WE are sometimes asked why the articles in TIME are unsigned. Our usual reply is that each issue is the joint product of all the staff names listed in the adjoining column, and that we prefer the traditional anonymity followed by such English institutions as the Times of London and the Economist. But another reason is just as basic--the fact that individual TIME stories are generally the work of many hands. This week's cover story is a good example of how we go about it.

Off to Yugoslavia went Bonn Correspondent Jim Bell to see Ambassador Kennan. Bell, through the years, has been a constant reader of Kennan's output, visited with him in October to get his views on Moscow's 22nd Party Congress. Bell went back to Belgrade for the cover story, had three separate interviews with Kennan totaling 4 1/2 hours.

Tokyo Correspondent Don Connery, interviewing Ambassador Reischauer, was renewing an old acquaintanceship that began when Connery, at Harvard, and his wife, at Radcliffe, studied under Reischauer more than ten years ago. For the cover, Connery talked to Reischauer at his office and residence for four hours, continued the conversations riding with the ambassador and his wife Haru in the embassy limousine, at the Christmas party for embassy children, and elsewhere.

New Delhi Correspondent Charles Mohr has followed Ambassador Galbraith around India by plane, car and elephant, finds him "the easiest man to interview" he's ever worked with. Mohr describes Galbraith a onetime FORTUNE writer) as amiable, instructive and vivid. Mohr interviewed him six hours for the cover, the last 2 1/2 hours of it on an airplane bound for Bombay.

Well before these interviews began, Associate Editor Michael Demarest, who was to write the story, and Researcher Harriet Heck had been wading through some of the 25 books these prolific diplomats have written, before sending off the initial queries to the correspondents. Foreign Editor Henry Grunwald worked with them, suggesting ideas to pursue, questions to ask.

In the end, each correspondent filed enough material for a cover story on his ambassador alone. From Washington, Diplomatic Correspondent James Greenfield reported current State Department readings on each man, as well as the nature and limitations of each ambassador's assignments.

All this might have been reported, at interminable length, under separate bylines from different capitals. Instead, it became the late-night struggle of Writer Demarest to assemble, digest and organize all this material, to find a writer's way to tell the story, cutting from one character to another, and in collaboration with Editor Grunwald to decide on the story's pace, tone and attitude. This is by no means a full accounting of all who had a hand in this week's cover, but may help explain why bylines rarely appear in TIME.

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