gained. These separate parts were to be collected and assembled at
various big government plants. The aim was to turn out planes as
rapidly as Ford Cars and to swamp the Hun with numbers. America is
unusually rich in the human as well as the mechanical material for
crushing the enemy in the air. In this service, as in all the others,
the only difficulty that prevents her from making her fighting
strength immediately felt is the difficulty of transportation. The
road of ships across the Atlantic has to be widened; the road of steel
from the French ports to the Front has to be tracked and multiplied in
its carrying capacity. These difficulties on land and water are
being rapidly overcome: by adding to the means of transportation;
by increasing the efficiency of the transport facilities already
existing; by lightening the tonnage to be shipped from the States by
buying everything that is procurable in Europe. In the early months
much of the available Atlantic tonnage was occupied with carrying the
materials of construction: rails, engines, concrete, lumber, and all
the thousand and one things that go to the housing of armies. This
accounts for America's delay in starting fighting. For three years
Europe had been ransacked; very much of what America would require had
to be brought. Such work does not make a dramatic impression on
other nations, especially when they are impatient. Its value as a
contribution towards defeating the Hun is all in the future. Only
victories win applause in these days. Nevertheless, such work had to
be done. To do it thoroughly, on a sufficiently large scale, in the
face of the certain criticism which the delay for thoroughness would
occasion, demanded bravery and patriotism on the part of those
in charge of affairs. By the time this book is published their
high-mindedness will have begun to be appreciated, for the results of
it will have begun to tell. The results will tell increasingly as the
war progresses. America is determined to have no Crimea scandals. The