To answer some of the questions subscribers are asking about how TIME gathers, verifies, organizes and writes its news

Trying to explain TIME to you without saying anything about TIME'S creed of public service would be like trying to make you understand a friend of mine without describing his character.

The stories you read in TIME each week are only partly the day to day product of our 200 correspondents stationed all over the world. They are only partly the product of our 34 researchers here in New York. They are only partly the product of our 49 editors and writers.

Although TIME is all of these--TIME is more than these. And no one can ever understand TIME until he understands the purposes and the thinking which direct our correspondents and researchers, and motivate our writers. As much as any large group of intelligent men can agree on any one credo, I believe they are agreed that:

The present crisis in world affairs is also a crisis in journalism. Fundamentally and at bottom the reason why the modern dictatorships are unspeakable is not merely because of their murders and their concentration camps. Men can fight that kind of tyranny. The bigger reason why the modern dictatorships are unspeakable is that they corrupt the mind from within. They suppress the truth. They lead men by lies and fraud to desire and acquiesce in their own enslavement. And how is this corruption brought about? By the destruction of journalism. . . .

This is the true poison of our time. And its only antidote is truth. And not only truth in a laboratory, but truth in the ears of the people.

Unless the facts, the significant facts, the difficult, complicated facts of industry and finance and politics are put before the people, the people cannot govern themselves in an industrial society.

The Press must assist the people to govern themselves. And to do that, the Press must offer to the people of this country in the next few decades such an amount and such a quality of instruction in the facts and problems of public affairs as no people yet under the sun have been willing or able to receive. This will involve telling some very unpalatable facts. . . .

There is today great need for great argument. To the great debate, journalists like others, must inevitably respond in their emotions and in their consciences. . . .

But there is a mission which is peculiar to the Press--the mission to inform. Through all the alarms of the future, the true journalist will continue to believe in the paramount importance of the purely informative function of journalism. There is where his conscience will be most especially engaged. And his proudest boast will be that he has fearlessly, eagerly and effectively transmitted significant information from the boisterous newsfronts of the world into the minds of living and literate and free people.

Most of these words were written by TIME'S Editor five years ago.

As the months passed they have taken on added meaning for TIME'S staff. They still express, better than anything new we could put on paper, TIME'S attitude toward its job as part of America's wartime press.

Cordially,

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