The other day TIME-LIFE International, publishers of our overseas editions, received a subscription order from a man who gave his address as Andagoya, Colombia. No such place appeared in the traffic manager's atlases, so he asked the airline that flies TIME to Latin America where Andagoya was. The airline couldn't focate it, but promised to investigate. This is the investigator's report:

"Andagoya is a camp belonging to the Frontino Gold Mines, situated amid the jungles at 5DEG f North and, 77DEG 32' 30" West or 67 kilometers south of Quibdo at the confluence of the Condoto and San Juan Rivers.

"Means of communication with Andagoya are extremely irregular and difficult. Avianca renders service from Medellin to Quibdo with PBY-5R planes. From Quibdo to El Yuto, which does not show on any map, you go by launch. From El Yuto to Istmina a jungle trail enables a truck to make its way, though rather difficult in the winter months as the rivet" Certegui may flood the area. From Istmina to Andagoya you have recourse, once again, to a launch. Two days overall of difficult travel, if you are lucky."

The airline investigator added a postscript: "The foregoing sounds like just the sort of place where TIME would do the most good."

Now that TLI knows where its Andagoyan subscriber is, he can rest assured that he will somehow get his weekly copy of TIME. For in spite of transportation difficulties, censorship, bans, dollar shortages, import restrictions, iron curtains, and such, TLI managed last week to get 260,000 copies of TIME'S four International editions to a million readers in 180 countries and possessions overseas. Eighty-one copies even got into Soviet Russia--to "safe" official addresses--and TLI is sure that Russia, too, is "just the sort of place where TIME would do the most good."

Because news is a perishable commodity, TLI takes pride in the knowledge that most of these 260,000 copies of TIME were being read while U.S. citizens were reading the same issue. The story behind this accomplishment might very well begin with an Indian Maharaja who, in 1941, was paying $585.60 a year airmail charges to have TIME flown to him. At that time only 26,000 copies of TIME were going (by surface mail) to the world outside continental North America. There were many requests for faster delivery overseas, but the best air-delivered price we could get was $1 a copy to Rio de Janeiro.

Then a special air-cargo rate that would make this operation economically possible was approved by the U.S. Government and, in May of 1941, our Air Express edition (now called Latin American) began. It was printed on fast offset presses in Jersey City, N.J. and carried by Pan American Airways planes to 20 countries in South and Central America, thereby cutting delivery time by three weeks. We also worked out a technique of photographing TIME'S editorial copy on film, which could be rushed by air to Latin American printing plants.

Our experience with this edition prepared us, when war came, for the job of supplying U.S. forces overseas with the news from home, of the world, and of the history they were helping to make. At war's peak we were turning out at home and abroad 21 different editions (including the Pony and Navy V-Mail editions) for servicemen from Normandy to the Persian Gulf, and from Attu to China.

Soon after V-J day, TIME Inc. decided to continue this world-wide publishing operation and its accompanying network of correspondents that had been built up from wartime necessity. TIME'S editors believed then--and still do--that it is vitally important to world peace to get the American story overseas, and we hope that TIME is helping in that job. And, because we have to make a profit to stay in business, we also hoped to be able to make this venture a success.

Last year TIME Inc.'s International editions turned the corner as a business operation. TIME now publishes four International editions: the Latin American, printed in Jersey City; the Atlantic, printed in Paris for Europe, the Middle East and Africa; the Pacific, printed in-Honolulu and Tokyo for the Far East and Pacific areas; the Canadian, printed in Chicago. Each carries advertising directed to its particular markets.

As for Latin American, our initial overseas edition, its readership is now three times what it was in 1941. Like most of the rest of the world, much of Latin America is short of dollars. Some countries, therefore, have found it necessary to set up import controls and dollar quotas to conserve their foreign exchange By securing existing permits and licenses, however, readers in most of the countries can pay for TIME in their own currency to a local branch of the National City Bank of New York.

Occasionally, a government resorts to censorship to keep out displeasing news. TIME has been banned in Juan Peron's Argentina for some time. But at present TIME is persona grata everywhere else in Latin America.

Some indication as to how our Latin American readers regard TIME was given by a Dun & Bradstreet survey we had made of executives of 6,000 Latin American corporations. We were very pleased to find that more than half reported that they get TIME regularly. Asked which magazine they would choose if they could have only one, they voted more than three to one in favor of TIME.

Two years ago, in response to the urging of subscribers like Mexican President Miguel Aleman, Bolivian President Enrique Hertzog, and 15 residents of Punta Arenas, Chile (probably TIME'S southernmost readers), we more than doubled the space devoted each week to the news of Latin America in the Latin American edition. This move, accompanied by a considerable strengthening of our network of Latin American correspondents, has resulted, we believe, in a more significant and informative weekly report on Latin American news for TIME readers everywhere.

In future letters I hope to tell you more about TIME'S other three International editions.

Cordially yours, '

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