Dear Subscriber

If one of your friends came back home from a long stay in Washington, what is the first question you would ask him?

Perhaps your first question would be something about a military secret your friend could not clear up. But very soon you would begin asking questions about the people in Washington upon whose courage and ability so much depends.

Is Harry Hopkins still closest to Mr. Roosevelt's ear--and has he changed much since his marriage? What is Vice President Wallace really like and would he make a good President?

Is Jimmy Byrnes enough of a fighter? What do the admirals think of Navy Secretary Knox--and what does he think of them?

The press associations seldom put that kind of information on their wires. It isn't "news," and anyhow a reporter can't go into a man's character without venturing an editorial opinion--which is also taboo in news columns of most newspapers. As for the editorial writers, very few of them spend much time on personalities--they're busy explaining "issues." But TIME'S editors believe you are instinctively right in wanting your Washington friend to tell you first about the people who are making the news. It's all fine to read that Donald Nelson says he is going to get tough--but Nelson can't get tough unless he is tough. A man's words don't mean much until you have had a chance to size up the man himself, for actions grow out of character, not out of words.

And that is why TIME tries so hard to help you know the people in the news--the people upon whose greatness and littleness we have all risked so much.

The other day I was talking to a new research assistant in U.S. at War. Before she came to us she had been teaching contemporary politics at the University of North Carolina with TIME as one of her most important text books. She had been using and studying TIME for years, so I was particularly interested in whether TIME seemed very different to her now from what she had expected.

"It certainly does," she answered. "Here I've been spending the last two hours making sure we were using the right two objectives to describe a Congressman--checking with the Washington office and with the newspaper in his district. And on top of that we've got four pages of research on him. But before I came here TIME's characterizations seemed so natural that I never dreamed anyone had to spend hours making sure they were right--least of all that I'd ever be doing it myself."

This letter has talked mostly about Washington and what you would want a friend just back from Washington to tell you--and how TIME tries to do just that job for you in reporting to you what is going on in the capital. But the same thing could be written about TIME's news from London, or Moscow, or the Solomon Islands--where we certainly want to know what sort of admirals and generals have the lives of our boys in their keeping. For all over the world TIME is trying to give you not only the kind of news the newspapers print, but also a real understanding of the people who are making the news--an understanding such as you can get from no other publication.

Cordially,

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