Dear TIME-Reader:

As advertising director of TIME'S international editions, William Stone Honneus spends a good third of his time traveling. Wherever he goes, he takes his two Contax cameras and keeps them clicking. Boston-born Bill Honneus has a mission with his cam eras, and he goes about it with the zeal of a Johnny Appleseed. In each country he visits, he devotes every spare moment to a photographic report of little-known cultural aspects of the land, plus pictures of any new ideas in advertising, merchandising or manufacturing. Among his business friends around the world he always finds interested audiences for these spontaneous reports. With them, Bill feels he is sowing seeds not only of new commercial ideas but of a broader cultural understanding among people.

This spring, Honneus' personal mission got official status. Aware of his wide experience with business here and abroad, the Department of Commerce asked him to join a four-man* trade mission to West Germany. The mission's mission: to explain the vast U.S. market, second in size only to the world market.

In preparation, Honneus collected statistics for his charts, then ransacked his collection of color photographs taken in the U.S. for illustrations. His pictures of rural and urban America, with its growing population at work and enjoying its new leisure, gave a quick but comprehensive review of the nation's burgeoning market. In" nine cities scattered through the Rhineland, the Ruhr and northwest Germany, industrialists and businessmen found it a fascinating report. After seeing it first in Frankfurt, business leaders asked for copies of the color slides for showings in every Chamber of Commerce in West Germany.

During the five-week trip the four-man mission was busy in conference or consultation from early until late, but Honneus still found time to take pictures. Before breakfast he was out shooting street scenes, and late at night he took pictures of window displays in fashionable shopping districts. On the Autobahnen between cities, he sat in the front seat of the mission's Ford station wagon to photograph scenery through the windshield.

Last week Honneus was home again with more than 1,000 new pictures to add to his collection. Among them was a visual report on the mission's activities, which he hopes may some day reach the congressional committees that can influence an expansion of the U.S. trade program.

"It's a privilege to go on one of these missions," Honneus said. "Many more are needed, because the real barrier to trade improvement is not tariff but lack of knowledge of markets. And only through these free and frank exchanges of information between friendly businessmen can this be overcome."

Cordially yours,

James A. Linen

*Other members: Commerce's Frank W. Sheaffer, San Francisco Importer James S. Baker, and William H. Lukens of R. M. Hollingshead Corp., Camden, N.J.

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