The selection of Bill Knudsen to head up the agency charged with coordinating war production was a happy one. Just as George Mead knew his aircraft, so did Bill Knudsen know his production. Furthermore, he knew the men who knew production and he held their confidence and regard. This was important at the moment when business and industry had reason to fear and suspect government; the drift in this country toward the omnipotent state had aroused intense bitterness and might have bogged down the whole program had not Bill Knudsen attracted to his organization other men who held the respect of their fellow manufacturers. These men began immediately on the complex task of unraveling all the mare’s nests that had collected around government procurement. About the middle of the summer of 1940, Fred Rentschler and I went down to Washington to call on the Grand Old Man and outline to him the key to our whole program. The President’s 50,000-plane program, when superimposed on the already staggering foreign purchases, was clearly beyond the total capacity of the New England area. And if we undertook further expansion in other areas, we would impose further burdens on an already hard-pressed staff. The time had now come to bring in the great automotive industry. Since Knudsen had, until recently, been president of the General Motors Corporation, we saw little hope of interesting him in diverting Buick or Chevrolet to aircraft-engine production just yet. For our automobile manufacturers still remembered the treatment given them back in 1918 when, after the Armistice, their war contracts had been ruthlessly canceled—torn up like so many scraps of paper—and their “war profits” had vanished from view except in the news headlines of the next twenty years. It would take some doing to persuade Bill Knudsen to our cause, and even Bill Knudsen would have his work cut out to get his automotive friends on the beam. As a matter of fact, without Bill Knudsen it could never have been done in time. For Bill was animated throughout his wartime service by a great motive. He had come to the Land of the Free a penniless immigrant, and had there won not alone riches but the respect and esteem of the great men of the land. And whatever the generation which had inherited liberty might think about it, Bill Knudsen knew what liberty meant; his whole being was imbued with a love for the country of his adoption, with a devotion to the spirit which animated it and an intense zeal to pay back in part some of the privileges it had extended him. And so deeply was this zeal imbedded in his character and so honestly did he seek to pay back his debt that even men grown cynical under the lash of government were impelled to go along. His simple fundamental character combined with his native wit and intelligence gave Bill Knudsen such qualities of leadership at the very moment they were most needed.