To answer some of the questions our subscribers have been asking about how TIME gathers, verifies, writes and distributes its news.

This will be a strange Christmas for a lot of TIME people.

I suppose the least Christmasy Christmas of all will be George Johnston's in New Guinea. Steamy jungles, evil-smelling swamps and man-high kunai grass are no substitutes for holly wreaths, nor the whine of Jap bullets for jingle bells, as most all the men out there will tell you (you'll find Johnston's story on Christmas with General MacArthur's men in Buna on page 38).

Coldest and snowiest Christmas will be James Aldridge's who should be in Moscow by then. He will probably hear plenty of droshky sleigh bells, as the Russians have a lot more to celebrate this year than the Germans--but even so hungry Moscow must be a pretty grim place to spend Christmas.

Christmas comes at the beginning of the Southern Hemisphere's summer for Holland McCombs and Jane Braga in Rio, for Hal Horan and Kurt Steinfeld in Buenos Aires, for William Chickering in Australia, for Hart Preston and Bob Landry in South Africa.

The thirty-odd people in our London office are looking forward to England's best Christmas since the blitz (it was in Christmas week 1940 that our office came nearest to being wrecked). Quite a few of them will probably spend it at the hideaway we rented for them out in Buckinghamshire and I hope rationing will let them celebrate with something a lot cheerier than dehydrated meat and boiled cabbage.

While we are eating our roast turkey and cranberries in America, Bill Fisher and Bill Vandivert in New Delhi have been invited to eat their Indian equivalent with General Ferris--while Teddy White in Chungking will probably get together with the few other American old timers at the Embassy. Harry Zinder may get back from the desert in time to have his Christmas dinner with Jack Belden at Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo where Rommel planned to have his headquarters by now-- and I will be surprised if Will Lang and Lincoln Barnett don't have a really royal feast with the American troops in North Africa.

T. S. Matthews and Roy Alexander are racing the calendar home across the Atlantic hoping to make good a cable to their wives: "Will be there to trim the tree."

But Carl and Shelley Mydans, captured by the Japs in Christmas week 1941, will be beginning their second year in a prison camp. I hope the Japs know this is Christmas and give them a break.

There are dozens of other TIME correspondents in strange places this year--and more than 200 TIMEmen (and women) are away in service. All together I suppose the change the past year has brought into their lives is a symbol of the change the year has brought to all Americans.

To all of them, and to all of you, as this year of preparation ends, we wish a very merry Christmas.

Next year is the year we have all been working and preparing for. May it be a brave new year for men of good will everywhere--a year of service and a year of victory.

Cordially,

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