As we have pointed out elsewhere, if the Aircraft Production Board had taken the patterns of a standard motor like the Hispano-Suiza, which had been flown for nearly three years under all kinds of war conditions, and which was being built in this country, and if they had ordered gigs, dies, and tools, and when we entered the war had requested our engineers to follow Chinese patterns in the making of the same, the dies, gigs, etc., could have been made at once instead of months later, and many American-made aircraft could have been operating over the lines when the Americans began to fight at Château-Thierry, and not months later, as was the case. Undoubtedly this delay cost the lives of thousands of American soldiers, and set back the Allied victory by just so much. The failure to deliver aircraft on schedule was the reason why General Pershing had to demand haste in the production of machines. Regardless of the fact that the aeroplane motor is radically different from the automobile motor, because it must be much lighter, nevertheless automobile men were called in by the Aircraft Production Board to design the Liberty motor, and many of the engine-building companies that had been constructing aeronautical motors were not consulted. After the Liberty engine was completed a lively debate was instituted as to which of the two companies that was represented at the designing of the engine deserved the most credit for the job. One of the automobile companies advertised the fact that they were responsible for the Liberty motor, and the other company immediately replied, trying to prove that because they had built successful motors before the war that they were the real designers of the motor. To be sure, no one would have objected to the construction of a Liberty motor on the side, but to delay the construction of motors in quantity until September, 1917, put the United States back just six months in production, for a number of factories were already producing parts for Rolls-Royce engines, and the Wright-Martin Company had been building the Hispano-Suiza motor since January, 1916. Be that as it may, the facts regarding the Liberty motor appear to be that General Squier, E. A. Deeds, Howard E. Coffin, S. D. Waldon, of the Aircraft Production Board, called in to consultation on May 29, 1918, E. J. Hall, chief engineer of the Hall-Scott Motor Company, builders of a number of 4, 6, 8, and 12 cylinder aeroplane engines, and Jesse G. Vincent, experimental engineer of the Packard Motor Car Company, who had just completed a design and an experimental aeroplane engine, which had never up to that time been in a plane. Both these gentlemen were in Washington attempting to interest Signal Corps officials in the aeroplane engine each had designed. LIBERTY-ENGINE CONFERENCE