY. NO ONE WAS HURT .

CARL MYDANS

BILL GRAY

This cable from our two correspondents at the front in Manila announces the start of TIME Edition No. 23--the first American magazine to bring the news to General MacArthur's fighting men on Luzon while it is still fresh here at home.

The first copy off the press was presented to General MacArthur. Some 5,000 copies were given away to troops fighting in Manila, on Corregidor, and all the way north to Rosario; and plenty of copies were also sent to the news-hungry internees at Santo Tomas University.

For more than a year now we have been making plans to print in Manila as soon as General MacArthur fought his way back. In fact, as long ago as last September, on the chance that we might find the Japs had destroyed all existing printing equipment, we bought a complete offset printing plant--cameras, presses, folders, stitchers and scores of other big & little items--all boxed for shipment to print TIME and anything else General MacArthur or the Philippines Government might want. We even lined up a reserve crew of plate-makers, pressmen and binders in California, ready to shove off for Manila.

But as soon as our troops started south from Lingayen we began flying plastic printing plates and photographic positives of each week's Pony Edition to Luzon in the hope that some prewar presses would be found intact there (plates in case we found letter presses still available, positives if we found presses for offset lithography still standing).

The actual printing of our first Manila Edition was done by engineer corps troops under able Captain Ray Harrison, by direction of mountain-moving Major General Hugh J. Casey --to all of whom many thanks.

Even before we were printed in Manila, TIME was doing its best to help our troops and internees catch up with the news. For example, ever since last October we have been flying our lightweight Pony Edition from Honolulu to Leyte, distributing 4,000 copies there free each week while that same issue was still on sale right here at home. And the copy of our Pony Edition which Correspondent Bill Gray flew to Manila in his pocket a few weeks ago was read aloud to the internees at Santo Tomas by rescued Newscaster Don Bell of NBC. Said Gray: "Listeners accustomed to news a year old gasped, 'That's 1945!' Tears came to many eyes . . ."

And we were proud to hear from Marine Headquarters in Washington that the Corps had supplied TIME to all the news-starved Marines rescued from imprisonment in the Philippines as "the best source of global news."

Cordially,

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