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

This was a strange Easter for thousands of Americans who are making the news overseas--and for all the TIME men who are with them.

On the other side of the Pacific Bob Sherrod went in with the doughboys and Marines who found the beaches of Okinawa so strangely deserted. It was "the kind of landing every correspondent who knows the Marines wanted to cover--particularly those of us who had been at Iwo Jima. This was the finest start of a battle our Marines and soldiers could hope for" (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS).

On the other side of the world Harry Zinder datelined his cable "On the Road to Berlin" and told of a day's advance with General Dempsey's Second Army north of the Ruhr. "I was out in the open in a jeep in the middle of a convoy of specially armored tanks. Snipers were still present in all the villages we passed through, since nothing had been cleared. Through the night the Germans shelled our column with their 88s, and were registering as well with heavy caliber guns. But regardless of the guns the column pushed through by the first light of morning. . . ."

Deep inside the Reich with Patton's rampaging divisions, Sidney Olson found "the little valley roads covered with the junk of war--the crunched helmets and the equipment thrown away in panicky retreat, the charred hulks of tanks, guns, trucks, automobiles. The little hill towns are only slightly damaged by bombing as they were never strategic targets, and it seems odd to see housewives washing their windows. . . . I am too tired now to carry this on, but I intend to keep cracking at this German atmosphere until I am satisfied that I get across some of its unreality. . . ." (See WORLD BATTLEFRONTS.)

"One girl spat at a tall Maryland Colonel as we jeeped through the debris-littered streets of this town," reported Will Lang, at the front with the Ninth Army. "Other Germans peeked furtively from behind the crocheted curtains that ornament the workers' windows. . . ."

And from Percy Knauth in Frankfurt came still another close-up report of these last days of war with Germany: "I have been in Frankfurt before, but covering it almost end to end today I found no single landmark I recognized. In these miles and miles of ruins there is nothing but dullness and apathy, a state that seems like a sleepwalking trance. The backdrop is complete destruction; the script is desertion in the face of danger. And all the propaganda slogans painted on the walls--'Frankfurt Stands Firm'--'Better Death Than Slavery'--are nothing but a mocking epitaph." (See FOREIGN NEWS.)

"If there ever was a time for optimism, this is it," says Zinder. "Things have obviously reached the stage where plans cannot be made in terms of months or even weeks," Wertenbaker cables.

As we catch the feel of victory in reports like these, our prayers join with yours that this Easter Week 1945 may bring us very close to the end of our fighting across the Atlantic.

Cordially,

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