Just for this week I am turning this space over to TIME's Circulation Director-- because the paper shortage and an overburdened post office make it impossible for him to write each of you personally through the mails this Christmas.

Publisher

DEAR SUBSCRIBER:

One of the nicest things about Christmas at TIME is the renewed vote of confidence our readers give us each November and December--when so many of you share your own discovery of TIME with your friends by sending them gift subscriptions.

And now, as the war races towards its climax, I suppose it is only natural that so many more subscribers than ever before are choosing TIME as a Christmas present. For in times like these it seems hard to imagine a TIME subscriber whose friends would not welcome TIME too--and TIME each week in 1944 will indeed be a long-remembered gift.

We are deeply grateful for all these orders--but somewhat embarrassed by them, for they are pouring in just at a time when paper curtailment is forcing us to limit our circulation sharply. Consequently, they are creating some very difficult problems for us.

Certainly we do not want to tell any subscriber that this year we cannot continue the long-standing TIME-for-Christmas tradition--that this Christmas we cannot accept gift subscriptions for busy men or women who today more than ever would welcome TIME's help in following the news quickly and confidently. We do not feel we should refuse your gifts to some boy or girl whose war-born interest in the news you may wish to guide into intelligent channels. Most certainly we do not want to say "no" to any subscriber who wants to send TIME to someone in our armed forces overseas--for your gift of TIME may well prove his only quick and knowing source of news from home and all the war fronts of the world.

So, for the next few weeks at least, we will continue to accept Christmas gift orders from our subscribers--and the one thing we ask is will you please send us your Christmas list early?

For TIME's subscription office is in the critical Chicago war production area, where we canot go out and recruit an emergency staff to handle a last-minute rush of Christmas orders. And so, to make sure your gifts can be entered in time for us to inscribe, address and mail your Christmas gift announcement cards and start the subscriptions with the Christmas issue, we need your Christmas list just as soon as you can possibly send it.

A postage-paid order card, showing our Christmas rates on gifts of TIME for your civilian friends, is bound into this issue to help you enter your order early--and I hope you will try to mail it back to me with your instructions before the weekend.

Thank you--and

Merry Christmas!

Circulation Director

P.S. You can send TIME to your friends in the armed forces at home or abroad at the special military rate of only $3.50 a year. (TIME's miniature Pony Edition--sent each week by first class mail--can still get overseas in time for Christmas if you let us have your order right away.)

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