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

"The first pony has arrived and is already distributed to the front and to the west, with combat troops getting the heaviest share. Reception enthusiastic all the way from the top down."

This cable from Correspondent Will Lang at the front in Tunisia had nothing to do with horsemeat. The "pony" is a miniature edition of TIME--and Lang was reporting the safe arrival of the first shipment flown 10,000 miles over land and sea to our news-hungry fighters in North Africa.

Because the planes could carry only a few thousand copies, we had to ask the soldiers to handle their copies with care and to pass them along. But from now on the troops in every platoon from Casablanca to the heights of Tunis will have a chance to get TIME almost as quickly as our subscribers here in the U.S.

All over the world now--wherever American boys are fighting or getting ready to fight--TIME is trying to help the Army keep them posted on what people back home are doing and arguing over--what they are saying about the war and how things are going in the South Pacific and on the Russian front and on the home front. About 100 copies are being flown all the way to General Stilwell in Chungking to keep the American flyers in China in touch with the world outside. Other copies are being flown to Assam for our flyers on the Burma front. In Liberia, in Sierra Leone, in French Equatorial Africa, in Egypt, in Iraq, in Iceland, in Greenland and in Alaska it is the same story.

The demand for some such service began the day the first American soldiers landed in dreary Iceland. It grew and spread all over the world as more and more American boys were sent overseas. The Army found that news from home was second only to food and cigarets in importance-- and hundreds of letters told us how starved the men were for news, how the copies we succeeded in getting through to them were shared sometimes by as many as 400 men, how copies were torn apart so that several soldiers could read pieces of them at the same time, how issues grew dirtlayered to twice their original thickness as they passed from hand to grimy hand.

Lieutenant J. D. C. wrote his wife by V-mail from Africa:

"Fellows out here miss news of what's going on in the world and at home so much that they go crazy over even two and three months old newspapers from the States. I ran across three old issues of TIME today, as welcome to my mind as eggs and oranges were to my body. It's surprising how the mind stagnates during this war--and wastes away for lack of food. But I have nursed it back now with liberal doses of TIME."

"TIME is practically my only contact with the outside world," wrote Corporal J. I. D. . . . "It is the most sought-after publication in the combat zones," observed Captain D. L. J. of the Marines . . . and "TIME in this area is worth its weight in gold," Lieutenant (j.g.) A. N. H. of the Navy told us--"the Executive says it's fine for morale and sends a heartfelt vote of thanks."

At first we tried to meet this demand with our regular Air Express edition, but last fall even this proved too heavy to fly all over the world. So last November we developed the pony. It is printed on flyweight paper. It is a little less than two-thirds the size of the copy you are now reading, and about eight times lighter. But the news is there, and it gets to our troops the quickest possible way.

Cordially,

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