While France's President Valery Giscard d'Estaing was touring the U.S. last week, many Americans were reading his views on their country at 200 in a new TIME feature, inaugurated in last week's issue, called "Message to America." Giscard's message--which, among other things, is that the U.S. is seen as a land of "enterprise, initiative, movement" and "prodigious resiliency"--was the first in a series of letters written for TIME by foreign leaders that we plan to publish periodically as part of our Bicentennial observance. The series is intended to offer Americans a rare perspective on how others see them, as well as provide friends and critics of the U.S. with an opportunity to speak directly to our 25 million readers in America and elsewhere. In a letter inviting the French President and other leaders to participate in this series, Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Hedley Donovan defined the aim: "We hope that these messages will be completely candid, that they will express how world leaders perceive America today, its past, its future, its virtues, its faults, and what they hope and expect from America in the years ahead." This enterprise, the letter noted, "is very much in the American tradition, going back to the Declaration of Independence, which invoked a 'decent respect for the opinion of mankind.' "

Covering rock music during its acid-hard past used to be something of an athletic contest for correspondents, who had to dodge all manner of bodyguards and groupies to talk to the stars. This week's cover subject, Paul McCartney, the Beatle who came back as a Wing, is not short of fans or muscle--a burly ex-football player guards his door. But Correspondent James Willwerth found that his main obstacle on this assignment was, of all things for a rock hero, McCartney's keen devotion to family life. "Paul was far more interested in being with his children than talking to journalists," reported Willwerth. "At one point while we talked, his daughter Mary walked in, near tears. Paul walked her gently out, saying, 'All right, little Miss Emotion ...' " Willwerth followed the McCartney road show through Philadelphia and Atlanta, filing his reports to New York, where the story was written by Jay Cocks, researched by Edward Tivnan and edited by Martha Duffy.

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