These Are Real Experts
The A. E. F.—and this is news to many of its members—has, right here in France, a fully equipped automobile factory which is able not only to rebuild from the ground up any of a dozen or more makes of motors, but to turn out parts, tools, anything required from the vast stores of raw materials which has been shipped overseas for the purpose, with the special machinery which has been torn up in the States and replanted here. The factory is going to employ thousands of expert mechanics, and is going to have a capacity for general repair work unequalled by any similar plant back home.
People who dwell within the desolate region bounded by the Rhine on the west and the Russian frontier on the east have been in the habit of considering our national Uncle as a superficial sort of an old geezer; but the way he has taken hold of his automobile business proves that they have another good think coming. He hasn't overlooked a thing. Hard by his big new factory there is an "organization ground," a "salvage ground," a supply depot, and what is perhaps most important of all, the headquarters of a highly trained technical staff.
This is a staff of experts; not self-styled experts, but the real thing—big men in the automobile business representing all the important motor factories in the United States. Some of these experts inspect the broken down machines and pieces of machines in the salvage grounds, and report whether the wearing out process was due to a chauffeur's mishandling of the car, to the use of poor material in its construction, or to something wrong in its original designing.