Dear TIME-Reader:

"TRAVELING TIME-Readers who like to get away from the beaten path are always surprised to see the latest issues of TIME on native news stands in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. When they return home, many ask us: "Who reads TIME in those far-off, out-of-the-way places?"

We cite many examples, such as the roving missionary in Tanganyika who would be disappointed not to get our current issue on his weekly shopping trip to Dar es Salaam. British commercial travelers, returning from the Far East with a great hunger for the latest news of the Suez crisis, are delighted to find TIME in the bustling Arabian Sea port of Aden. And at Bishoftu, Swedish airmen training Ethiopian air force crews can now read the news of the world in TIME long before hometown newspapers reach them.

But these are only some of the foreign nationals who read TIME in far-off lands. More numerous are the native readers, who in each country, it turns out, are the same kind of people who read TIME in the U.S.--the college-educated, the leaders in business and all manner of community affairs. Accustomed to receiving their magazines on the same day as many U.S. readers, they are just as quick to let us know when they don't (the secretary ' of TIME-Reader Mohammed Reza Pahlevi. Shah of Iran, is on the phone within two hours to our Teheran distributors, Farajalla Press Agency, if the Shah's copy is delayed).

Our circulation representative who does most of the traveling to the remote places is Robert D. Simon, 34, who joined our Paris office in 1950.

Bachelor Simon recently returned from an eight-month tour of Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Soon he will leave on another tour of some 60 countries around the world that will take a full year. In his travels Simon calls on hundreds of distributors, wholesalers and news dealers to help them get TIME quicker and circulate it faster and farther. In the out-of-the-way places these distributors give Simon a royal welcome, for they rarely meet a publisher's representative in the flesh. Says Simon: "We go a long way to help get TIME anywhere to anyone who wants to read it."

SOON TIME will be read at as remote a spot as there is in the world -- the geographic South Pole. This week hundreds of recent and back copies were being loaded aboard Navy supply ships at Davisville, R.I. for Polar Expert Paul A. Siple and some 350 other scientists and military men who will spend the International Geophysical Year on Operation Deep Freeze II in the Antarctic. Navy Chaplain John E. Zoller, who collected the magazines, explained that his responsibility on the 18-month expedition will be morale, and reading material will be his best aid. "The opportunity to pick up TIME, read it and look at the pictures will be a touch of America that cannot be obtained in any other way," said Chaplain Zoller.

Cordially yours,

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