If you're planning to travel abroad this summer, you may be interested to know that your copy of TIME will cost seven escudos in Portugal, ten piastres in Egypt, 100 fils in Iraq. Business Manager David Ryus has been telling me some fascinating facts about how these currencies and others like kurus, dinars and pyas fit into the day-today operations of TIME'S International Editions. "We have a market for our magazine in 180 different countries," Ryus explained. "We sell TIME for kroner, drachmai, rials--about 120 currencies all told. Two of the newest mediums of exchange are the rupiah of Indonesia and the hwan of Korea." Few of these odd currencies cross Ryus' desk directly, since normally TIME International subscription orders, paid for in local currencies, are cleared through branches of world banks, such as New York's National City, Holland's Amster-damsche Bank, Italy's Banca Commerciale. There the money is converted and credited to TIME'S U.S. dollar account. "It's all pretty routine," says Ryus, "except when we get a barrelful of 'pazooties.' " "Pazooties" are what the International staffers call any currency that fluctuates wildly in value or that cannot be converted into dollars. "In the first years after World War II, foreign currencies usually obeyed the law of gravity," says Ryus. "They always went down--they never went up. Take the Chinese currency, for example.

When Mao Tse-tung's armies were overrunning China in 1946 and 1947, the value of the Chinese dollar plummeted overnight. In came a steady stream of cables asking, 'What do we price the magazine at today?' Originally, TIME in China cost 150 Chinese dollars (30-c- U.S.), but with the sharp devaluation of the coin, TIME was soon going for 30,000 dollars a copy and higher." Current price of TIME on Formosa: five Taiwan dollars (30-c- U.S.).

TIME circulates in many, countries whose currencies cannot be directly converted to U.S. dollars but can be converted to still other currencies which TIME can use. On occasion, Ryus has considered some weird and wonderful schemes to realize at least some dollars from "pazooties." "I particularly remember one idea of several years ago -- to soak up a whole pile of blocked Dutch guilders by buying cheeses and bringing them to the U.S.

to sell," he said. "We finally decided that we ought to stick to publishing and leave the cheese business to the dairymen. But the research was fun -- I've never eaten so much good cheese in all my life." Today the guilder is one of the world's strongest and most easily convertible currencies.

"Until recently," says Ryus, "I thought I had been born one generation too late. Before the first World War, most of the world's currenterchangeable, and the life of a business manager in international trade was comparatively simple.

Then international finance went into a series of tailspins. In the last year or so, however, things have been easing up. 'Pazooties' are getting scarcer.

Heads of state, who recognize the need for free trade in ideas, are doing all they can to help publications of all kinds circulate in their countries. Major currencies show signs of hardening.

It may not be too long before the good old days return." Ryus, a Stanford graduate, has been with TIME International since he left the Navy in 1947. As an officer on an ammunition ship and then on a joint-command ship, he learned about foreign currency the hard way -- by taking part in five invasions.

Cordially yours,

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