A Letter From The Publisher, Feb. 6, 1950

As we have often told you, TIME is in the international publishing busi ness, with four International editions which carry the news of the world and the advertisements of free enterprise to our readers over seas. These editions print the same news as the U.S. edition, of course — but they print different advertisements. Consequently, while you often see the mes sages of foreign busi nesses in our U.S. edition, you do not see the advertisements of U.S. business which run in our International editions.

Recently, Roy E. Larsen, President of TIME Inc., was quoted in this connection in a booklet we published about advertising. Said Mr. Larsen: “Our magazines are dedicated to” the distribution of informa tion — and this applies to their advertising as well as to their editorial pages. Just as the work of our world could not go on without the swift ex change of news — so would our economy, grind to a halt without the swift exchange of goods and news about those goods.” The advertisements in TIME’S International editions, like those in other U.S. publications distributed overseas, constitute a major medium for the ex change across our borders of news about goods and their sources. Naturally, the advertisers are conducting their businesses to make money, but in the process many of them are selling the New World to the Old.

Their advertisements are often quite different from the ones you find in our U.S. edition. Many of them (and there were 2,792 pages of them in our four International editions last year) are directed towards supplying the needs of war-torn or economically undeveloped areas, and almost always they offer their wares by selling the con cept as hard as the product. They sell insecticides, antibiotics and pharmaceutical products, for instance, by selling American standards of health; they sell trucks, petroleum products, road-building equipment and automotive replacement parts by selling American standards of transportation; they sell agricultural equipment by selling American standards of food productivity; they sell office equipment and engineering services by selling American standards of efficiency.

As one subscriber wrote us from abroad recently, “Such advertising pages are milestones on the road to progress; they tell us much of the American way of life.”

And not long ago, with an even larger focus, one of our European readers had this to say about TIME International:

“You have really succeeded in making American democracy an article of export.

TIME is a link, not only between reader and world news, but also between a wide spiritual community of people feeling the same way.”

* * *Of course, to stay in business, all these advertisers in TIME’S International editions must sell their products or services.

A case in point is one American manufacturer who has been an advertiser in the International editions since 1941. He told us that his company had received an inquiry from a major Government official of Pakistan early in 1949 concerning one of his advertisements in TIME.

Recently, he wrote to say that he had closed an order for $800,000 worth of hydroelectric equipment. He had been selling American standards of power. More power to him!

Cordially yours,