possible charge of the slightest responsibility for the misconduct of any man in the service.

CURIOUS CONDITIONS

These provisions form the most comprehensive measure of insurance protection ever offered to fighting men. To our own men there is thus afforded a proportionate consolation and courage not otherwise obtainable.

Yet the operation of these provisions has already brought to light some curious and sometimes poignant conditions.

For example, a number of men have actually remonstrated against making an allotment to their wives. In a great many of these cases, however, it is probable that the wives can get along themselves.

Again, by voluntary allotment a man could provide for his widowed mother under the automatic insurance which has now terminated. But suppose she is no longer a widow and is married again, but has been deserted; she might need her son's support more than ever. She could not get it. There are many cases of dependent mothers not widows and disabled fathers dependent on their sons. A bill in Congress is proposed to remedy this injustice.

THE COST

Many ask: What is all this Government War Risk Insurance scheme going to cost?

The cost has been estimated at some $700,000,000 during the first two years of its operation. While we may remember that any estimate is based on conditions which may change, we must surely remember, as Mr. Arthur Hunter, of the New York Life Insurance Company and President of the Actuarial Society of America, has said, that no cost is unfair or excessive which does justice to the men themselves and to their dependents.

QUALITY REQUIRED IN BUREAU WORKERS

To administer all these provisions of War Risk Insurance a force of Bureau workers is required, not only, as we have seen, remarkable for quantity, but necessarily remarkable for quality. It is not easy to get the right kind of workers for the War Risk Insurance Bureau. That it has found them is certainly a feather in the cap of the Treasury Department. The type of man required is admirably shown in the following letter from the Director of the Bureau :

To my Friends:

Co-Workers in the Bureau of War Risk Insurance:

Every letter, every claim, every inquiry handled in the Bureau of War Risk Insurance represents a vital human problem, and should be treated by you as such. Delay, inefficiency, or indifference on your part in handling any one of these important matters may result in anguish and privation to the wife, mother, or children of a soldier or sailor.

All America's fighting forces and their families depend upon this Bureau of the Treasury Department to carry out the provisions of the most comprehensive, the most humane, and the most liberal measure of protection ever adopted by any nation. If you regard any work before you as merely "another case," or any application, card, or inquiry as merely "a piece of paper," you are undermining the spirit and purpose of this great act, retarding the war efficiency of your Government, and bringing untold hardships upon many people.

F

The work on your desk is far more than ordinary office rou

tine-it is a throbbing, live reality. Put your whole hearts and souls into the duties to which you have been assigned, and think of yourselves as being arrayed in the great war, side by side with the fighting men in the trenches of France.

I am relying on each one of you for co-operative assistance. WILLIAM C. DE LANOY, Director.

SHYSTER LAWYERS

There is one person, however, whom we have not yet considered that human parasite, the shyster lawyer and claim agent. Take the recent Tuscania disaster as a case in point. Relatives of persons on the Tuscania whose lives were saved were put to the torture of being notified that their relatives and next of kin were lost. Indeed, so keen for business have been the claim agents that they have not hesitated to notify the next of kin of the loss of an entire ship-load when half the number have been saved. Why should these leeches longer be permitted to sap the blood of anxious but unsuspecting people?

In the War Risk Insurance scheme there are just two places where claim agents and attorneys are recognized. During the recent discussion of the subject in the House of Representatives Mr. Treadway, of Massachusetts, a leader in insurance reform, clearly pointed them out. One is in the preparation and execution of the necessary papers, for which not over $3 is to be charged for the purely clerical service. The other is in connection with a possible lawsuit, in which the attorney's fees are not to exceed ten per cent of the amount recovered. Any person who shall solicit or receive anything more shall be punished by a fine of not over $500 or by imprisonment at hard labor for not more than two years, or by both. On May 10, 1918, the Senate passed unamended the House bill providing for this.

In the collection of any benefits granted by the War Risk Insurance Act there is no necessity for the employment of any claim agent or attorney. The process of such collection is simple and the Bureau of War Risk Insurance is prepared to give any and all assistance required; in fact, on the back of each certificate issued for the insurance the beneficiaries are advised not to employ claim agents or lawyers, and are requested to come direct to the Bureau of War Risk Insurance, the only expense being for notarial fees.

The American Bar Association, we are glad to add, proposes to co-operate with the Treasury Department in keeping a sharp eye out to detect any claim agent, attorney, or other person who violates the law. The name of any such should be sent to the American Bar Association, 1712 I Street, Washington. In every district there is a Local Advisory Board, whose duties have been to help registrants in filling out their questionnaires. The American Bar Association is communicating with the Chairmen of these Legal Advisory Boards, requesting them to organize the lawyers within their districts to render service free of charge to the dependents of soldiers and sailors who have claims under the War Insurance Act. As Mr. McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury, says: "A great service can be rendered by making these facts clear to the dependents of soldiers and sailors who are being approached by unscrupulous persons." Patriotic service is being rendered not only by our men abroad in the trenches, but also by men at home who are serving gratis claimants under the Insurance Law.

