TO gather the material for this week's essay on "The Dilemma of Chemical Warfare," Senior Correspondent John Steele spent three weeks traveling across most of the U.S. Despite the secrecy that shrouds most CBW research, Steele managed to visit nearly every installation where such work is under way. He flew over the Utah salt flats to see the vast reach of the Dugway Proving Grounds; he went to the biological laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Denver, the scientific offices at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, and the huge storage depot at Tooele, Utah.

Everywhere he went, Steele was impressed by the ability of the men he interviewed, and by their sensitivity to what they consider the ill-informed criticism that is now aimed their way. He was also impressed with their safety record and with the strange mixture of gruesome, warlike preparation and peaceful pleasures that he found in the areas where they work. "Fishermen drop their lines in the ponds at Pine Bluff Arsenal. At Tooele, the day I was there, thousands of school kids were paying Armed Forces Day visits. There was only one 'incident': a bright teen-ager managed to start up a tank."

A veteran political reporter from Washington, London Correspondent Lansing Lament says that this week's cover story on Britain's Prince Charles was his toughest assignment yet. "I had to become an instant Welsh historian and an amateur genealogist of the royal family." He also had to become a gossip columnist of sorts. In London discotheques and at private parties, he collected scraps of anecdotes from sources within the royal circle. Those scraps, he says, "helped immensely to illuminate the human side of that aloofly detached institution known as the British monarchy. Once the pieces were assembled, a mosaic of Charles' character and attitudes emerged."

Additional segments were supplied by London Bureau Chief Curtis Prendergast, who reported on a mountain-climbing trip with Prince Charles in Wales, and Correspondents Honor Balfour and Monica Dehn, who contributed a study of the British monarchy. The cover story was written by Bob McCabe and edited by Jason McManus, with the help of Researcher Mary McConachie. All loyal Scots by background, they brought to the story a basic sympathy for their fellow Celts.

The Cover: Mixed media collage by Peter Max. At the age of 29, Artist Max likes to think of himself as a member of the U25 (under 25) generation that he paints for. Anyone, Max says, can be U25 if he is "open-minded, youth-oriented." Prince Charles, at 20, is unquestionably U-25, and an ideal subject for Max's "cosmic art." The colors and shapes in his portrait, says Max, and the planet Saturn in the lower right-hand corner, "are all symbols of today, of the Aquarian age, the golden age that we are just now entering." Charles, says the artist, "is an Aquarian prince whether he knows it or not."

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