Similarly, the Belgians, always an enterprising people, covered Europe and reached out for the Congo with their “Sabena.” In Italy, the tendency was to use domestic types like the Savoia-Marchettis, but the Italians purchased technical information and took licenses to build American products. In Poland, the Polish Airlines “LOT” operated an extensive service using American equipment. A Jugoslav service covered the capitals of Europe. Finland connected Helsinki with Berlin. The Germans, after getting the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty lifted, moved rapidly to make up lost ground. Junkers began to manufacture its version of the Boeing 247, and Bavarian Motoren Werke, builders of one of the best in-line liquid-cooled engines extant, took a license to manufacture the Pratt and Whitney Hornet. Junkers took a license to manufacture the Hamilton-Standard propeller, but later abandoned it in favor of their own “V.D.M.” The German Lufthansa, equipped with aircraft derived from the American technologies, spread over Europe and reached out to the far comers of the world, like South America. In France, which we now recognize as a casualty of World War I, the world’s strongest air force was dissipated by storing war surplus aircraft and neglecting a living industry. In fact, the French industry, suffering from subversive activities, declined to the point where the government could conveniently nationalize it and, to all intents and purposes, strangle it. French air transport suffered from the internal dissensions which were rife at the time, but Air France attempted to write its name in history with aircraft predominantly of American conception. In England, even the Empire routes suffered in competition with American aircraft. Thus when Pan American was ready to initiate the Bermuda-Azores-Lisbon transatlantic service, with the new Sikorsky S-42 Clippers, the British delayed granting landing rights in Bermuda to Pan American until they could build a plane of their own, undertaken after Mr. Sikorsky had read a paper before the Royal Aeronautical Society outlining the novel features in his design and setting down its measured performance. During this delay, Pan American shifted its attention to the far Pacific and, using the same Sikorsky Clippers, pioneered the air route to Hawaii and the Orient.