ROM a night of calm security I rose, as did thousands about me, to the day's work.

But before I could leave my room the steam whistles of all the great industries in the great city and of all the steamcraft in its great harbor began to blow; to bellow and scream and roar and wail in unnumbered voices that presently fused into one and rolled down through hundreds of miles of streets into the open country and out to sea.

I wondered but a moment, and then I knew. I knew the same uproar was sounding in every ear from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Niagara to the Gulf, and that it proclaimed the first rounded twelvemonth of our Nation's share in the war for civilization. I knew it was our notice. to. the round world

that all we have done in this thrice-busiest year of our Nation's life is but a beginning of what we shall do. It was Paul Jones's cry from the deck of the blazing Bonhomme Richard, magnified by steam and a million trumpets of brass-"We've just begun to fight!" Wild, discordant, terrible it was-it is, for it will ring in my ears henceforth-our tocsin! the tocsin of a hundred million people speaking one wrath and one purpose. It was, it is, our answer to the great gun in the wood of St. Gobain, shelling the churches of Paris on Good Friday. It stoops to no further mockery of argument or negotiation, yet says as definitely as human voice ever spoke, "In the name of God and humanity, and of a just and permanent peace to a free world,

No treaties made this side the Rhine."

66

W

E brought out the fat lady and introduced her to the audience, and she wasn't as fat as her pictures on the billboards, and the audience was disappointed." That is the aircraft situation as it was summed up by a man who has been connected with it from the beginning. It probably isn't so far wrong. If America had made the most elementary preparations in developing an aircraft industry before the warpreparations it is almost incredible we failed to make the story would have been very different. But given the situation that actually existed and it is hard to escape the conclusion that, in spite of undoubted blunders, the men in charge have done a notable piece of work. Avoidable delays there were-delays arising chiefly from the defects of an inexperienced and rapidly expanding organization. The programme was foolishly overadvertised. Promises were made that could not be fulfilled, and the public was stupidly kept in the dark when the delays and disappointments came. But a survey of the available evidence gives reasonable ground for belief that the essential policies

were correct.

It may be frankly admitted that men of the highest standing hold views directly contrary to those here expressed. There is no such thing as a "consensus of opinion." Reputable engineers remain who still insist that the Liberty motor is a failure and that the whole policy has been bungled. The greatest confusion exists. Is magneto ignition preferable to the battery type? Is the angle between the twin sets of cylinders adopted for the Liberty motor hopelessly faulty? Is its radiation problem solved? Is the motor really practical or is it still in the experimental stage? To these questions the most diverse answers are given by highly respectable persons.

In view of all these contradictions, it behooves the investigator to walk humbly. The best he can do is to size up his sources of information, check them against each other and against the known facts, and make allowance for the personal equation. It would be well for the reader to bear in mind that every statement to be made in this article will be challenged. These con. trary opinions, however, have been given careful consideration in arriving at the views here set forth.

Let us start with the theory of the most reasonable of the critics, disregarding the wild charges of sinister influences and leaving the accusations of graft to the Hughes investigation. That theory runs about as follows: Admitting the honesty and good intentions of Mr. Howard E. Coffin, Colonel A. E. Deeds, and the others responsible for the programme, they committed fatal errors in policy. They put all their eggs in one basket and staked everything on an American-made motor. This motor proved a disappointment, or at least could not be developed in time for this year's programme. Consequently the country was left with no fighting planes. What the Aircraft Board should have done was this: It probably was justified in attempting to develop an American motor, but while working on this motor it should immediately have put into production in this country the best foreign motors. Then we should have had airplanes, even though the American motor had been a disappointment.

This argument, apparently, is unanswerable. Yet it leaves so many essential considerations out of the account that it is misleading. This is what happened: A survey of the field at the beginning of the war disclosed the existence of a trifling aircraft industry in this country, with very few aeronautical engineers. (There was a flock of men who thought they were, but were not.) The airplane motor is radically different from the automobile engine. It is as delicate as a watch. The French mission last year inclined to believe that America did not have the skilled workmen to build aviation motors and would have to

