of airplane wings; and $8,000,000 tied up in the fabric itself or in raw cotton for weaving into fabric. The Service spent over $25,000,000 for gasoline and oil. The largest enterprise of all was the production of airplane engines, the contracts for which reached a total value of $450,000,000. These figures are cited to show the enormous size of our air project, to show, also, how small a part of a balanced air program is the manufacture of the airplanes themselves, and, finally, to controvert and refute the widespread, the almost universal, impression to-day that the whole air program of America in the war was a failure, a scandal, and a blot on the fair name of our war industry. The average American, if he has not examined the record of our war aircraft program, probably holds the opinion that a billion dollars or more appropriated for aircraft vanished into thin air during the war, and that all we had to show for the enormous expenditure was a few hundred airplanes of inferior design. To this day such statements are still being made by irresponsible journalists and other careless critics of the conduct of the war. Against such assertions we oppose the statement that the production of aëronautical materials during the war was as successful as any other great branch of war industry, that we got value received for our money--“war value,” that is--and that the losses incurred were the natural and inevitable losses to be expected by any nation unprepared for war. The general charge of shocking waste and failure reposes upon nothing more substantial than rumor and muddy impression. Behind the rejoinder we are able to marshal the facts, which are, with the demobilization of the industry virtually complete, now to be evaluated as a whole. [Illustration: _Photo from Packard Motor Car Co._ PREPARING LIBERTY ENGINES FOR STORAGE] [Illustration: _Photo by Signal Corps_ ASSEMBLING PLANT AT ROMORANTIN]