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

Teddy White's expense account from Ceylon to Chungking passed across my desk for an okay this week. It gave me such a sharp new insight into what a correspondent's life in far-away places is really like these days that I thought you might also be interested in some of the entries. (A rupee is about 30 cents.)

91 rupees--For tropical shorts, shirts, and a monsoon raincoat. This island is only 8 degrees from the equator. The day I landed I almost passed out in my winter army uniform.

5 rupees--Movie--pretty bad.

94 rupees--My hotel bill in Colombo. That hotel always was bad, but since they've been expecting air raids, they built up a solid wall around it--and now it's like the inside of a tomb. There were two baths for my entire floor, and I had to keep my windows shut because otherwise the full blast of the monsoon slugged the black raindrops all over the room.

53 rupees--Incidental expenses: plane from Colombo to Bombay, train from Bombay to Delhi. When I hit Delhi I had just 7 rupees left.

985 rupees--My first bill at the Cecil, which is really a great hotel. But they've run out of Western whiskies, so now they are serving such tiger wash as "Dew of the Himalayas." They have no beer either, but only stout. Our Bill Fisher likes stout, but he's a Yale man.

38 rupees--Bush shirt for uniform, and sun helmet.

25 rupees--Bearers. A bearer is a personal servant. You've got to have one. He gets your laundry done and takes your telegrams to cable office.

100 rupees--Medicines. Last time I came back from Chungking it took me hundreds of dollars and a long vacation to get my health back. This time I figure on the ounce of prevention. When I got to found I had bought more wisely than I knew. For example: my sulfanilamide is worth $1.50 a tablet here, and the 300 five-grain tablets of quinine I bought in Australia for two cents U.S. money apiece are worth U.S. 20-c- a tablet. Chinese friends come around asking for quinine, sulfanilamide and aspirin--and I feel compelled to give the stuff away because they need it so.

208 rupees--Trip to Allahabad and back to see Jawaharlal Nehru. It was worth it. There's a truly great man. The train service to Allahabad is lousy these days.

1019 rupees -- Second bill from Cecil (August 2 -September 7). The Cecil is an island of Paradise in a political hell. On a cool white verandah the rulers of the British Raj sit sipping chota pegs and singing for the "kipnagar" (waiter) and talking about India as if it were something very far and remote and inconsequential in their personal lives.

That terrible August day when dozens of people were being shot down all through Delhi and rain and blood ran half and half in the dirty gutters I came back to the Cecil at 9 o'clock emotionally exhausted. And there on the porch they all were sipping their gimlets and chota pegs--and they asked me what was happening in town and was it serious!

NOTE: One of the chief items on the attached bills is "cash"--money I had the hotel pay out for taxis, on which I spent about $8 a day. Taximen were scared to go out during the rioting, so I had to pay fantastic prices.

Multiply all this by 100--and I . think you'll know better what it feels like to be a crack correspondent on and off duty in the Orient these days.

Cordially,

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