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

"Have you a secretary? ?Tiene usted secretario?"

"Si. Tengo secretaria. Yes, I have a girl secretary."

"Is she beautiful? Beautiful, beautiful, quiere decir bella o hermosa. Fea es ugly, u-g-l-y."

"Is she beautiful? ?Es bella? No, es fea. No, she is ugly. Con una mujer hermosa en la oficina es dificil hacer trabajo. With a beautiful woman in the office, it is hard to do work."

These lines may look like the result of internationally-crossed wires--but they are really a 23-second sample of a new 15-minute radio program TIME has gotten up. It is called Aprendamos Ingles, and it aims to help people in Spanish America learn English painlessly--by letting them listen in on some informal talk between a North American called Joe Bishop and his South American friend, one Pepe Obispo.

In a very real sense Aprendamos Ingles ("Let's Learn English") is a request program--for we might never have thought of the idea if so many important U.S. and Latin American officials had not written us about our Spanish-teaching program here in the U.S. (Among them were the Ambassadors of Panama, Venezuela and Uruguay, the Ministers of El Salvador, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, the Consul General of Cuba, several top-ranking radio members of the Rockefeller Committee, and scores of other dignitaries and just plain interested citizens.) And many of them asked if we could not work out a similar program to teach English to the peoples of Latin America.

Evidence of this same enthusiasm for a TIME-produced English-teaching radio program greeted TIME'S Circulation Director, Francis Pratt, wherever he went in Central and South America last spring -- and Mexico's Ambassador Francisco Castillo Najera assured us that such a program would "meet with complete success not only in Mexico but throughout Latin America"--because "one of the best ways for the peoples of this hemisphere to strengthen their solidarity is through learning each other's language."

We are now ready to send this new program over the airwaves of Spanish America. It will be sponsored by the American Home Products Corp. of New York City as a public service in the hope that it will help draw the Americas closer together. For only one in about 43 Latin Americans speaks English now--and we like to think that Aprendamos Ingles will help teach our language to many more.

There are some 3,815,000 radios south of the Rio Grande. This new TIME program will be broadcast to them twice a week over more than 70 stations in 17 Latin American countries--during the evening hours when Latin Americans (like North Americans) find it most convenient to listen.

Cordialmente,

P.S. Meantime in the U.S., "Let's Learn Spanish" has been broadcast over 50 stations in 28 states. It has been made part of the training for servicemen in Army and Navy posts across the country--it has been added to the language-teaching courses in many schools and colleges--and only recently it was given Ohio State University's Cultural Award, a sort of Pulitzer Prize in radio.

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