Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia greeted Hong Kong Correspondent Eric Pace at his palace in Pnompenh, where he was hosting a dinner in honor of the French Ambassador to Laos. With a somewhat puzzled grin, the Prince informed his 40 guests in a loud voice: "This is an American journalist from TIME. He is making a reportage here although the magazine is forbidden."

TIME has been banned in Cambodia for most of the past five years. A long-term ban came in February 1959, after a rather uncomplimentary report on the Prince. The ban was lifted last year, and then after the story (Nov. 29) about Sihanouk's attack on U.S. aid, a new decree banned TIME for "critical acts of injury against the Cambodian government." But the fact that we are not one of the Prince's favorite magazines nor he one of our favorite statesmen does not mean that we can or should ignore him.

Most of the news from Southeast Asia in recent months has focused on South Viet Nam, but turning the story around the ambivalent position of Sihanouk's Cambodia takes it into a broader perspective. Correspondent Pace's own experience was in a way symptomatic of the ambivalence. He flew to Cambodia at a time when most journalists were banned, feared that he might be shipped right out again, but argued with security officials until two planes had departed and left him stranded until the next day. At that point, the officials gave him a 48-hour visa; some hours later, that visa was extended by Sihanouk's announcement that all journalists would be admitted. Pace sat through a riot alert at the threatened U.S. embassy, spent an hour and a half in private conversation with the Prince over glasses of pink champagne, which neither man drank, and finally joined the dinner party, where, he reported, "the food was excellent and the lettuce the best in the world." Then he flew out to file his report from Hong Kong.

Along with Pace's "reportage" from the Pnompenh palace, Writer Bruce Henderson and Editor Henry Grunwald got wide and deep coverage of Southeast Asia from Hong Kong Bureau Chief Frank McCulloch and the rest of his staff; the thoughts and theories of the State Department were transmitted from the Washington Bureau, and a study of Sihanouk's writings in French came from Paris. Out of it all came a story new enough to reach into the future and old enough to recall the past. Artist Boris Chaliapin reached into the past for the background of his cover painting; but in a way, it does not seem so different from the never-never land of Southeast Asia today. It is from a bas-relief in the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat, and it shows gods and demons pulling on a ropelike serpent in an effort to draw the liquid of immortality from the churning Sea of Milk.

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