The basic stuff of the news is vivid, accurate reporting of day-by-day events. Sometimes this is the best that can be done, and readers must make their own interrelationships between separate events. But at other times it becomes possible to find, in seemingly unrelated happenings, a context that reflects an entire nation's mood. This week events in five countries enabled TIME correspondents and editors to take a searching look at several such situations. Items:

sbIn Bonn, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's decision to withdraw to the comparative quietude of his nation's presidency--a decision he acknowledged had been made quickly--symbolically ended an era in postwar German history. More important, it laid bare the long-mounting restlessness of his political followers raising important questions for the future. See FOREIGN NEWS, The Old Man Steps Aside.

sbIn the radio speech announcing his decision, Adenauer took a few angry slaps at Britain and provoked a cross-Channel exchange of insults, thus bringing into the open the stress and strains of the postwar marriage of convenience between Britain and West Germany. But Britain, and particularly its press, was somewhat at odds with all its partners on the eve of East-West negotiations. See FOREIGN NEWS. The Strange British Mood.

sbIn Tokyo, a prince took a commoner for a bride. Popular as his choice was, it did not take a rude intrusion from an angry student in the street to demonstrate that the royal family still has more to do to establish its new place in the minds of a new generation of Japanese. See FOREIGN NEWS, The Prince Takes a Bride.

sbIn Cuba, humble peasants marveled at the bountiful leader, Fidel Castro, who is going to give them land, and the workers in the cities cheered the arbitrary rent cut that Castro decreed. But as Castro got ready to go to the U.S. this week, the middle and upper classes, who financed his revolt to restore an elected democracy, uneasily realized that Castro plans a long overhauling of Cuban society before anyone goes to the polls. See THE HEMISPHERE, The First 100 Days.

sbIn the U.S., the mood was the spirit of the wild black yonder as the seven Mercury Astronauts, after rigorous physical and psychological tests, were presented to the public with the promise that one of them will be space-bound in two years. See NATIONAL AFFAIRS, Rendezvous with Destiny.

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