At first reading, last issue's lead story in TIME'S National Affairs department on the mood & temper of the U.S. at this season appears to be the product of one, man's judgment.

Actually, although one man wrote the story (titled THE NATION, Late Spring), it is the product of almost all of TIME'S nationwide staff of U.S. correspondents.

It would be presumptuous to attempt such a news story without having the facts at hand, and the way they were assembled serves to illustrate one of the basic tenets of TIME'S kind of journalism.

The story began as a three-page query to all but one* of TIME'S ten bureaus throughout the U.S. and to strategically placed string correspondents. The query asked for answers to 35 specific questions like "Is the veteran of World War II by now as discernible a political and community force as he thought he was going to be a few years ago?"

Each bureau chief and stringer went about getting the answers in his own way. Being perceptive journalists who live and work in their communities, they could be expected to know them well. To confirm their knowledge, however, and to get the additional facts, they had days of pavement-pounding and questioning to do. Beyond talking to people themselves they went straight to those people who spend most of their time talking to others: ministers, personnel managers, employment agency heads, political ward heelers who punch doorbells the year round, salesmen, bartenders, traffic cops, waitresses, cab drivers, barbers, etc. One correspondent, who has found the method highly productive in the past, went around picking up hitchhikers to get their variegated viewpoint.

In the process, our correspondents initiated or encountered many a revealing, amusing incident:

Visiting a New Orleans high school to observe and hear today's teenagers, Correspondent Ed Ogle, whose hair is retreating, saw a student nod his way and ask: "Who's the low joe with the high head?"

In Dallas, Holland McCombs told the waitress who was serving him--and explaining what the high-cost-of-living had done to her--that he was a reporter. Said she: "Say, you're a smart guy. Why has the cost of living gone up so?" The answer put McCombs behind schedule.

Barron Beshoar called on a Denver businessman to get his views on the international situation. The man gave him a long look, hrrmphed, reached toward the floor beside his desk and came up with a huge Spanish onion. "Here," he said, "have one." That ended the interview. If any symbolism was intended, Beshoar has not figured it out.

The Chicago bureau's Jim Bell stood for a long time at a bus stop in The Loop, making a spot check of the current long-skirt vogue. A policeman tapped him on the shoulder and said: "I been watchin' you, buddy. Better move on. We don't like that stuff around here."

After a long, tiring final day rounding out his information, Sid Copeland expressed Seattle's temper and his own in the lead sentence of his report. Wrote he: "Normalcy is a good word to describe the mood hereabouts this spring because everyone's beefing again."

The consensus of his and all our other correspondents' reports made it possible for National Affairs Writer Paul O'Neil to turn out his story. Of the thousands of specific facts, opinions, bits of information on which the story was based, few appeared in print --although they will be used by TIME'S editors for guidance on other stories for weeks to come. It is this sort of local-national coverage that helps TIME maintain a national viewpoint and makes possible stories like THE NATION, Late Spring.

Cordially,

*Washington, which had all it could do that week to report the exceptionally heavy flow of news from the nation's capital.

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