confine itself to rough training planes. The foreign motors were all hand-work jobs and were not available for quantity production. That was one reason why relatively few had been accumulated on the western front. The cry constantly went up for more of the heavier bombing planes. The French and English were in shape to take care of the light pursuit planes with the smaller motors. They agreed with us that it would be worth while if we could design a powerful American motor for quantity production, suitable for bombing planes. To whom should the Board turn to design such a motor? The automobile industry had absorbed a large share of the engineering and business energy of the country in the last few years. It had been brilliantly successful. Naturally this industry was the one in which the Board put its main reliance. Two engineers were selected to design the motor, the one primarily an automobile engineer, the other an aviation engineer who had designed successful motors for the Dutch Government. They were asked to design a motor on approved lines (resisting the temptation to freak designs) that would develop 335 horse-power with a weight of about two pounds to the horse-power. Later the power was raised to 400. This was a higher efficiency than the British Rolls-Royce or the German Mercedes. It was not quite the efficiency of the Hispano-Suiza, a crack French motor of 150 horse-power, which, however, is difficult to build. After the design had been completed several leading gas-motor engineers were called in to study the design and suggest improvements.

There have been heartburnings on the part of neglected engineers, but there seems little reason to suppose that the best engineering ability in the country was not employed on the work. The suggestions of these men were incorporated in the design, and then a committee of manufacturers was called in to make suggestions from the production standpoint. Then an experimental motor was built and finally brought up to about 400 horsepower at 1,700 revolutions a minute. Difficulties developed, as is always the case with a new motor. There was trouble with lubrication. Certain parts had to be redesigned. There were features that could not be worked out on the block, but had to wait to be tried out in flight in high altitudes. Gradually the difficulties were remedied and the motor was ready for quantity production in the late winter. Further refinements and improvements were made and will be made. But the motor in its present shape is an unqualified success. It has been put through the severest tests in the air at high altitudes and on the block. It has been run to destruction. The figures have not been given out, but the results have been so satisfactory that the engineers have no misgivings. The motor is now in use abroad and the original plane to be equipped with it in Dayton last October is still flying. By the middle of May production had passed the thousand mark. Two factories were then producing and others were expected to get into production in June. By July the production should reach one hundred and fifty a day-which is cutting in two the manufacturers' estimates. When it is recalled that the British official statement last year said that it took at least a year to get an air-engine into production, it is evident that the production of the Liberty motor in six months was an achievement.

But the Aircraft Board did not put all its eggs in one basket. It took into account the possible delay or failure of the American motor, and made provision against it. First, it must be understood that it is impossible to bring a foreign motor to this country and copy it. Certain changes must be made in it to adapt it to American methods of production. Also, even if the copy were made exact to the thousandth of an inch, the motor would not work successfully. The trouble is in the structure of

the metal. The Wrights, the inventors of the airplane, were the first to discover this fact. They took their motor to Europe several years ago and attempted to get it reproduced in the finest machine shop in Paris. The reproduction was perfect, but the motor refused to perform. It required months of work to get it into operation. Metals with the same constituents, apparently identical under chemical analysis, have such different structures that their expansion varies greatly. In cylinders and pistons of delicate engines this is a vital matter. Three French motors were being made in this country, but the best of them, the Hispano-Suiza, had taken a very long time to produce at all, and was so complicated that large production was out of the question. It was discovered that it would take at the very least a year, and probably longer, to get the Rolls-Royce into small production. If we attempted to rely on foreign motors built in America, we should be automatically barred out of airplane production on a scale to count for probably two years. The sensible thing seemed to be to get the French and Italians to build us their motors in their own shops, to help them expand their fac tories, to furnish them material, and to send over thousands of mechanics to help as they could. This arrangement was carried out, and several thousand planes were ordered abroad from the best of the foreign manufacturers. Unfortunately, they were unable to come up to their contracts, and deliveries which should have been made in the late winter began only in May.

To return now to the situation in the United States. With Liberty motors getting into production in the winter, why was it that our combat planes were so delayed? As we knew so little about the airplane industry, we sent a commission abroad a year ago to study it and report on which planes we should build. This commission had to learn the subject. The advice it received abroad was conflicting, and, as a consequence, there was the greatest confusion all summer. We were three thousand miles away. It took a long time for designs to reach here. The foreign practice is so different from the American that when the plans and specifications were received a single plane had to be built and then plans and specifications worked out from it. No sooner would we get started on one design than an order would come to cancel that and wait for another. Thus three thousand single-seater Spads were ordered from the Curtiss Company in Buffalo last September. In November the order was canceled from abroad by General Pershing. Such an experience was heartbreaking for the men who were trying to hold their organizations together. But it was the fortune of war. In October a general utility two-seater bombing plane was decided on for production at the Dayton-Wright plant-the De Haviland 4. It was a successful English plane, driven by the Rolls-Royce motor. Changes were necessary to adapt it to the Liberty motor, but these were carried out readily, and the first flight was taken late in October. Yet the production of planes did not begin until well into April. The reason for the delay lay in a factor few persons would suspect-accessories. The foreign mission reported that literally dozens of accessories were needed in a well-equipped plane. As Howard Coffin is reported to have said, they put everything on a plane except a kitchen sink. Aside from a large number of instruments, there were wireless apparatus, an intraplane telephone, electrical clothes-warmers, oxygen tank, flares at the ends of the wings for landing at night, bomb-dropping appliances and sights, camera, and four machine guns, two synchronized for shooting between the propeller blades in active operation. The builders would make their layout for the body, and then would be notified from Washington, which perhaps had been notified from abroad, to make room for more appliances. That would necessitate complete redesigning. It was months before the gun mounts were satisfactory. For this the Ordnance Bureau was to blame. These delays were exasperating and many of them needless. There was a bad breakdown somewhere in Washington in the handling of these accessories. Apparently four or five months were simply thrown away in the production of this bomber. And yet men familiar with the situation have questioned whether these blunders were not the almost inevitable result of a hastily gathered organization that was rapidly expanding and that had to include a multitude of men to whom an airplane was only a name.

