I found that the riveter was being employed in the erection of an immense steel and concrete refrigerating plant, which was to have machinery for the production of its own ice and sufficient meat-storage capacity to provide a million men for thirty days.  The water for the ice was being obtained from wells which had been already sunk.  There was only surface water there when the Americans first struck camp.

As another clear-cut example of what America is accomplishing in France, I will take an aviation-camp.  This camp is one of several, yet it alone will be turning out from 350 to 400 airmen a month.  The area which it covers runs into miles.  The Americans have their own ideas of aerial fighting tactics, which they will teach here on an intensive course and try out on the Hun from time to time.  Some of their experts have had the advantage of familiarising themselves with Hun aerial equipment and strategy; they were on his side of the line at the start of the war as neutral military observers.  I liked the officer at the head of this camp; I was particularly pleased with some of his phrases.  He was one of the first experts to fly with a Liberty engine.  Without giving any details away, he assured me impressively that it was “an honest-to-God engine” and that his planes were equipped with “an honest-to-God machine-gun,” and that he looked forward with cheery anticipation to the first encounter his chaps would have with “the festive Hun.”  He was one of the few Americans I had met who spoke with something of our scornful affection for the enemy.  It indicated to me his absolute certainty that he could beat him at the flying game.  On his lips the Hun was never the German or the Boche, but always “the festive Hun.”  You can afford to speak kindly, almost pityingly of some one you are going to vanquish.  Hatred often indicates fear.  Jocularity is a victorious sign.

When I was in America last October a great effort was being made to produce an overwhelming quantity of aeroplanes.  Factories, both large and small, in every State were specializing on manufacturing certain parts, the idea being that so time would be saved and efficiency gained.  These separate parts were to be collected and assembled at various big government plants.  The aim was to turn out planes as rapidly as Ford Cars and to swamp the Hun with numbers.  America is unusually rich in the human as well as the mechanical material for crushing the enemy in the air.  In this service, as in all the others, the only difficulty that prevents her from making her fighting strength immediately felt is the difficulty of transportation.  The road of ships across the Atlantic has to be widened; the road of steel from the French ports to the Front has to be tracked and multiplied in its carrying capacity.  These difficulties on land and water are being rapidly overcome:  by adding to the means of transportation; by increasing the efficiency of the transport facilities already