In a sense, TIME has almost three million potential and active outside editors, and TIME is very grateful for their advice and counsel, even for their occasional vituperation.

In one recent week these editors-by-mail (the hundreds of readers who wrote to TIME) had their say on who should be the Man of the Year; on the Palestine question; on the pros & cons of various Labor-Management disputes; and on the general subject of TIME'S news-handling (said one writer: "You are incurable optimists about everything"; said another: "You are preoccupied with the hopeless, unhappy and eccentric side of existence").

They lambasted the U.S. Army's "military caste" system, deplored the absence of a strong U.S. foreign policy, thought that America was still isolationist because it had failed to send enough food to feed Europe.

Such admonishments are gravely considered here at TIME, for they supply a pertinent answer to a question always in the mind of any editor worth his salt: "How'm I doing?" They are welcomed, read and studied. The editors sometimes schedule new stories on the strength of them. And all are answered.

This old TIME custom of answering every letter we receive is complicated by the fact that about one-sixth of TIME'S editorial mail is requests for information about, or suggested by, TIME stories. They range from the reasonable (requests for advice on the care and feeding of infants) to the sublime ("Do Hindus, Moslems and Mohammedans play organ music?"). They include urgent requests from doctors, lawyers, farmers, et al. Although TIME cannot always find the right answer, the batting average is high.

Not more than 70 letters a month end up in TIME'S Letters Section. They are the few that best amplify or correct the news which has appeared in TIME, and TIME'S Letters Editor chooses them with care--especially those concerning highly controversial issues, which run in exact proportion of "for" and "against."

TIME'S first Letters Section appeared exactly 21 years and one month ago. It seems to me that, with different names and subjects, it might almost be appearing this week:

Reader Workman (Nov. 10, 1924) thought that TIME showed bias in referring to Methodism as a sect; ED. said he preferred sect to denomination because it was a four-letter word. Reader Goler advised us--correctly --that Airman Wilbur Wright died of typhoid, not pneumonia, as TIME had said. A brief dissertation on the subject of Cain's wife led to a longer one on Calvin Coolidge's mistaking (in a speech) a hit by Baseball's Walter Johnson for an error by Shortstop Jackson. ED. agreed that it would be silly to choose a Chief Executive for his knowledge of baseball.

The Salvation Army protested that TIME'S photograph of Evangeline Booth did not do her credit, and ED. said he would be happy to receive a better one. As usual, cantankerous Upton Sinclair was present--denying that he was, as TIME had said, a Bolshevik. He put TIME to bed with the Ku Klux Klan for seeming to support the candidacy of "the Klan Kandidate Koolidge." ED. allowed that the charge was baseless.

Today's issues are graver, and TIME'S letter-writers are correspondingly more concerned about them (e.g., the very heavy volume of thoughtful mail we have received on the atom bomb). Many letters hit us hard, and sometimes we reciprocate--not always by mail. For example: a University of Shanghai professor wrote in recently to thank us for a large map of Manchuria which hit him on the head outside the TIME & LIFE Building during the blizzard of paper that marked the peak of the V-J Day festivities.

Cordially,

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.