The American Congress appropriated over one thousand million dollars that were expended for aviation during the nineteen months of war. When the armistice was signed, not a single American-made fighting or combat plane had reached the front. No American-made fighting or combat plane was ever produced. America depended upon her allies to furnish a few obsolete fighting planes with which our armies were equipped. Our contribution to wartime aircraft consisted of two hundred and thirteen “utterly dangerous” observation planes that reached the front with others on the way. That is the record. (Report of aircraft investigation under House resolution of June 4, 1919.) Mr. Borglum is the man who started the entire aircraft investigation at the outset and performed a great public service. (Congressman James A. Frear, Wisconsin, speech to House of Representatives, _Congressional Record_, March 1, 1920.) You may have gathered from the record thus far that Gutzon Borglum was a bit unused to doing things the way other people did them. There was only one of him, and there were so many of the rest of the population that maybe one shouldn’t be disturbed by this technique. He had a genius’ variety of talent; so it probably isn’t remarkable that his art studio should have been filled with frightening projects for roads, transportation, parks, breakwaters, engineering, airplane models, philosophy, abstract science and the saving of the world. He believed he could do anything--so he did it. All of this is fairly obvious on his history sheet. But, for all that, his investigation of the aircraft industry in 1918 remains today one of the most incredible things that ever happened to America. We start our study of this attempt of one man to produce some honesty in a $1,000,000,000 delusion with the knowledge that Borglum was not only a fairly competent theoretical engineer, but also a practical mechanic who had been following closely the growth of air power. And that is fortunate, because few other matters in the aircraft investigation are that obvious or sensible. In November 1917, after the United States had been eight months in World War I, he got a look at an airplane factory in Dayton, Ohio. He was shocked, as he admitted, almost into a state of speechlessness. He had a brief visit with a man in a high position in the direction of aircraft production, listened to him, and, instead of going home, made a quick trip to Washington. Next morning he was at the White House, demanding to see President Wilson.