AMERICA'S HELP
Our own contribution to the war in the air was considerable, but we had hardly started before the armistice brought the fighting to an end. Before we entered the war we did not give the airplane any very serious consideration. To be sure, we built a large number of airplanes for the British, but they were not good enough to be sent to the front; they were used merely as practice planes in the British training-schools. We knew that we were hopelessly outclassed, but we did not care very much. Then we stepped into the conflict.
"What can we do to help?" we asked our allies, and their answer gave us a shock.
"Airplanes!" they cried. "Build us airplanes—thousands of them—so that we can drive the enemy out of the air and blind his armies!"
It took us a while to recover from our surprise, and then we realized why we had been asked to build airplanes. The reputation of the United States as a manufacturer of machinery had spread throughout the world. We Americans love to take hold of a machine and turn it out in big quantities. Our allies were sure that we could turn out first-class airplanes, and many of them, if we tried.
Congress made an appropriation of six hundred and forty million dollars for aëronautics, and then things began to hum.