| OCR Text |
Show TRYING TO JOKE JOSEPUHS. Who is the mrV adroit humorist who is trying to "put one over" on our own Josephus? Somebody to whom the Espionage and Sedition Acts ought surely to apply, "has been issuing in his na.me, or ostensibly under his authority, author-ity, an.S O S call to American inventive genius to come to the help of the Naval Consulting Board with aeroplane devices. Every-crank in Christendom is insiduously re- 1 minded that perhaps he. is. the one Heaven-sent genius who is to invent the ideal aircraft which will win the war; and is told that there is an appropriation of a bu- lion dollars available for production. ...' jffl Think of it! To send out such an invitation to 'the in- numerable progeny of Darius Green, with the tempting bait of that billion dollars ! And this at a time when ware- houses all over Washington are already packed to the roof with plans and models. Does not this way madnesa lie? But think, too, of the bitter irony of it all. We have . been in the war more than a year and a third. During that practically unlimited means have been available for -iy aircraft production. A year ago there was promise of KM the speedy production of planes by tens of thousands. mr Long ago George Creel gave the movie-seeing and bulle- Sg tin-reading public to understand that American aero- Fgty planes were already swarming all over France like mos- f J& (mitoes over a Jersey meadow. Yet now, under date of Bgjtf August 11, 1918, the defectiveness of all American mm machines is openly avowed, and an omnibus appeal is is- -jfcap sried to whom it may concern, to devise some improve- gi ment which will make the thftigs work poperly. i9 Meantime, who, of course, compared with " us, are Shm effete and behind the times, appear to. have aircraft ftj which do pretty well. We hear of British aviators dis- K posing satisfactorily of a hundred and twenty.-two Ger- K man planes in two days, and of carrying indescribable H havoc and ruin far behind the German lines. Are we" H really to wait until some budding genius invents some- VJ thing that will fly, and the Board, passes upon the invent- H tion,, and a factory builds the machines, before we can I have our promised air-navy? N. A. Review's War Weekly. -,-&& H |
