DearTIME-Reader:

GENERALISSIMO CHIANG KAI-SHEK appears this week on TIME'S cover for the tenth time--oftener than any other living man. Only the Generalissimo's archenemy, the late JOSEPH STALIN, had been a TIME cover subject so often. Runners-up: PRESIDENT EISENHOWER, nine times; former PRESIDENT HARRY TRUMAN, SIR WINSTON CHUCHILL, GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR and the late FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, eight each.

Chiang was first portrayed OH the cover in 1927 as a grave young Nationalist leader and heir to DR. SUN YATSEN. His goal today is the same as it was then: the unification of all China. To put the goal in geographic perspective, TIME illustrates the story with graphic four-color maps of Formosa, mainland China in panorama, and an azimuthal equidistant projection (Cartographer R. M. Chapin Jr.'s jawbreaking term for it) of the Generalissimo's target, Red China.

WHILE the fate of Chiang and China hinged on decisions in Peking and Washington, Sir Winston, keeping a firm rein ort his own fate, resigned--just when TIME said he would (TIME, April 4). Knowing that the Prime Minister had wavered in his decision for almost a year, I asked our London Bureau how it had been so sure of the date in advance. "On March 9, I had a drink with a politician I trust, and he told me the decision had been taken, that Churchill would resign in the first week of April,'' cabled Bureau Chief Andre Laguerre, with a newsman's reticence about his sources. He had, of course, other pipelines, and although a well-known London editor offered to bet that Churchill would stay on the job, Laguerre confidently passed the word to our editors in New York.

As the "Gimo" and the Prime Minister enacted their historical roles, that sturdy character, the American taxpayer, was performing an annual spring rite. All over the U.S., men and women of varying degrees of substance were taking pen and fate into their own hands and calculating how much or how little of that substance must pass to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Tax Time (NATIONAL AFFAIRS) has some faintly promising news for 60 million Americans.

Cordially yours

James A. Linen

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