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

TIME is 20 years old this week, and for a month now I have been wondering what I should say to you on our Anniversary, to show our appreciation for the truly extraordinary loyalty and interest with which our subscribers have now backed us through two decades.

Perhaps the best thing I can do is just to quote a few paragraphs from TIME'S original prospectus and to reaffirm our faith in the journalistic concepts and ideals on which TIME started:

"Although daily journalism has been more highly developed in the United States than in any other country of the world--people in America are, for the most part, poorly informed.

"This is not the fault of the daily newspapers; they print all the news. It is not the fault of the weekly 'reviews' ; they adequately develop and comment on the news. The reason people are uninformed is that no publication has adapted itself to the time which busy men are able to spend on simply keeping informed.

"TIME is a weekly newsmagazine, aimed to serve the modern necessity of keeping people informed. It is created on a new principle of complete organization of the news.

"TIME is interested--not in how much it includes between its covers--but in how much it gets off its pages into the minds of its readers.

"No article will be written to prove any special case. But the editors recognize that complete neutrality on public questions and important news is probably as undesirable as it is impossible, and are therefore ready to acknowledge certain prejudices which may in varying measure predetermine their opinions on the news.

"A catalogue of these prejudices would include such phrases as:

1. A belief that the world is round and an admiration of the statesman's 'view of all the world.'

2. A general distrust of the present tendency toward increasing interference by government.

3. A prejudice against the rising cost of government.

4. Faith in the things which money cannot buy.

5. A respect for the old, particularly in manners.

6. An interest in the new, particularly in ideas.

"But this magazine is not founded to promulgate prejudices, liberal or conservative. The magazine is one of news, not argument, and verges on the controversial only where it is necessary to point out what that news means. 'To keep men well-informed' --that, first and last, is the only axe this magazine has to grind."

Since those paragraphs were written, the concept of TIME has grown and deepened. The world TIME reports in 1943 is a world whose knaves and good men, fools and heroes play their parts on a stage whose backdrop is literally life-and-death. In reporting this grave new world TIME still hews to its original line: we have not changed our axe but sharpened it. With 55 writers, 58 researchers, 22 branch offices and 201 correspondents all over the world, obviously we should be able to do a much better job for you than our four full-time editors and their ten part-time assistants could hope to do back in 1923.

But TIME still has only one aim--to help busy, intelligent people get the news and as much of its meaning as diligent reporting can discover.

Cordially

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