“The Secretary of the Treasury is calling, sir,” she said, and then added, “just a moment, Secretary Morgenthau.” I lifted my receiver. “Could you come down to Washington,” came the flat voice, “and have supper with me at my home Sunday evening?” “Certainly, sir,” I replied. “Would you mind,” the voice inquired, “if I invited a competitor?” “Not at all,” I answered. “May I ask who you have in mind?” “Vaughan,” came the reply. “Guy Vaughan, of Curtiss-Wright.” Something impelled me to try to inject a little humor into the colorless colloquy. “An honest competitor,” I laughed, “but with an inferior line.” The phone clicked and I sat back to try to dope out what was going on. A 50,000-plane program and the two big suppliers of aircraft engines dining at the secretary’s home on a Sunday night! Shades of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Senator Black, and Postmaster General Brown! Phil Johnson, of United Airlines, had chanced to drop in on an informal conference called in the daytime to take away from him air-mail contracts he had won under competitive bidding and Congress had crucified him for it! It all seemed to depend upon whose political ox was to be gored. I met Guy Vaughan in the Carlton Hotel on Sunday afternoon. Guy had already scouted the terrain and discovered from “Tommy the Cork,” so he said, that the bright boys intended to give us the works at supper and force us to agree to license the government to build aircraft engines under our patents. Why they should resort to the cloak-and-dagger technique remained a mystery; they already had such rights under numberless Army-Navy contracts. But there seemed no mystery about why they wanted the licenses; the big idea was to set up a string of big government-owned-and-operated aircraft factories in the several distressed areas of the country to give relief to the unemployed, and votes to their new employers. Our quiet little supper party with Secretary Morgenthau did seem to bear out Guy’s dope. For afterward, the secretary informed us that since we were already overloaded with the foreign business, our government would have to look elsewhere. He served notice on us that we would be expected to license the government under our patents. Guy Vaughan, on being questioned, advised the secretary that in his opinion Curtiss-Wright could build all the engines the government might require, and stated further that his company would not license the government voluntarily on a program that would put competitors into his business—and at government expense—who would, after the war, put his company out of business. In reply to the same question, I stated that we would license others to build our engines.