n Europe; our gains must be consolidated and the
conquests of our glorious air-force made secure. And then--! We warn
you in advance, and we laugh at your efforts to prepare for our
coming. We even tell you the date: in thirty days the invasion begins.
It will end only at Washington when the great country of America, its
cruel shackles cast off from the laboring masses, joins the
Brotherhood--the Workers of the World!"

There was a man from the War Department who sat across from me at my
desk; my factories were being taken over; my electric furnaces must
pour out molten metal for use in war. He cursed softly under his
breath as the voice ceased.

"The dirty dog!" he exclaimed. "The lying hypocrite! He talks of
brotherhood to us who know the damnable inquisition and reign of
terror that he and his crowd have forced on Russia! Thirty days! Well,
we have three thousand planes ready for battle to-day; there'll be
more in thirty days! Now, about that vanadium steel--"

But I'll confess I hardly heard him; I was hearing the roar of an
armada of red craft that ensanguined the sky, and I was seeing the
curving flight of torpedoes, each an airplane in itself....

* * * * *

Thirty days!--and each minute of each hour must be used. In close
touch with the War Department, I knew much that was going on, and all
that I knew was the merest trifle in the vast preparations for
defense. My earlier apprehensions were dulled; the sight I had of the
whole force of a mighty nation welded into one driving power working
to one definite end was exhilarating.

New York and Washington--these, it was felt, would be the points of
first attack; they must be protected. And I saw the flights of planes
that seemed endless as they converged at the concentration camps.
Fighters, at first--bombers and swift scouts--they came in from all
parts of the land. Then the passenger planes and the big mail-ships.
Transcontinental runs were abandoned or cut to a skeleton service of a
ship every hour for the transport of Government men. Even the slower
craft of the feeder lines were commandeered; anything that could fly
and could mount a gun.

And the three thousand fighting ships, as the man from Washington had
said, grew to three times that number. Their roaring filled the skies
with thunder, and beneath them were other camps of infantry and
artillery.

The Atlantic front was an armed camp, where highways no longer carried