One of the privileges of journalism is the license to learn from people who know, and exercising that license can take many forms. Periodically the editors of TIME conclude that a particularly complex issue or problem can best be plumbed by inviting the best and brightest minds from a number of callings to sit around a table and bounce-pass ideas at one another. Facts are shared, opinions are ventilated, brains are stormed and much coffee is consumed. The result is almost always that rarest and most vital of transmutations: information becomes knowledge, as TIME editors, writers, reporter-researchers and correspondents find that they have acquired a fast education on an issue--and often a major story for the magazine.

This week's cover story on military manpower emerged from just such a process. Says Associate Editor Burton Pines, the Nation section's expert on military affairs and principal author of the story: "It was a natural. The issue was very important, potentially explosive, but not susceptible of a quick fix. It was clear it would lend itself to a symposium treatment." TIME assembled five experts on military manpower problems, who joined 19 TIME staffers for a 5 1/2-hour seminar in the Time-Life Building in New York City. The results not only inevitably helped shape this week's cover story but produced an edited transcript of the discussion that follows the main story.

The manpower symposium is one of four such intellectual forays TIME has sponsored so far this year. In January, prepping for the campaign year, the Nation section traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with members of Congress, political advisers, party professionals and pollsters.In March editorial staff members convened with experts on Soviet-American relations to assess the present parlous state of affairs between the superpowers. Last month TIME Reporter-Researcher Barbara Dolan organized a one-day colloquy on the plight of American families. Twelve outsiders, knowledgeable on 'such problems as child abuse, domestic relations and aging, joined 22 people from TIME in a wide-ranging and stimulating discussion that, sooner and later, in ways visible and invisible, will be shared with the readers of TIME.

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