Ask almost any American the difference between a war correspondent and an editor, and you might get an answer something like this:

"A war correspondent does his job right out where the fighting is thickest -- an editor does his work in a comfortable office far from the front lines."

But that definition hardly holds true at TIME, not these days. For in this sixth winter of World War II we have in our home office correspondents from every front, helping our editors get the firsthand feel of the news into every story. And from the TIME & LIFE Building our editors are constantly going out to the fronts, to find out for themselves -- often at the risk of their lives -- just what the war is like and what it means to the men who are living and fighting it.

So this week, as you read in TIME about the battle of the Bulge and the Red Army's smash across Poland, about the bombings of Tokyo and the march on Manila, you might like to know about some of the TIME men who have come home from the wars to get their fresh-from-the-front knowledge of the news into TIME for you.

From the Ardennes, for example, comes a correspondent who flew home just after Christmas to bring you his detailed understanding of Rundstedt's attack and Eisenhower's counterattack -- Jim Shepley. And from Holland comes a TIME reporter who marched with Montgomery's men from D-plus-12 to Eindhoven and Nijmegen and Arnhem -- Bill White.

From halfway across the world in the Philippines comes a veteran who got his Pacific baptism by fire at Angaur, then landed with MacArthur on Leyte --Battlefronts Writer John Walker. And from this same exploding front comes another TIME correspondent -- who covered 30,000 miles of ocean in five months, was on 17 Navy vessels, eyewitnessed the first raid on Manila and the carrier strikes at Palau and Morotai. His name is Bill Gray.

Straight from the bickering Balkans comes an editor who spent nine months as a correspondent in Turkey, Bulgaria, Rumania and the Aegean Isles -- Percy Knauth . . . From the battles in Italy and southern France comes a Senior Editor fresh from his second wartime assignment to Europe -- John Osborne . . . From Egypt and the Middle East comes a TIME correspondent who has been on the Dark Continent all his life, most recently in Cairo --who knows Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan, Tripolitania and the Sudan intimately and uncomfortably -- South African-born John Barkham . . . And from buzz-bombed Britain comes the man who has been our top correspondent there almost continuously since 1938 (except for his five critical months in Russia as head of our Moscow office and the month he spent jeeping across North Africa with Montgomery's triumphant Eighth Army) --London Bureau Chief Walter Graebner.

So there is hardly a fighting front or a diplomatic front all around the world that at least one of our writers here at home can't tell you about from firsthand recent experience of events and personalities thousands of miles away.

This way of getting the real texture of the news into TIME is nothing new in TIME reporting, of course -- but I thought you might like to be reminded of it right now when conflicting statements and contradictory communiques make it so hard for Americans to be sure they are getting a straight, true, reliable report on world affairs.

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