To answer some of the questions our subscribers have been asking about how TIME gathers, verifies, writes and distributes its news.

Perhaps this week you would like to know something about what we are doing to get you our own special coverage on the tremendous news from Africa.

Right now we have enough correspondents there to challenge the A.E.F. to a football game. The eleven men from the TIME and LIFE News Bureau now on the Dark Continent moved in from Asia, from Britain and from across the Atlantic--to reinforce John Barkham, who covers the news for us down in South Africa--and Harry Zinder, just back in our Cairo office after jeeping along with the triumphant Eighth Army all the way from Alamein to Derna.

From Britain came Will Lang with the "center force" of the American troops which landed at Oran--and Line Barnett, who sailed with the British forces and landed near Bone on the Tunisian border.

From India came Jack Belden, now completely recovered from the hardships of the Burma campaign and his long trek across the mountains and jungles with General Stilwell. From America came Photographer Eliot Elisofon, now in Casablanca with Major General George S. Patton Jr.--and by Clipper and boat via Argentina came LIFE Editor Noel Busch on a special assignment to South Africa, to join Hart Preston, fresh out of Ankara, who was last heard from hedgehopping kraals, crocodiles and elephant herds in Zululand.

From Teheran came young Jim Aldridge, who joined our Cairo staff a week before Montgomery's attack--but who will soon be on his way to Moscow to take Walter Graebner's place there. And from Russia came Graebner himself, homeward bound to report what he learned during his five months with the Russian armies. He stopped over in Egypt to bring home with him the first-hand feel of the fighting--got a very authentic six-days' sample bouncing across the desert with the British troops all the way past Tobruk--dodging Nazi bombs with them and sharing their bully beef and the dusty taste of victory. In contrast, he flew back to Cairo in six hours in a British bomber whose crew fed him chicken and ham pie and fresh fruit.

I wish I could round out this report by telling you the latest news about Henry B. Cole, our native correspondent on the Guinea Coast, but we last heard from him three months ago in Monrovia. He has worked for TIME three years now, sending us all sorts of unexpected stories and interesting sidelights on the echoes of World War II in his bailiwick. In addition he is Associate Editor of "Who's Who in Liberia" and the author of something he calls "A Classic: God and the Negro"--and all in all we have grown so fond of him we would like to send a Stanley to Africa to see what happened to him.

These TIME and LIFE newsmen are not ploughing through Sahara dust or flying through African skies or dodging equatorial snakes merely to duplicate the headline news that comes flashing to TIME over our Associated Press wires at the same time that it goes to the newspapers.

Rather their job is to dig up background information and usually-overlooked detail, so that TIME'S editors can give you the taste and smell and feel of the battles around Africa's rim --and the quality and flavor of the men who are fighting those battles and preparing for new ones and secretly working to win without battles.

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