thousands of cars on pleasure bent. By night and day I saw those
familiar roads from the air; they were solid with a never-ending line
of busses and vans and long processions of motorized artillery and
tanks, whose clattering bedlam came to me a thousand feet above.

Yes, it was an inspiring sight, and I lost the deadly oppression and
the sense of impending doom--until our intelligence service told us of
the sailing of the enemy fleet.

* * * * *

They had seized every vessel in the waters of Europe. And--God pity
the poor, traitorous devils who manned them--there were plenty to
operate the ships. Two thousand vessels were in that convoy. Ringed in
as they were by a guard of destroyers and fighting craft of many
kinds, whose mast-heads carried the blood-red flag now instead of
their former emblems, our submarines couldn't reach them.

But our own fleet went out to measure their strength, and a thousand
Navy planes took the air on the following day.

Uppermost in my own mind, and in everyone's mind, I think, was the
question of air-force.

Would they bring the red ships? What was their cruising range? Could
they cross the Atlantic with their enormous load of armored hull, or
must they be transported? Were the air-cruisers with the fleet, or
would they come later?

How Vornikoff and his assassins must have laughed as they built the
monsters, armored them, and mounted the heavy guns so much greater
than anything they would meet! The rest of us--all the rest of the
world!--had been kept in ignorance.... And now our own fliers were
sweeping out over the gray waters to find the answer to our questions.

I've tried to picture that battle; I've tried to imagine the feelings
of those men on the dreadnaughts and battle-cruisers and destroyers.
There was no attempt on the enemy's part to conceal his position; his
wireless was crackling through the air with messages that our
intelligence department easily decoded. Our Navy fliers roared out
over the sea, out and over the American fleet, whose every bow was a
line of white that told of their haste to meet the oncoming horde.

The plane-carriers threw their fighters into the air to join the
cavalcade above--and a trace of smoke over the horizon told that the
giant fleet was coming into range.

* * * * *

And then, instead of positions and ranges flashed back from our own swift
scouts, came messages of the ene