Dear TIME-Reader:

EXPERIENCE paid off last week for TIME. CORRESPONDENT JOHN BEAL of the Washington Bureau is an old hand at covering the Department of State. As a result, when DOS announced that ASSISTANT SECRETARY WALTER S. ROBERTSON and ADMIRAL ARTHUR W. RADFORD were hurrying to Formosa for routine consultations, Beal raised skeptical eyebrows and went to work.

He phoned Robertson, who refused to let him accompany him to the airport. Rushing to the airport alone. Beal questioned DOS men waiting to see the party off. They were noncommittal. But Beal, circulating and asking circumspect questions, picked up the clue that sent him racing back into the maze of Washington officialdom.

At week's end, he was the only newsman in Washington who had uncovered the real and urgent reason for the sudden Robertson-Radford trip, reported in NATIONAL AFFAIRS' Grim Deeds,

ACROSS the world, another TIME veteran, DWIGHT MARTIN, who has ranged the Far East since 1948, threaded through a maze of a different kind to report the Bandung conference story. Upset at Bandung (see FOREIGN NEWS). "The principal feature of any international conference is confusion.'' he cabled. Bandung was no exception. Martin worked day and night, fathoming the multilingual confusion, and fighting his dispatches through already overtaxed cable offices -- all the while sustaining himself on such peppery Indonesian fare as meat with chili, potatoes with chili and ferns with chili, washed down with a cloyingly sweet cider.

ASSOCIATE EDITOR OSBORN ELLIOTT'S most notable previous excursion into the world of feminine fashion can hardly be said to have helped him as he wrote this week's cover story (his 14th on the U. S.'s famed Fashion Designer CLAIRE McCARDELL.

One fall day three years ago, Editor Elliott impulsively stepped into a Madison Avenue shop and bought his wife Deirdre a size 10 dress for $40. It was. he recalls, a black taffeta with puffy short sleeves, a full skirt and stringlike belt.

At a party last week. Deirdre Elliott happened to wear the same black taffeta, still as dashing and smart as ever. After weeks of looking at Claire McCardell creations, interviewing Claire McCardell about her dresses. dreaming about them and finally writing about them. Elliott stared at his wife and suddenly exclaimed: "Hey -- that's a Claire McCardell dress!''

"Yes, dear," said his wife in that pointedly patient way women often have.

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