From the point of German advantage, it would be a good plan to frighten the British if it would take the fight out of them, but it is a very bad plan to frighten the British if it puts more fight into them. The Zeppelin raids have certainly had the effect of stimulating the British fighting spirit. It is especially regrettable that the United States Government did not heartily co-operate with the Wright Brothers to lead the world in the development of the aëroplane; but nothing of the sort was done. "We have," as Congressman Gardner says, "been experimenting and expecting and reporting and contracting and considering--in fact, we have been doing everything except building aëroplanes." The Wright Brothers, however, were received with glad foreign embrace. They were generously encouraged abroad, both by co-operative and competitive experiments and by liberal purchases. The result was that, on the breaking out of the European War, France, for example, had 1,400 aëroplanes, while the United States had but twenty-three, mostly obsolete. The United States Government has followed its time-honored custom of allowing its naval and military inventions to be developed and perfected abroad before adoption here. Prior to the outbreak of the European War, this government ordered from abroad an up-to-date French aëroplane with two Salmson motors, and one of the latest German aëroplanes with two Mercedes motors, with the intention of building a few of these machines. Then came the European War. The American purchases were commandeered, and we were thereby prevented from acquiring the much-desired air-craft. The de Bange obturator, an indispensable part of the breech mechanism of all large guns, was originally an American invention, but this Government allowed it to be developed and perfected abroad and given a foreign name. Ericsson's _Monitor_ was taken up by Europeans, right where its private builders left it, and it has been developed, mainly in England, into the modern super-dreadnought. The interchangeable system of manufacture of small arms was developed and perfected in America, but received no encouragement from the government. This system is now universally employed in the manufacture of small arms, and also in the manufacture of all kinds of machinery. It is for this reason that we are able to get a spare part for an automobile that will fit in place perfectly without having it specially made. Before the advent of the interchangeable system of manufacture of firearms, a sportsman in England went to his gunsmith to be measured for a shotgun just as he went to his tailor to be measured for a suit of clothes. At that time, no two guns were made exactly alike, and no piece of one gun would fit any other gun, while now all the parts of one gun will fit in the places of corresponding parts in every other gun of the same pattern.