By the latter part of May the Dayton-Wright plant was in quantity production with this plane, with a record of one hun

dred and twenty miles an hour under full load-a speed hardly exceeded by even the fastest light planes on the front. (Most of the foreign speed records must be viewed with suspicion; sad experience has shown the reports ten, fifteen, and even twenty miles over the facts.) A heavy production of the De Havilands is assured by midsummer. A somewhat similar situation arose in the great Curtiss plants in Buffalo, in one of which twentyseven acres are under one roof. When the Spads were canceled, the aircraft people sent the Bristol to Curtiss. This is a twoseater combat plane carrying three machine guns, but no bombs. It is a more powerful edition of the single-seater fighter, and ought to be considerably faster than the De Haviland. Unfortunately, it was badly designed for the Liberty motor. Too small a radiating surface was responsible for the engine overheating. It was necessary to provide auxiliary radiators in the shape of ears projecting on either side. These retarded the speed. These difficulties eventually will be overcome, possibly in a very short time. Meanwhile the great resources of the Curtiss plant have been partly wasted for several months. Only partly wasted, for the plant built more than two thousand training planes last year and is building huge flying boats to hunt the submarine. These flying boats, part of which are taken by our allies, are using the Liberty motor, and are now flying successfully in the submarine zone. Doubtless the engineers responsible for the Bristol failure are to be blamed. But the Nation must share their blame. It refused to give these engineers experience by building up an airplane industry before the war. We shall build heavier planes also-night bombers; the British Handley-Page, equipped with two Liberty motors, and the Italian Caproni, equipped with three. For the present we shall leave the small single-seater pursuit planes to our allies. They made that suggestion last year, on the ground that they were equipped to do that job, while they did not have the resources to put out bombing planes in quantity. The Liberty Twelve is too big and heavy for these small planes. They constitute, however, only a fraction of the planes that are in use or needed. For perhaps ninety per cent of the planes-bombers of the day and night type, two-seater pursuit, and seaplanes-the Liberty is probably the best motor in the world to-day. It is quite possible that later the Liberty may be cut in two and the Liberty Six used on single-seaters. There has been criticism that the aircraft people stifled initiative by adopting one type of motor. It is not quite true to say that they adopted only one type. They gave large orders for the French Hispano-Suiza 150 horse-power, and now the manufacturers are working on a 300 horse-power Hispano-Suiza. The heavy and powerful Italian Bugatti has been ordered in this country. We are buying several types of training-plane engines, three of them foreign. Large private manufacturers are experimenting with new engines which they hope will be world-beaters. Still, effort was centered on the Liberty, and deliberately. The best opinion was that the Allies were handicapped by the number of types of motors used on the western front, while the Germans had won a distinct advantage by concentrating on the Mercedes and developing that type to a high degree.

The Outlook has asked why battery ignition has been used on the Liberty motor instead of magneto. It is an engineering problem. The men who designed the motor believe battery ignition to be superior. The battery spark is sharper, the magneto spark more prolonged and harder on the spark plugs. They insist that European engineers still adhere to the magneto because the battery ignition was developed in this country and has not been worked out abroad. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The Liberty's battery system weighs less than half as much as an adequate magneto system, and is producing th required results. The engineers believe that they are having much less trouble than the magneto machines are having. As for the angle between the sets of cylinders, it was adopted, not for aeronautical reasons, although those justify it, but in order to reduce vibration.

It has been asked how we could have spent several hundred million dollars and obtained no planes for the money. The question is not accurately put. In the middle of May a balance-sheet given to Congress showed something more than $160,000,000 spent for airplanes, machine tools, general equipment, and ordnance. This money had produced several thousand training planes