Somewhat bewildered by the change, Don then called on Hap Arnold. Here he learned that the secretary’s decision had also taken the Air Force by surprise. Anxious to keep Allison ticking over, Wright Field had built up such a strong case for liquid-cooled, that the secretary had decided to scrap air-cooled. Since recent pursuit planes like the Seversky had been designed for air-cooled, the decision had left them on a spot. Apparently, however, the decision once taken could not be recalled. No one in the Air Force had dreamed for a moment that it would be taken, but here we were, out on a long limb, and war was in the offing. As the year 1938 came to a close, we began laying off men, dropping first those who could be the more readily spared. But the time came when the organization was being seriously hurt, and the year-end forecast indicated that, by July, 1939, we would reach the end of our production. Since materials must be in hand five to six months ahead of delivery of the finished article, that meant that time had already begun to run out for Pratt and Whitney. We had long since cut back expenses to the bare minimum and there remained nothing but a final decision to suspend manufacturing operations. Yet even then, Don Brown kept the War Plans Division intact. Now we had but a single remaining hope: Tom Hamilton in Paris. Tom reported by radiotelephone that the French, now reduced to dire straights, still vacillated, but had established financial credits in the United States and would send a purchasing commission to Washington to open negotiations direct with us. Don Brown, sick as he was, went down to Washington with some of our staff to battle through hours of legalistic verbiage, in smoke-filled rooms of Washington hotels. Here it developed that the United States Treasury would act as a sort of intermediary between the French commission and the American manufacturers, and that Secretary Henry Morgenthau had turned the job over to Capt. Harry Collins, then head of the Purchasing Division of the Treasury. With the Arms Embargo Act still adorning the legislative library, active participation by the Treasury in negotiations between United States arms manufacturers and a possible “belligerent” had certain aspects of incongruity. However, the whole situation was so phony that this detail escaped public attention. Capt. Harry Collins provided just the _savoir faire_ necessary to resolve an impossible situation into a completed contract. Harry had served as supply officer on the ancient destroyer-tender _Iris_ back in the dark ages when I had commanded the four-piper _Truxtun_, then based on San Diego. He had resigned his commission to go into business and had there shown the same tact that had endeared him to the temperamental skippers of the Pacific Torpedo Flotilla.