from the PUBLISHER

DearTIME-Reader:

One little word dominated the news last week. It was YALTA, a name that evoked many memories, reposed many questions. One of the early questioners quoted by TIME (March 5, 1945) was George Bernard Shaw. The Yalta Conference, snorted Shaw, was "an impudently incredible fairy tale ... I for one should like to know what really passed . . . This will come out 20 years hence ... But I shall not then be alive --I shall never know."

Last week, ten years and a few days after the event, Skeptic Shaw, if he were living, would have had his wish. On Wednesday night the State Department released the mass of records, notes and files on the meeting--834 pages, some half-million words of history. Headlines erupted around the world. Editors and editorial writers worked overtime to get chunks of the material into type.

It was too large a newsmeal to digest in one sitting. The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune printed the entire conference text--prodigious publishing feats, and a nine-hour task for even a swift reader. In an editorial, Denver's Rocky Mountain News echoed the feelings and frustrations of many an editor: "It is a report that is going to require close reading, rereading, and then all the clarification that can be summoned. In the short time since its release, it would be humanly impassible to digest its full implications. We can only put down an impression or two."

To study, digest and interpret is the job of a weekly newsmagazine, one of the services that TIME must give its readers. This week TIME'S editors pre sent a special six-page section on the new Yalta material, including three other related stories.

The story The Light of History, in NATIONAL AFFAIRS, reports domestic reaction to the release of the Yalta documents and answers two key questions : Why were they released now, and what effect will it have on international relations?

The FOREIGN NEWS story Reaction to Yalta is a roundup of official and unofficial reaction from abroad. In PRESS, How to Lose a Beat offers a classic example of a Washington "leak," and tells the details and pro fessional mechanics of how the Yalta papers got into public print.

The special Yalta section deals with the documents -- how the peace was lost before the war was won. It relates in detail how three men at the summit of authority sought to reshape the world in a week. What emerges is the real "spirit" of Yalta, a story more tragic than sensational. It is, as Shaw remarked, an "incredible fairy tale," but one without a happy ending, as you will see upon reading The Yalta Story.

Cordially yours,

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