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

One of the most colorful war correspondents in Asia today is TIME'S Teddy White. He has short legs, a freckled face, a cocky walk, an indomitable spirit, a compassion for suffering people and a curiosity which would cost a cat all nine of its lives in no time. And this week, when the Chinese victory along the Yangtze looms so important in the news, perhaps you would like me to tell you something more about the man who is covering that story for you.

White is only 28 years old but he is the dean of Chungking correspondents--in fact, he has been there almost as long as General Chiang Kaishek. He was there all through the worst of the Jap air raids--was bombed from house to house and from shelter to shelter (during one horrible air raid the mangled body of a Chinese woman was blown 20 yards straight through his open window). But White's news-hunting has also carried him over much of the Far East.

For example, he was in Indo-China all through the 1940 crisis when the Japs took over there. He was in mid-Pacific on a Dutch ship loaded with "enough dynamite to blow us a full day's voyaging on our way" when Singapore fell. He was in Australia through the dark days before the Battle of the Coral Sea. He was in New Delhi last August helping Bill Fisher cover the rioting there.

Boston-born Teddy White first landed in Chungking on a $1,500 traveling scholarship right after he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard. There he had sold newspapers to keep himself in shirts, had tooted a trumpet to keep himself in spirits. More important, he had learned to speak Chinese--and as soon as he reached China he put this knowledge to use working for the Gissimo's government. John Hersey found him in Chungking in 1939, was so impressed by his news sense and his eagerness to get the facts first-hand that he signed him up for TIME.

Teddy set up shop in a bamboo-and-mud hut next to the Press Hostel's kitchens (he says it had the biggest cockroaches in town until it burned down last year), but he spent much of his time getting out to see for himself what was going on. For example, he was the first white man in 15 years to go into parts of Shansi province and come back alive. To get there he flew from Chungking to Sian (400 miles, five hours), went on by train to the Yellow River (70 miles, five days, one wreck, one washout). There they gave him a horse, and for three solid weeks he rode ten hours a day, sometimes on ledge-narrow mountain trails, to reach the Chin Valley. He got there just in time to send us one of the most important dispatches of the war --about how the Chinese had routed the Japs in the Chungtiao Mountains. (The Japs haven't completely occupied Shansi yet.)

Early this year White lived for months with General Claire Chennault's bomber pilots--flew with them on mission after bombing mission all over South China. In fact, he went along on so many of those raids that our worried Editor had to cable him please just to go on the most important ones--and save his hide for TIME'S readers.

Cordially,

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