EVER since the 1948 U.S. election, newsmen the world over have been cautious about predicting overwhelming victories at the polls. Last week's balloting in Britain was no exception. Although the signs of robust prosperity that normally keep a party in power were abundant everywhere in the British Isles, and had been widely reported there and abroad, neither British and U.S. Newspapers nor TIME forecast a Tory sweep. TIME, planning this week's cover on the winner, was ready for both possibilities. Its London reporters, who had spent the campaign glued to leading candidates of both parties, providently filed as much background material on Gaitskell's Laborites as on Macmillan's Tories. In TIME'S New York offices, preparations were made to go to press with either man's face on the cover; portraits of both (see cuts) had been painted and engraved, and the fast-color presses that usually start printing TIME'S covers Wednesday afternoon were poised to hold off until as late as Friday afternoon in case of a near tie or late-ballot recounts. Thursday night, when a cabled bulletin alerted the editors that Labor was glumly conceding a Tory triumph, a phone call to Chicago started cover presses rolling by early Friday morning. The result: TIME went to press on schedule, with Britain's newly re-elected Prime Minister Macmillan on its cover and a comprehensive cover story on the man, his top colleagues, and his drastically changed countrymen, "the new men of property" who had elected him.

THIS week week in in Melbourne, Australia, TIME'S overseas organization, TIME-LIFE International, adds another printing point and a fifth international edition to its growing list of enterprises. The other four:

TIME Latin America, printed in Havana

TIME Canada, printed in Chicago TIME Atlantic, printed in Paris

TIME Pacific, printed in Tokyo

The new edition rolls off presses in an up-to-the-minute Australian plant operated by Wilke & Co. Ltd. on the four-lane Prince's Highway to Dandenong, beyond the cricket fields of Melbourne in the booming industrial complex of Clayton. Wilke, which has the only high-speed web offset press in Australia, is itself a symbol of an industrial revolution in an area where cow paddocks that 15 years ago sold for -L-50 now go for -L-3,000 as factory sites. There TIME is among U.S. as well as Australian friends; along the high way are the big Australian plants of General Motors, Heinz and International Harvester.

By printing in Melbourne, TIME hopes to solve in part its toughest delivery problem, distributing TIME over a 40 million-sq.-mi. market by air. The new Australian edition will reach most readers in Australia, New Zealand and Oceania as much as two days earlier.

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