A Letter From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

People make news. Henry Luce and Briton Hadden started TIME in 1923 on that theory, and it has animated our pages ever since. The first People section appeared in 1926. An accompanying Personality page flourished in the 1950s. Today our coverage of even the most impersonal trends, ideas and events teems with the people who shape them.

This week we are taking Luce's and Hadden's notion one step further. The magazine is introducing a section called Profile, its seventh new department this decade and the first addition since Ethics appeared last January. Profile will consist of a telling, vivid word portrait of one or another of the world's most noteworthy people -- some of whom will figure in the week's news events, all of whom will be interesting. Says Executive Editor Ronald Kriss, who will supervise the section: "There was a time when this magazine featured 52 faces on its cover in the course of a year. Now we can go for weeks on end without having an individual, rather than a trend or event, as a subject. Profile will give us an opportunity to return to the kind of close and detailed examination of important people in politics, academia, the arts and other fields for which TIME is famous."

This week's subject is Sir James Goldsmith, the international financier, art collector and company collector who presciently sold most of his stock holdings shortly before last month's market crash. Senior Correspondent Frederick Ungeheuer interviewed Goldsmith at length for the three-page story. The two discovered something they had in common: Frankfurt, Ungeheuer's hometown and the seat of Goldsmith's forebears, a distinguished German banking family. Ungeheuer spent a week traveling with Sir James, watching him conduct business in Paris, New York City and Washington. The two also huddled at Goldsmith's homes in Paris and New York City. The Paris building's ornate interior and art collection reminded Ungeheuer of an earlier age. "It was like stepping back in time, to when the great banking families financed the princes of Europe."

Goldsmith's eye for the future fascinated Senior Writer Otto Friedrich, who wrote this week's Profile. Says he: "Goldsmith is an extraordinary gambler who knows when to hold them and when to fold them. He also has a lot of luck. All great generals and politicians have that kind of luck."