A Letter From The Publisher, Dec. 17, 1951

The majority of editors, great & small, share the faculty of seeing stories where few others can see them, sometimes in apparently inconsequential people and events. By the same token; most editors are amazed when anyone suggests that they themselves might make good stories.

DeWitt Wallace, founder and editor of the Reader's Digest, is such an editor. When TIME Writer Bill Miller first approached him on the subject of a cover story, Wallace was reluctant, said he believed editors should be kept in the background. "Ellery Sedgwick edited the Atlantic for 30 years without putting his name on the masthead," he said....

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