I wrote you recently about the Russian-sponsored magazine, USA in Wort und Bild, which distorts TIME stories and pictures into propaganda aimed at West Germans. A number of you wrote back to urge that we make a similar counterattack each time the Communist press warps our material into a libel against the U.S.

Other readers have found a way to beat the Communists to the punch. By giving TIME subscriptions to business and personal friends in other countries, they supply them with the news of the world before it can be pretzeled into propaganda.

To step up this flow of TIME abroad, we have launched a "Share-the-News" project for U.S. students who use TIME in their classrooms.

Under this plan, U.S. students are now providing copies of our overseas editions for classroom use in Western Germany, Northern Italy, Japan and Latin America.

In Frankfurt am Main last fortnight, when the first "Share-the-News" copies of TIME arrived at the Karl Schurz Real-gymnasium for boys. Schoolmaster Walther Binner took them into his English class. Binner had fled from Redrun Silesia to become director of the West-protected school. While the 18-to-21-year-old Germans were still studying General Eisenhower's (Feb. 12) cover picture, he explained: "Girls of the Ethel Walker School at Simsbury, Connecticut, have donated to our school eleven TIME copies for eleven weeks."

After surprised murmurs had subsided, he added: "I must say, it's nice to know that of all people, a girls' school had the idea of promoting friendship among nations, and it may be a fine occasion for you to get to know some of them . . . Maybe, you will even find a girl to marry."

"Who?" asked a student who had missed the first part of the sentence. "The most beautiful one, of course," replied the smiling director.

Binner went on to make a serious point about the need for "acquaint ances" across language and political barriers. His students had reason to know what he meant. World War II had slowed or stopped their schooling, left them far behind in their grades. One wing of the old stucco school building, which had been flattened by bombs, has been rebuilt in a modern design. But it is easier to restore buildings than to erase from young minds what Binner calls Nazidom's "stale doctrines." In that uncertain zone fringing the Iron Curtain, the anti-American absurdities hammered into German youth by Goebbels & Co. are echoed loudly today by the Russian propagandists.

The Ethel Walker girls, who are so news-conscious that their current events classes often run over in continued arguments, sensed German students' "skepticism" toward Americans. They were among the first schools to join the "Share-the-News" plan. When each girl pays for the copy of TIME which she studies in class, she contributes an extra dime toward sending a copy abroad. TIME then pays the cost of delivering a copy of our Atlantic edition to a student in one of eight Frankfurt schools.

Thus, U.S. and German students read the same issue the same week. Our educational service department also furnishes them with the same maps, discussion outlines and news tests used in U.S. classrooms.

Said one of the Ethel Walker girls: "I sent TIME abroad because, after spending my summer in Europe, I saw what a demand there was for it. There never seemed to be enough copies for everyone, and I felt that if we helped to supply one group, it would give others, too, a chance to read it."

No doubt, some of these student-sent copies of TIME, like many of those which are read to a frazzle by thousands of our regular European subscribers, will eventually find their way behind the Iron Curtain. Wrote one reader from a Russian satellite area: "TIMERS my only trustworthy source of information ... is read by us as a Bible."

Cordially yours,

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.