Recently, Henry Wallace,* TIME'S string correspondent in Havana, Cuba, sent us a report of his work covering the news for us there. In it he made the following comment:

"TIME'S news assignments are different from those of any other publication I have ever worked for--and that includes the Lexington (Ky.) Leader, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Puerto Rico World Journal and the Dayton (Ohio) News, as well as the Havana Post, of which I am, as you know, news editor.

"Suppose, for instance, that a politician here makes a speech denouncing the United States. For my own purposes I can always get a copy of the speech or listen to it on the radio. But for TIME you would have to be on the scene--to know whether his tie was under his chin or drooping to his waist, whether he gulped water from a pitcher or a jug or a glass, etc. You would have to know whether his wife was on the speaker's stand nodding her head affirmatively, negatively, or not at all because she was reading the comic strips.

"Then, having heard the speech, you would have to find out what motivated it, who wrote it for the politician, who listened to it. You would have to find out who liked the speech, who said the politician was a windbag anyway, and whether the speaker went home to his family or to confer with political cronies.

"To get those details and many more you would have to question, observe, evaluate, boil down and put two and two together until, in your best judgment, after your best efforts, they made four. It would take a lot of time and hard work, but what I like about working for TIME is to see a sweated-out story like that appear in the magazine. It makes you feel that you've done a real job of journalism.

"Sometimes I get sore at TIME for passing up a suggested story or condensing my long account to a few lines. Then I remind myself that TIME culls the world for the news while I just cull Cuba. And I see in the final product the tempering effect of the editor who isn't swept too far one way or the other by being too close to the scene."

As you can see by reading the roster at your left, TIME has 39 correspondents and executives in its own U.S. and Canadian News Service, 32 in its Foreign News Service, headquartered in the 28 cities throughout the world where we maintain permanent news bureaus. These are the full-time correspondents of the TIME organization we have set up to gather and verify the news--augmented by the full report we receive through our membership in the world-girdling Associated Press.

In addition there are 85 cities in the U.S., 20 in Canada and 60 overseas where TIME requires independent coverage but not fulltime representation. In each, TIME has a local correspondent (called a "string correspondent" or "stringer") to watch for news stories of more than local interest, to cover special assignments for our editors, to answer their queries, and to keep them filled in on what people in their sections are doing, saying and thinking.

Like Havana's Henry Wallace, a TIME string correspondent usually works part-time for us, full-time for his city's leading newspaper, where he is generally an editor or top reporter. This double duty gives him a unique opportunity to experience the difference between TIME'S weekly job and the newspaper's daily one, whether he works abroad or at home. I hope to tell you more later about the work of our string correspondents in the U.S. and Canada.

*No kin to the Progressive Party's candidate.

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