"Detente," laments Associate Editor Gerald Clarke, who wrote our cover story, "too often gets built up as if it were a sexy toothpaste or a sensational new car. It's not a grand millennial package -- it's an accommodation of mutual interests. My job was to try to demythologize the subject." Clarke has been making sense out of complex stories for TIME for nine years, following his education at Yale, Heidelberg and Harvard, and some newspapering on the New Haven Journal-Courier and the Baltimore Sun. A veteran of most sections of the magazine, he has a score of covers to his credit -- most recently, our story on alcoholism -- but few of his assignments have been as demanding as this week's.

First he consumed a wealth of background material while bedridden with the flu, then returned to the office to confront an avalanche of complicated files from many of our bureaus. Clarke and Reporter-Researcher Genevieve Wilson (who brings to her work in the World section the experience of having studied in Paris and worked for the U.S. Government in Saigon) had to immerse themselves in a host of topics, from international trade to Jewish emigration to atomic-age diplomacy. "Many of the experts in these fields," says Wilson, "have exactly opposite views on the same specific matters. We had to put them all in context and sort out the merits and demerits of the arguments."

The most apocalyptic field of all was the province of Associate Editor Burton Pines and Reporter-Researcher Susan Altchek, who put together a detailed report on the relative destructive powers of the U.S.

and the Soviet nuclear arsenals, and on the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. Says Pines: "Some people find it hard to believe that serious men actually address themselves to as 'Strangelovian' a subject as nuclear strategic theory -- but I'm rather pleased that there are serious people thinking about it."

Another concern that has occupied serious minds recently is the crisis of leadership that is afflicting not only the U.S. but many other nations. TIME'S editors and correspondents have set out to determine where and why leadership vacuums exist, and to discover and describe tomorrow's potential leaders. In the near future we will present a special section on the subject. It will feature a gallery of 200 men and women aged 45 and under -- some well known, some relatively unknown -- who have already enjoyed significant civic or political impact and who we believe will become even more influential. With names, faces and capsule biographies, we will offer a Who 's Who of this new generation. Many of these people will be making their first major appearance in TIME. We doubt it will be their last.

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