GETTING the the story straight in Saigon is the biggest problem, but getting it out has sometimes been almost as big a task. As the U.S. involvement in the war in Viet Nam has risen, so have the ranks of the foreign press corps (which currently totals some 200) and the strain on the severely limited communications facilities. This week, word traffic out of Saigon is vastly improved, thanks largely to the ingenuity and cooperation of three men -- Director General Nguyen Van Dieu of Viet Nam's Administration des Postes et Telecommunications, RCA Communications, Inc. Vice President Charles H. Clark, and Time Inc. Communications Manager John F. Striker.

In April, Striker made a troubleshooting swing through the Far East looking into our communications problems, notably at Saigon, with its one overtaxed radio-cable circuit to New York via Manila. More lines were the answer, but how to get them? Clark came down from his base in Manila, and the three men and their colleagues went to work on the problem. Striker found some electronics equipment lying unused in the Saigon cable office. Van Dieu agreed to provide six new channels to Manila. Clark agreed to establish radio channels to the Philippines and link them to the Transpacific cable to the U.S.

Naturally, there were all kinds of bugs along the way. While assembling the new installation, the technicians learned that two vital parts-- magnetic storage elements--were missing. Striker found that they would have to be specially manufactured, ordered them and, fortnight ago, with the two missing links in his hand luggage, flew out of New York for Saigon. Last week, as the new circuit went to work, copy from our Saigon bureau moved to New York in a matter of minutes. Formerly it took as long as twelve hours.

While TIME is only one beneficiary of the new circuit (we have leased only one of the six channels; the Associated Press and United Press International are among those who will be using the other five), our new capability out of Saigon adds another facet to a vast communications network that is unique in magazine publishing. Via leased-wire Teletype, Telex, commercial telegraph and cable facilities, this network links the TIME-LIFE News Service's 32 bureaus in the U.S. and abroad, whose staff and special correspondents file an average 3,500,000 words a month into the clattering cable room on the 25th floor of the TIME & LIFE Building in Manhattan.

PHYLLIS McGINLEY has become, perhaps to her own surprise, the literary protagonist of the point of view that the keeper of the home is the most important woman in the world. So this week's cover story about this remarkable American poet focuses sharply on how she lives and works at her pre-Revolutionary home in Weston, Conn. Boris Chaliapin, a Connecticut neighbor, painted the cover portrait from life and used the house and grounds as background; Boston Bureau Chief Ruth Mehrtens spent five days there as a house guest and constant interviewer. Out of this close view of the subject's way of life as well as an intensive study of her works, Writer John Koffend fashioned BOOKS' heartwarming story of The Telltale Hearth.

* With a Vietnamese Teletype operator and TIME Correspondent James Wilde.

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