IN the aftermath of World War I, when the U.S. rejected the League of Nations, many concerned citizens felt a need for an organization that might help to balance the country's growing isolationism. Thus 50 years ago, a group of editors and scholars founded the Foreign Policy Association. In publications and meetings they provided a platform for foreign-affairs and communications specialists who later helped organize World Affairs Councils in cities throughout the nation.

As a newsmagazine that covers the world, TIME has had a parallel history of continuing concern with international policy. Marking that mutuality of interest, TIME and the Foreign Policy Association are joining this month in a "Travelling Foreign Policy Conference" that will discuss "The Demands of the Next Decade" in a dozen major cities.

Underwritten by a grant from TIME, the tour will bring together panels of such leading foreign-affairs experts as Political Scientist Robert Scalapino, Teodoro Moscoso, former coordinator of the Alliance for Progress, and Wayne Fredericks of the Ford Foundation. At every stop, public discussions will be held under the sponsorship of local World Affairs Councils and universities. Starting this week in Los Angeles, the jet-borne conference will visit San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Houston, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Chicago and Dallas. The meetings are meant for community participation; those who wish to attend should call their local World Affairs Council.

If a nervous G.I. should run across a South Vietnamese civilian carrying a copy of the map shown above, he could be forgiven the notion that he had collared a Viet Cong spy. Next to the bomb-burst symbols at each city, the map also has such suspicious and cryptic legends as "50 outlets, 14 trucks, five Americans, 70 Vietnamese." A plan for a coordinated attack on Allied bases? Not at all. The map shows distribution points used by the company that delivers TIME magazine to U.S. forces.

Each week tens of thousands of copies are flown from our Tokyo presses into Tan Son Nhut Airport. The magazines are then dispersed in a constantly changing pattern by military and civilian trucks through minefields and monsoons, by helicopter to isolated outposts, and by airdrops to ships on duty near Yankee and Dixie stations in the South China Sea. About 11,000 are packeted to troops by the Army's Library Field Distributing Center. Half of these copies are donated by TIME; servicemen who can get to a PX snap up their copies at a special 250 rate. Many say they rely on TIME to fit their own unit's action into the picture of overall strategy. About 5,000 copies each week are also given free to hospitals and rest-and-recuperation centers, and put aboard planes flying the men to the centers.

Getting magazines to the troops is, to be sure, low on the list of military priorities. But last year, newspapers reported that part of TIME'S Viet Cong cover issue (July 28) was found cached in a V.C. cave. Apparently, TIME does get through, with an unusual "pass-along" readership.

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