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

Whenever we print an article like last week's outspoken cover story about General Spaatz and the progress of the North African campaign, we get a heavy mail citing various points we have made and asking "Who says so?"

Although our answer ("TIME says so!") may sound arbitrary, it is not intended to be--for when an outside expert or public figure is willing to let us quote him as authority, we are only too glad to do it. But when we cannot find authorities willing to vouch for essential facts our editors feel they should go on record "on our own."

This willingness to shoulder the responsibility for our statements still seems to surprise many of our readers --but it stems back to TIME'S original prospectus, which promised to try and tell TIME'S subscribers all the news of all the world each week--and to write that news as if by one man for one man. It seems to us that this promise pledges TIME to tell you all the important news TIME knows itself. And so once TIME'S editors have become satisfied that a thing is true--that it is significant and that it will not endanger U.S. military security--TIME prints it, even if not a single admiral or senator or college president or other official will allow us to quote him as vouching for its truth.

This practice of telling all we know has occasionally embarrassed TIME staff members whose friends expect them to have information beyond what appears in TIME itself. When TIME'S Managing Editor says that all he knows is what he reads in TIME, he is not being wary or bashful or humorous--he is merely stating a fact. But most people are so accustomed to the idea that the press must resign itself to silence unless it can pin its statements on someone else that they find it hard to believe that our editors are not gold mines of unprinted truth.

Of course, before the editors will go on record with a fact about which no man of prominence will be quoted, they become hyper-careful. They check their evidence over and over again--talk off the record with all sorts of authorities and sources--leave no stone unturned to make sure they are right.

This is one reason why TIME cannot get along with just the services of the Associated Press, but must also have its own staff of 201 correspondents and 22 editorial offices in the United States and all over the world --to provide background information on the news and verify facts the editors believe to be in doubt. It is one reason why every week special TIME people in the field send us by wire or cable or phone about 100,000 words of answers-to-queries and special news research--one reason why during a recent working day 88 special inquiries from the editors went out from New York to TIME'S Washington office alone.

I suppose the one most important thing to remember about news TIME tells "on its own recognizance" is this: although TIME stories have no bylines, everything you read in TIME is to all intents and purposes signed by all the names over there at the left. Those men and women represent the best brains TIME has been able to gather from all the world of journalism. Together they bring to bear on their job of uncovering and verifying and telling the news for you more than 300 years of news experience.

They may not always be right--but they are always conscious of the greatness of their responsibility to be right--and of the peculiar nature of their contract with you: to tell you all the important news they know--straight and clear and true.

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