THE 21 top American businessmen, journeying on a trip arranged by Time Inc., had spent long days and longer evenings being briefed, being lectured to, having their questions answered, and being feted in Washington, London and Moscow. Now they were in Berlin, and would have their first two-hour free period next morning, to sightsee, to rest, to do as they like. But one of them had a proposal to make: Why not spend the time talking out their impressions of all the people they had met, from Kennedy to Khrushchev, and the arguments they had heard? The matter was put to a vote. Unanimously, they agreed to use their free time to compare notes.

It was that kind of group, and one that realized that they had shared an unparalleled experience together. Last week they had more of it--in Germany, dinner with Chancellor Erhard, lunch with ex-Chancellor Adenauer. In Paris, lunch with French Premier Pompidou, a dinner with "Mr. Europe," Jean Monnet. In Brussels, a dinner with a picked group of Common Market Eurocrats. By now the businessmen, whose questioning of experts had been diffident at first, had become forthright. When the Common Market's Vice Chairman Robert Marjolin, a Yale-educated French Social ist, called for questions, he was asked: "Why should a bunch of American capitalists put their trust in a bunch of Socialist Eurocrats?"

Marjolin answered: "I wasn't aware that you had put your trust in us."

There was laughter and applause. Actually, that exchange did not truly reflect the feelings of the occasion, for when called upon to ask the evening's final question, Walter H. Wheeler Jr., chairman of Pitney-Bowes, made a statement instead: Marjolin & Co. were receiving a lot of criticism these days, but what Wheeler had seen in Brussels was the most hopeful and inspiring experience of the whole trip, and he thought that the Common Market was doing the right thing both for Europe and the world.

This remark brought standing applause and cries of "hear, hear" from the U.S. corporation heads.

As the 10,600-mile trip came to an end, one of the executives picked up the day's copy of the New York Times and was pleased to note that in the previous three days, he had talked to five of the world leaders who were making Page One news.

LAST May 31, when our cover L carried the pictures of twelve leading U.S. executives, we predicted that this would cause great difficulty for the growing number of readers who collect the autographs of cover subjects. To get all twelve signatures onto one cover, we thought, through a series of mailings, might even take years. Reader Howard Lawrence of Inglewood, Calif., who with his wife has been collecting TIME autographs since the Jimmy Byrnes man-of-the-year cover in 1947, writes us triumphantly that he now--after many delays--has rounded up all twelve. One of the difficult ones to get, he reports, was who was then vice chairman and is now president of the Bank of America. Peterson was one of the 21 "American capitalists" who made the Moscow trip, and Khrushchev, too, found him an amiably deliberate fellow.

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