Dear TIME-Reader:

BEFORE he left for the Middle East, Eugene R. Black, president of the World Bank, was late for a Saturday golfing date in Washington. Apologizing to the other members of his foursome--Federal Reserve Chairman William McChesney Martin Jr., Under Secretary of State Herbert Hoover Jr. and U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia George Wadsworth--he explained: "I was being interviewed all morning by George Bookman for a TIME cover story."

Black's golfing companions understood. There are few top officials in the Government who do not know Bookman. Our economic correspondent in Washington since 1948, he has a beat that tracks all over the capital. In the past six months, he has supplied a large block of Washington guidance for the Man of the Year cover (Harlow Curtice), most of the material for the Budget Bureau cover (TIME, Jan. 23) and the Secretary of Agriculture Benson cover (TIME, May 7). Bookman also has done a wide range of Washington reporting on many of the Essays that have become a feature of our BUSINESS section.

His series of interviews with Black himself, other officials of the World Bank and Washington financial experts made up the major contribution (augmented by worldwide reports) to this week's cover story, written by Associate Editor George Daniels.

IN Northern Rhodesia, our Johannesburg Correspondent Edward Hughes was heading home last week after bouncing some 5,000 miles through Mozambique, the Rhodesias and into the Belgian Congo in a battered Mercury. He stopped off in Lusaka (pop. 60,000) to listen to the black natives' saucepan radio and visit the unique Central African Broadcasting Station (see RADIO & TV). Then he rolled in a cloud of dust 530 miles along the corrugated dirt track, called the Great North Road, to Chinsali, a district commissioner's headquarters. There he switched to a bicycle and pedaled down a goat path through man-high bush, infested with mamba snakes, lions and man-eating chiggers, to the mud-and-thatch village where lives the prophetess, Lenshina Mulenga (see RELIGION).

Hughes was warmly received until he started taking photographs and giving the tin containers for his tropic-pack film to the black children. Their parents snatched the shining tin away, fearing it was a whiteman's charm. An old man thumped Hughes's chest and cried: "You come to pay respects to Lenshina, all right. But don't come bring silver magic!"

Back in Lusaka, an astonished official commented on Hughes's threeday, thousand-mile detour: "All that trouble just to talk to a bunch of native crackpots? You must be bloody well 'round the bend, old boy."

Cordially yours,

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