THIS week's cover story is our fourth on Viet Nam in seven weeks. The article on TIME'S Man of the Year, General William Westmoreland, was immediately followed by a cover story on President Johnson's peace offensive, and this in turn was succeeded three weeks later by the cover on Dean Rusk and the resumption of bombing raids on North Viet Nam. After a one-week interval, the current story on Viet Nam's Premier Nguyen Cao Ky focuses on "the other war"--the essential effort to rebuild a devastated nation. To symbolize this in the cover painting, we chose the clasped-hands emblem of AID (Agency for International Development), which appears on all shipments of supplies from the U.S.

This unusually heavy concentration of cover stories on a single if historic subject reflects our belief that Americans have not been so deeply concerned with any international crisis since Korea. In fact, the need for reporting and analysis may be even greater, because American public response to the clear-cut Communist aggression in Korea was also clear cut; it did not provoke the divisions and doubts of the debate over the confusing Viet Nam conflict.

Cover stories about Viet Nam require massive amounts of work at high speed. Hong Kong Bureau Chief Frank McCulloch, who has headed TIME'S coverage of the war for more than two years, had spent a day in the field with Premier Ky and was having breakfast with him the next morning, a few hours after the Honolulu conference was announced. With five other U.S. correspondents, McCulloch flew to Hawaii with the Premier, who lost $8 at poker during the 13-hour flight. TIME White House Reporter Hugh Sidey and State Department Correspondent Jess Cook arrived from Washington with President Johnson. After covering the conference, McCulloch and Cook were awakened by a dawn phone call informing them that the editors had decided on the Ky cover. The two correspondents interviewed and wrote during the entire trip back to Saigon; Cook then peeled off to accompany Vice President Hubert Humphrey on his Vietnamese tour.

Meanwhile, Correspondent Arthur Zich, who had witnessed combat for more than a week with the U.S. 1st Air Cavalry Division, was relieved by Karsten Prager, who flew in from Hong Kong. Also on hand were TIME'S Pentagon correspondent. John Mulliken, and Stringer Zalin Grant. In the midst of the hectic week, McCulloch learned that his seven-year-old son David had undergone a successful emergency appendectomy in Hong Kong. "The jolt," said McCulloch later, "was at least partially absorbed by fatigue and activity."

In 30 hours the Saigon team cabled more than 40,000 words, which provided the substance of the WORLD cover and the piece on pacification. Four other stories in the NATION section deal with Honolulu and related issues. Ron Kriss, who wrote the Man of the Year story, also wrote the Rusk article and this week's principal Viet Nam stories in NATION. Jason McManus, who did the cover on the peace offensive, also wrote this week's Ky cover, again aided by Researcher Joanne Funger. It will not be their-or TIME'S-last cover on Viet Nam.

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