THEY traveled most of the way in a chartered Air France Boeing 707, the plane used by Charles de Gaulle on overseas trips. In fact, it contains a king-size bed for the general. The travelers did not meet De Gaulle, but they met just about everybody else of importance along their route--one king, three presidents, five prime ministers, Cabinet ministers, generals, princes, ambassadors and assorted specialists.

The trip was TIME'S News Tour of Asia, and it took 28 U.S. business and professional leaders to a crucial theater of world events. The purpose was to give the travelers--as concerned, responsible U.S. citizens--the best possible journalistic view of that theater, enabling them to seek information for themselves with the best facilities and from the best sources available to TIME.

Our first such tour, a little over a year ago, covered Western Europe and Russia, where Nikita Khrushchev spent seven hours talking to his American capitalist visitors. In the judgment of all concerned, the first trip was such a success that an encore, with another set of business participants and in another part of the world, became inevitable. Traveling with a TIME Inc. contingent headed by Editor in Chief Hedley Donovan and President James Linen, TIME'S News Tour of Asia included:

William R. Adams, president, St. Regis Paper Co.

Harry O. Bercher, president, International Harvester Co.

Gene C. Brewer, president, U.S. Plywood Corp.

Donald C. Burnham. president, Westinghouse Electric Corp.

Owen R. Cheatham, board chairman, Georgia-Pacific Corp.

Norton Clapp, president, Weyerhaeuser Co.

Gaylord Donnelley, board chairman, R. R. Donnelley & Sons Co.

Thomas M. Evans, board chairman, H. K. Porter Co. and Crane Co.

Frank M. Freimann, president, Magnavox Co.

Robert Lee Gibson Jr., president, Libby, McNeill & Libby

Rodney C. Gott, president, American Machine & Foundry Co.

William P. Gwinn, president, United Aircraft Corp.

Floyd D. Hall, president, Eastern Air Lines

George Harrar, president, Rockefeller Foundation

Frank E. Hedrick, executive vice president, Beech Aircraft Corp.

Henry J. Heinz II, board chairman, H. J. Heinz Co.

Harry Bulova Henshel, president, Bulova Watch Co.

J. Ward Keener, president, B. F. Goodrich Co.

Norman R. King, president, Miller Brewing Co.

Lewis A. Lapham, chairman of executive committee, Bankers Trust Co.

Andrew McNally III, president, Rand McNally & Co.

Maurice T. Moore, partner, Cravath, Swaine & Moore

Charles H. Percy, board chairman, Bell & Howell Co.

E. Claiborne Robins, president, A. H. Robins Co.

Dorrance Sexton, president, Johnson & Higgins

E. Carroll Stollenwerck, president, Laird & Co.

Jack D. Taylor, president, Phoenix of Hartford Insurance Companies

Thomas R. Wilcox, executive vice president, First National City Bank, N.Y.

These men's companies employ more than 600,000 people and represent annual net sales of more than $10 billion. Though well traveled, many of the tour members--who paid their own way--had never been in Asia before, and none had previously visited all eleven cities on the 23,120-mile itinerary.

It was an exciting time to be in Asia--the group heard about the U.S. air strikes against North Viet Nam halfway through the tour. While Saigon had to be dropped from the itinerary for security reasons, the Vietnamese war was one of the chief topics of inquiry.

The tour started in Washington, with a briefing by John McCone, head of the Central Intelligence Agency. After a stop in Paris, where TIME'S principal Asia correspondents joined the party, the first visit was to Pakistan. At his Karachi residence, Sandhurst-educated President Ayub Khan, a red rose in his lapel, bluntly discussed the problems facing his country and the U.S. Chief among these is Pakistan's bitterness over American military aid to India, which Ayub feels will sooner or later be used not against the Communists in Asia but against his own country. As a result, Pakistan has lately edged away from its once solid pro-Western position and moved closer to Red China--a move which Ayub insisted was not against U.S. interests.

Flying on to India, the travelers heard the other side of the India-Pakistan dispute from diminutive Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri. He called Indian relations with Red China "as bad as they can be," but advocated Peking's admission to the U.N. and shrank from endorsing the U.S. position in Viet Nam. He also discussed India's gravest problems--economic stagnation and inadequate food. When asked what his country was doing about its population explosion, Shastri smiled: "I hesitate to give advice because I have six children myself."

In Thailand the TIME group was received by King Bhumibol Adulyadej at his Bangkok palace, surrounded by green lawns and hedges neatly fashioned into the shapes of elephants, alligators and birds. In the Gomain Room (so named for a red precious stone, said to be clearer than a ruby), the King spoke of the closeness of Thai-U.S. relations. Then he showed the visitors some of his canvases--the monarch is a dedicated amateur painter. The pictures included one showing a blur of writhing demons in browns, greens and reds titled Subversion.

Subversion, Communist variety, was also taken up by Prime Minister Thanom Kittikachorn. "Those who talk about U.S. withdrawal from Viet Nam," said he, "are those who do not share the responsibility." A stirring appeal for U.S. commitment in Asia came from Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman, who said: "We in Thailand have no place to retreat to, so we will make our first stand and our last stand here." But he was optimistic: "If we draw up a balance sheet of our strengths and weaknesses and those of our antagonists, we would find it very much in our favor."

Next stop was Malaysia, the thriving federation threatened on the outside by Indonesian aggression and on the inside by racial conflicts. At Singapore's Raffles Hotel, that famed and slightly faded remnant of empire, the tour members heard Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore, offer sharp though sympathetic criticism of U.S. policy in Asia. He also put forth a striking definition of "the real problem" in the Far East: "How to give the human being in Asia the same zest, the same incentives which make a prosperous society, without being cold and dedicated and zealous like the other chaps, who are cold-blooded and ruthless in the process."

Later, in Kuala Lumpur, the travelers met Malaysia's Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman and his Deputy, Abdul Razak. It happened to be the Prime Minister's 62nd birthday and so, with more serious matters disposed of, he ambidexterously cut a birthday cake and heard his visitors spontaneously burst into "Happy birthday, dear Tunku, happy birthday to you."

Everywhere in Southeast Asia the presence of Red China looms, and nowhere is that presence more carefully observed than in Hong Kong. There, the TIME group received what U.S. Consul General Edward E. Rice described as "the fullest briefing on Communist China we have given here."

Perhaps the most dramatic view of the conflict with Red China was afforded in Taiwan, where indomitable Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, 77, still rules over Nationalist China and still dreams--though with diminishing assurance--of some day freeing the mainland. Before meeting the generalissimo and Madame Chiang, the visitors flew to Quemoy, the tiny, heavily fortified Nationalist island just off the mainland, which again and again has bravely stood up against heavy Red shelling. On the way back to Taiwan, one engine in a Nationalist air force plane gave out and the craft had to return to Quemoy. While repairs were made, some of the visitors passed the time on a parched nine-hole golf course; one player nervously hooked a drive off the fairway into a machine-gun emplacement.

By the time the tour officially wound up its final and 26th briefing, the businessmen had learned to toss interview questions like old pros and to assess answers with the required caution. "I thought I had these things all figured out," summed up one traveler, "but now I realize things are both simpler and not so simple as I thought." Thai Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman described the tour as "an international public service"--and we of TIME hope it was.

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