THE editors of TIME began the week with well-laid plans for a cover story on the winner of the British election. While covering both sides right down to the ballot box, the London Bureau weighed in 48 hours before the polls opened with a firm judgment that Labor's Harold Wilson would win. In New York, the WORLD staff was inclined to agree, but with knowledge born of experience remained flexible and ready for a narrow victory by either side. It turned out to be a week when flexibility, always the journalist's best stance amid breaking news, was nothing less than a critical necessity.

First of the big stories to break in the hottest week of international news in years was the scandal in the White House. Then in quick succession came the overthrow in Moscow and the bomb in China. As one big story piled on top of another, about all that journalists reporting by the minute or the hour or the day could do, as one editor said (see PRESS), was "throw it at" the public. In a position to look at the news at greater length and depth, TIME correspondents around the world and writers and editors in New York set about the more difficult but more rewarding task of studying, analyzing and assessing the meaning of the startling events. As the stories were developing, the editors decided that

Artist Bernard Safran's finely painted cover of Harold Wilson would have to give way, so it became a reduced black and white engraving, and joined photographs of the new Russian leaders and a picture of President Johnson taken as the news of the scandal was breaking--all four superimposed on the background of an atomic explosion.

In addition to these nation-rattling events, there was other hard news to be assessed--for example, the Russian space troika (SCIENCE), and the spectacular U.S. success in the Olympics (SPORT). With all that, TIME'S editors--by the very nature of their mission--went right on with a full schedule of stories on another level, such as ART'S critique of "op art," a new movement across the Western world; MEDICINE'S report on the use of animal corneas for transplant into the human eye; RELIGION'S study of an ecumenical milestone, the first Bible translation to combine the labors of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish scholars.

When big news is breaking fast, TIME'S editors believe in taking the time and the intensive effort to explain what it means. At the same time, they know they must not neglect the stories of trends and developments that may not make such black headlines but nevertheless add understanding and meaning to life.

THIS fall, in more than 5,000 classrooms across the U.S. and Canada, more than 100,000 young people are reading TIME as part of their regular course of study. Their teachers have enrolled them (at the reduced rates we make available when TIME is used in this way) in our Education Program, now in its 29th year. Teachers who enroll ten or more students receive supplementary teaching aids during the school year. In September, for example, it was TIME'S Election Year Argument Settler; soon we will be distributing the 1965 Current Affairs Test and a giant "Timetable of the Twentieth Century," listing important U.S., foreign, scientific and cultural events, 1901-64. Teachers interested in learning more about the TIME Education Program should write to: TIME Education Program, Box No. 853, Radio City Station, New York, N.Y. 10019.

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