New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-04-29

English aeroplanes are equipped with motors
built by the English motor car firm Rolls
Royce. Already several of our own motor car
and motor boat firms have exhibited aeroplane
motors growing out of their motor car and
motor boat experience.
The United States has the equipment, actual
and potential, capable of being expanded to the
desired capacity within period of only few
months. And it has the skill, on two condi-
TONS first that models and instructors are
furnished copiously by the French and che Eng
lsh to show US such specifications and methods
as we may not now understand; and, second,
that orders are placed by our government not
only copiousy but continuously for several
years to come to justify the expansion under
taken.
Probably nobody in the United States has
studied this whole field more uninterruptedly
more intently than Henry Woodhouse of
the Aero Club of New York. / asked him
directly whether or not if the conditions named
were met, the United States could produce
5000 aeroplanes by January l. 1918, and then
renew all breakages and losses among those
five thousand to the end of the war. He re-
slightest doubt that the answer was totally
without mental reservation of any kind, Eyes"
Will our government try it? Is our govern
ment trying it now? Here we walk in the
shadow Of the censor, on darkened territory.
Yet there are certain footprints discernible
even in that gloom and mentionable even under
that oppression.
There are three gentlemen, for instance,
formerly civilians, we'll known in the automo-
bile industry, who issue now from the aviation
section of the Signal Corps and hold rapid
civilian converse with other civilians likely to
be able to make aeroplane bodies and aeroplane
motors and aeroplane sundries. And the other
day in the office of the Society of Automotive
Engineers on Thirty-ninth Street, in New
York, there was a meeting of standards COM
mittee for the making of standards for spark
plug shells and all other standardizable parts
Of aeroplanes-a meeting attended by gentle
men from the Signal Corps and by gentlemen
from important corporations both in and out
IF the regular aeroplane business-all eng-
neers.
Civilians, commercial civilians, engineering
civilians, are taking hold and the government
is letting them take hold. Who they are, and
what they are about, it will not be wrongful
for me to say if say it. as | shall, without i'm
pinging on immediate statistics. They seem to
me to prophesy that happy day when the gen
eral principle will be accepted that we do not
run West Point to produce manufacturers and
buyers and accountants of motors and brides
and socks. The function of the aviation sec
tion of the Signal Corps is to drive aeroplanes
into the teeth of German aeroplanes on the
Western front. The function of fighters is to
fight. Let the fighters give US the specifica-
lions of what they need and let the rest of US
get it and carry it to thsm That is what we
ale for. That is what we can do-and do
better than the fighters can.
Last week / saw hale young captain of the
regular army settling down in Chicago to spend
his time in buying socks. offered to get him
a sock buyer who could run circles around him
from the gents furnishing department Of
Marshall Fields store. He was obliged sadly
to decline. From his case and, on the other
hand, from the case of the civilians who are
now helping to organize the building and buy
ing of aeroplanes for the government of the
United States, contrast may be shown be-
tween the system which would get us to the
Western front some time in 1918 and the new
,ort Of system which, if held and developed,
may quite possibly get us there, with our aero
planes and our aviators dominating the Ger
man lines and the future of the war, while we
can still say 1917.