OFTEN in TIME'S division of journalistic labors, correspondents in many places file the basic material that a writer in Manhattan shapes into a story. But the Manhattan-based author of this week's cover story, Associate Editor Mike Demarest, 37, has a closer than usual connection with his subject. Demarest grew up in England, and four years after joining TIME'S staff in 1954, returned to London as a correspondent for us for three years. Recently he flew over to London to watch Ted Heath perform in the crucial debate in the House of Commons ("most impressive"), to have dinner with him, and to get his own impressions of how prominent Britons--journalists, civil servants and businessmen--felt about their country's application to join the Common Market.

"The British have always been deeply suspicious about poetry, the decimal system, the Gulf Stream and the continent of Europe. Especially the continent of Europe." So wrote the well-known British journalist, Cassandra. Among Demarest's British colleagues on TIME'S London staff, feeling runs high and generally favorable for joining Europe. Says Correspondent Monica Dehn: "We have no option: I think that is the general feeling. As in 1939, there suddenly came a moment when we knew in our bones that war was inevitable; so there is now a feeling that the Common Market is inevitable. For myself, I'll be very proud to be a European."

ALONG with this week's cover story appear twelve pages of color photographs of the New Europe. This look at the skylines, scientific buildings and snack bars that reflect the new European prosperity is a distillation of 6,000 pictures taken for us by five photographers assigned to the job.

ALONG about now 85,000 or more TIME readers who have subscribed to the new TIME Reading Program are getting their second batch of four books, and we hope the reception will be as enthusiastic as the letters we got on the initial four. There were cheers for the editors' choice of titles, for the prefaces written by the editors of TIME, and for the look of the covers, the size of the type, and the durability of the bindings.

We try for diversity in our choices, seek to be timely, and insist on readability. We think that the four new titles can be judged by these standards, for they are: Joyce Cary's Mister Johnson (the best contemporary novel on Africa); S.L.A. Marshall's The River and the Gauntlet (Korean war); Lincoln Barnett's The Universe and Dr. Einstein; and Sybille Bedford's The Trial of Doctor Adams.

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