Since that day when Editor James Gordon Bennett Jr. sent his reporter, Henry Stanley, to find Dr. Livingstone, the job of reporting the news of Africa has become somewhat easier, but there are still a lot of problems. One of those problems is the immense distances that have to be covered.

One way these distances may affect a reporter was described recently by a newspaperman in Northern Rhodesia. Said he: "It sometimes seems that the home office of every newspaper and news agency is equipped with schoolroom atlases which have maps of Africa neatly squeezed into one page. News editors look at the map, see Accra within six inches of Northern Rhodesia, and send off a breezy query."

Today, as more and more news occurs in Africa. TIME has geared its coverage to keep pace with the events there. I recently asked our Johannesburg bureau chief, Alexander Campbell (TIME, June 9, 1952), to describe this pace. With the help of nine part-time correspondents, his regular beat includes everything south of the Sahara--a territory roughly 2 1/2 times the size of the United States.

Campbell's answer to my query began: "I'm typing this while flying on a plane from Johannesburg to Accra. Three days ago I was on the east coast of Africa, in Nairobi. To ' go from Nairobi to Accra via Johannesburg may seem like a roundabout way, but actually it's the quickest. To fly straight across would have meant hanging around the Belgian Congo for air connections. There is no good east-west trans-Africa air schedule."

Other problems, says Campbell, are a lack of free flow of internal news and an indifference on the part of one area to what is happening in another. He cited, for example, a recent experience in Khartoum, where he checked with a local editor for the latest regional news. The answer he got: "Oh, nothing but this business in Uganda. The British have deposed some guy called the Kabaka. We're not going to run the story . not much interest . too far away." (Six hours later, Campbell was on a plane bound for neighboring Uganda to report the story (TIME, Dec. 14.) Adds Campbell: "The Sudanese are not peculiar in their indifference to affairs beyond their borders. When you are in Accra, it is almost impossible to discover what is happening next door in Nigeria. When you move over to Lagos, you might be on another planet from Accra. Almost no news comes out of the Belgian Congo, French Africa or Portuguese Africa. If you want to find out what is happening there, you have to go in person and dig ... dig . . . dig . . ."

Ordinary communications are a test of patience. "Not so long ago, it was the custom in Africa to send a message in a cleft stick carried by a native runner and then sit back and wait six months for the answer. Now, things are slightly better, but not much. In the Union of South Africa, the most advanced country on the 'Dark Continent.' a telephone conversation even between Capetown and Johannesburg is an ordeal of waiting and cajolery. To phone Nairobi from Johannesburg, you must 1) book the call 24 hours in advance, 2) call via London." Even the telegraph is uncertain. "Once in Ndola. Northern Rhodesia, on a Friday afternoon, I filed a TIME story at the local cable station and asked when it would reach New York. The operator calculated that with luck it might be delivered by the following Tuesday." Between Ndola and Capetown, the operator explained, there were an awful lot of elephants, and elephants have a habit of playing hob with telegraph lines.

Regardless of the elephants, the distances and other hurdles, our correspondents continue to report their news each week to keep the editors informed. Sometimes they have a tendency toward the laconic answer if a story they are asked to check turns out to be mere rumor. There was the time, for example, when British-born David Cole, our part-time correspondent in Northern Rhodesia, received a query from New York and replied: "There, old chap. I think you're a bit up the pole. Absolutely no truth in your notion, and I've been having a hearty laugh ever since at the very idea."

Cordially yours,

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