In anticipation of the gradual drying up of government business and with a view to trying to get funds from Congress to help tide us over slack periods, Don Brown had outlined his situation to BUAERO and the Army Air Corps. As a result of efforts by the Armed Forces, Congress had appropriated funds for new engines to be ordered from Pratt and Whitney. It had seemed to us at the time that, with war imminent, the administration might have made better use of relief funds than raking leaves. As a matter of fact, a good deal of relief money was being invested in air fields and armament, but the program was not coordinated; Mr. Ickes and Mr. Hopkins differed as to who was boss. The idea prevailed that peace could be had by just wishing for it. To have spent money for arms, or even to have directed it into the business stream so as to keep the production machine at a high level, would, at that time, have been considered unmoral. On the other hand, spending money wastefully for made work seemed to meet with public approval. The bald fact remained, however, that with war but a few months away, Pratt and Whitney Aircraft, one of the two dependable sources of proved aircraft engines, faced a shutdown, and with it, dispersal of an organization which could never have been reassembled. To our relief, however, Congress appropriated funds, and the Army notified Pratt and Whitney that it might proceed with the procurement of materials and the production of engines in advance of the formal contract, with the idea of utilizing the allotment to best advantage from the point of view of readiness for emergency. Then, sometime after we had swung into our program, the Air Corps, to our amazement, canceled this informal assurance, and diverted the funds to the procurement of Allison liquid-cooled engines. At that time the General Motors Corporation, owners of Allison, had indicated little need for public relief funds, but to Pratt and Whitney, now almost wholly dependent upon government business, the loss of this critical order was a body blow. When, later, Don called upon the Assistant Secretary of War, Mr. Louis Johnson, to point out to him the results of his decision, he was advised that the Army had decided to scrap all air-cooled engines in pursuit planes. Next year would probably see the last of air-cooled engines in bombers. He was instructed to start Pratt and Whitney designing liquid-cooled engines at once. To Don, knowing that Allison, equally surprised by the decision, had not yet started tooling, while Pratt and Whitney, already tooled, must remain idle, the decision hardly made sense.