AT the first confrontation of the Big Four foreign ministers since the Geneva summit of 1955, a total of 1,174 journalists cabled stories about the big fuss over the furniture. But the week's historic news turned out to be the new Western plan for Germany, first outlined fortnight ago in TIME'S May 11 issue. To bring the basic discussion of the issues up to date, see FOREIGN NEWS, Around the Doughnut Table.

AFTER the U.S. airlift saved West Berlin a decade ago, a monument was erected to the men who lost their lives taking supplies to the beleaguered city. Last week, as West Berliners gathered at that monument to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the airlift's success, the man who led them was this week's cover subject, Mayor Willy Brandt, who was little known to the world ten years ago.

To get a close look at the man whom Berliners hail as a worthy successor to the late, great Mayor Ernst Reuter (whose bust appears behind Brandt in this week's cover picture), TIME called on John Mecklin, chief of the Bonn bureau, and Correspondent

Bob Ball, who has been in Berlin much of the time since 1950. For a uniquely knowledgeable analysis of the mood of West Berlin and its people, see FOREIGN NEWS, The Islanders.

BRAZIL'S President Juscelino Ku-bitschek, out to develop his sprawling, potentially rich nation at any price, has snowballed an economic boom just one miraculous jump ahead of his creditors. What are President Kubitschek's chances of staying out in front until the inflationary boom starts paying off? See THE HEMISPHERE, The Bumblebee.

SOMEONE said American poetry is divided into smoothies and shaggies. I'm a shaggy." So says a poet who has been a Christian Scientist, agnostic, anarchist and conscientious objector. Yet today he wears the white tunic and black scapular of a Roman Catholic Dominican lay brother. See RELIGION, Beat Friar.

ARE dancing and investing in the stock market alike? Wall Street may not think so, but Dancer Nicholas Darvas does. To find out how he has danced his way to a fortune in stocks, see BUSINESS, Pas de Dough.

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