Already acetone and its kindred products were being absorbed in large quantities by the war production of the allies. The British Army was absolutely dependent upon cordite as a high explosive. Acetone is the chemical basis of cordite; and therefore the British Army looked with great concern upon the added demand which the American aviation program proposed to put upon the acetone supply. We estimated that in 1918 we would require 25,000 tons of acetone in our dope production. The British war mission in this country submitted figures showing that the war demands of the allies, together with their necessary domestic requirements, would in themselves be greater than the total world production of acetone. There was nothing then for us to do but to increase the source of supply of these necessary acetate compounds; and this was done by encouraging, financially and otherwise, the establishment of 10 large chemical plants. These were located in as many towns and cities, as follows: Collinwood, Tenn.; Tyrone, Pa.; Mechanicsville, N. Y.; Shawinigan Falls, Canada; Kingsport, Tenn.; Lyle, Tenn.; Freemont, Mo.; Sutton, W. Va.; Shelby, Ala.; and Terre Haute, Ind. But it was evident that before these plants could be completed the airplane builders would be needing dope; and therefore steps were taken to keep things going in all the principal countries fighting Germany until the acetate shortage could be relieved. In December, 1917, we commandeered all the existing American supply of acetate of lime, the base from which acetone and kindred products are made. Then we entered into a pool with the allied governments to ration these supplies of chemicals, pending the era of plenty. Our agency in this pool was the wood-chemical section of the War Industries Board, whereas the allies placed their demands in the hands of the British war mission. These two boards allocated the acetate chemicals among the different countries according to the urgency of their demands. Since it was evident there might be financial losses incurred as the result of the commandeering order or in the project of the new Government chemical plants, the British war mission agreed that any deficit should be shared equally by the American and British Governments. It was also agreed we should not have any advantage in prices paid for acetates of American origin. Under this arrangement we were able to produce 1,324,356 gallons of fabric dope during the period of hostilities, without upsetting any of the European war-production projects. Had the war continued, the output from the 10 chemical plants in which the Government was a partner would have cared for all American and allied requirements, allowing the production of private plants to go exclusively for the ordinary commercial purposes. THE TRAINING PLANES.