o declared that they might have
to close their works for lack of employment. The apparent check was
discouraging to American airmen, and to our Allies who had expected
marvellous things from the United States in the way of swift and
wholesale preparation for winning battles in the air. The response
of the government to all criticism was that it was laying broad
foundations in order that construction once begun would proceed with
unabated activity, and that when aircraft began to be turned out by
the thousands a week there would be aviators and trained mechanics
a-plenty to handle them. In this situation the advocates of a
special cabinet department of aeronautics found new reason to
criticize the Administration and Congress for having ignored or
antagonized their appeals. For responsibility for the delay and
indifference--if indifference there was--rested equally upon the
Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of War. Each had his measure
of control over the enormous sum voted in a lump for aviation, each
had the further millions especially voted to his department to
account for. But no single individual could be officially asked what
had been done with the almost one billion dollars voted for
aeronautics in 1917.

But if the authorities seemed to lag, the inventors were busy.
Mention has already been made of the new "Liberty" motor, which
report had it was the fruit of the imprisonment of two mechanical
experts in a hotel room with orders that they should not be freed
until they had produced a motor which met all criticisms upon those
now in use. Their product is said to have met this test, and the
happy result caused a general wish that the Secretaries of War and
of the Navy might be similarly incarcerated and only liberated upon
producing plans for the immediate creation of an aerial fleet suited
to the nation's needs. If, however, the Liberty motor shall prove
the complete success which at the moment the government believes it
to be, it will be such a spur to the development of the airplane in
peace and war, as could not otherwise be applied. For the motor is
the true life of the airplane--its heart, lungs, and nerve centre.
The few people who still doubt the wide adoption of aircraft for
peaceful purposes after the war base their skepticism on the
treachery of motors still in use. They repudiate all comparisons
with automobiles. They say:

It is perfectly true that a man can run his car repeatedly from