A Letter From The Publisher, Sep. 21, 1959

THE news, like a great river, gathers its unity and strength and direction from the tributaries of seemingly separate events. It is TIME’S weekly purpose not only to follow those tributaries from their sources in the past but to show and give them meaning at their confluence in contemporary history.

Last week, in the wake of President Eisenhower’s trip to Western Europe and on the eve of Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to the U.S., historic events were in full flood, political leaders and diplomats rode a crest of world interest and hope. TIME describes those events —and relates them the one to the others and the parts to the whole.

Yet the mainstream of news consists not only of the efforts and activities of statesmen. Indeed, such efforts and activities can be supported only by the currents of thought and culture springing from man’s mind. This week TIME’S cover subject, British Sculptor Henry Moore, provides a significant case in point.

The course of Moore’s art form has twisted and turned throughout human history; it has run across shallows and been slowed—but never stopped. And after each stagnant period it has moved again in full flow. In ancient Rome the statuary was a way of life, as much a part of the city as the humans who walked the streets. That way of life seemed ended when the barbaric Goths came pillaging, leaving behind them ruins of Roman art. But the Goths themselves, even while deriving from the Romans, gave their name to an art form that took its own place in the cultural current. Henry Moore draws from this past, as from the past of the savage idol carvers of Africa, Central America and the South Seas. But he has also moved beyond the past, and in so doing he is the representative of a group of brilliant moderns who have led the way to the greatest resurgence of sculpture since the Renaissance—see ART COVER, Maker of Images.

*WHAT British political party has won the most national elections?

The fewest? What Prime Minister served the most consecutive years?- Within 24 hours after the announcement that British elections would be held Oct. 8. copies of TIME’S “General-Election Argument Settler,” a handy reference wheel with the answers to these and 250 other questions about 31 elections and 23 Prime Ministers since the parliamentary-reform bill of 1832, were distributed to government officials, party headquarters, university political clubs, educators, libraries, and other groups throughout the British Commonwealth. TIME previously distributed its “Argument Settler” for the 1956 U.S. elections and the 1957 Canadian elections, hopes the 1959 British wheel will be as successful as the others in providing useful information and in resolving the disputes that arise during national campaigns.

-Answers: 1) the Liberal Party, with 14 wins. 2) the Labor Party, with four. 3) Herbert H. Asquith (1908-1916).