And here is the first amazing part of his procedure. He had seen that the United States wasn’t producing airplanes and he felt that something ought to be done about it. But he didn’t look for anybody to help him prepare the case for presentation to somebody who might be able to correct the situation. It never occurred to him that he needed any. The man best able to get quick action was, undoubtedly, the President of the United States.
Gutzon Borglum knew Woodrow Wilson and Woodrow Wilson knew Gutzon Borglum, but the pair took a dim view of each other, as well they might. Borglum, in his Progressive-party campaign, had been loudly critical of the Wilson administration. Wilson, who was a scholar, appreciated Borglum’s art. But, as the record shows, he didn’t think enough of his politics to consider him a crusader for the democratic ideal.
And yet Borglum was appointed, with authority direct from the President, to conduct his investigation from an office in the War Department. He ran the boys into corners for several months, and he stirred up senators and congressmen and Department heads and cabinet officers. That in the end his inquiry failed to put anybody in jail or get back any of the §1,000,000,000 is not surprising. What is incredible about the whole affair is that he was allowed to start at all.
There isn’t much doubt about our dismal performance in building airplanes in 1917-1918. The propagandized public was a long time finding out that the chief trouble with our planes was their continued nonexistence. But we did get to hear about the “dangerous” De Haviland Fours, of which we sent 213 to France. This plane was widely celebrated across the country as “The Flaming Coffin.” It had a large gas tank mounted in the most vulnerable position, and a pilot was seldom able to get away from one after it was hit.
Soldier after soldier from the front came before the Frear committee to tell of seeing his comrades shot down in these planes. Yet reports of such catastrophes, as the Frear report scathingly pointed out, did not prevent Secretary of War Newton D. Baker and Aircraft Director John D. Ryan from continuing the manufacture of DH 4s.
After the war the taxpayers began to find out what they had purchased for §1,000,000,000. Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, ace flyer and national hero, told them when he came home to testify before an investigating committee. “Why did the army continue to use French planes?” he was asked. This was his reply:
The answer is simple. We hadn’t any others except the two hundred and thirteen “flaming coffins.” The American air forces were in dire need of machines of all kinds. We were thankful to get any kind that would fly. The French had already discarded the Nieuport for the steadier, stronger Spad, and our government was thus able to buy from the French a certain number of these out-of-date Nieuports for American pilots—or got on without. Consequently our American pilots in France were compelled to venture out in Nieuports against more experienced pilots in more modern machinery. None of us in France could understand what prevented our great country from furnishing machines equal to the best in the world. Many a gallant life was lost to American aviation in those early months of 1918, the responsibility for which must lie heavily on some guilty consciences.
There had been a lot of inquiry before the House began its investigation. And when Congress had finished there was a widespread display of indignation with the aid of aeronautic associations, farmers’ associations and two New York daily newspapers. For a while the scandals they dug up overshadowed what had caused the wrath of Borglum. He had worked in wartime and in a closed circle, and what he found out was reported to the President and the few others who had a right to hear. He was satisfied with that arrangement, for he had no faith in the efficiency of official inquiries. On this subject he said:
There is a radical defect in a system that occasions such investigations. A political inquiry of this nature must inevitably arouse enmity and opposition in the most powerful quarters. The credit, nay, the very existence, of the government in power is at stake. An inquiry may seem to start something, but what it starts is an avalanche that will surely crush its initiators and the truth they seek to discover. Thus they will remain buried under the debris and obscured by the dust.
When Gutzon Borglum first took his demand for an aircraft investigation to the White House he was politely, if somewhat shortly, received by Joseph Tumulty, the President’s secretary. Mr. Wilson was frightfully busy on account of the war, Mr. Tumulty mentioned, but he would undoubtedly be able to read a note explaining the purposes of Mr. Borglum’s visit. Mr. Borglum left the note and went home to Stamford.