At that time, our schools, organized as they had been by Dr. Lucke, were going like a house afire, while the nearby Army schools, at Rantoul, Illinois, were dragging bottom. At the close of the inspection, the general had remarked, without the quiver of an eyelid, “Keep working, Commander, and some day you may catch up with the Army.” As I opened my mouth to retort, he blimped the throttle and jammed the words down my throat, with the roar of his exhaust. The last I saw of him was a cloud of dust as he whirled away in the direction of the main gate, his sergeant hanging on with both hands. Subsequently, Mitchell had kept up a running fire against the Navy until he finally badgered the Department into anchoring some obsolete vessels in Chesapeake Bay, close to the Army air base at Langley Field, Virginia. In a masterly display of showmanship for the benefit of the newsmen, Mitchell had delivered a mast-high attack on the undefended targets at short range. One phosphorous bomb dropped on the fighting top of the old _Alabama_, where an alert photographer snapped a dramatic picture of pyrotechnics that made the front page with a convincing smash. All this had come along with the drive for reduction in armaments that had already set the Navy back on its haunches. Navy top brass, fighting hard for survival, had recognized in Billy Mitchell another Brutus, and some had even suspected Billy Moffett of a lean and hungry look. An old walrus over in Naval Operations had been heard to remark that Moffett was probably jealous of Mitchell for having first thought of the separate air force. In any event, the Old Navy had come to hate its own aviation almost as much at it hated Mitchell and the Army. “Mitchell,” I remarked, “is able, impetuous, and dynamic. He has an attractive personality and is long on the qualities that keep men willing to ride with him, hell for leather.” Leighton shook his head. “He takes a lot for granted. The time may come when airplanes will do the things he foresees, but first some of us slaves will have to solve a lot of the impossible technical problems that he now brushes off as unimportant. And one thing is sure,” he added, “under the sort of department Mitchell advocates, they just won’t get solved. Give him his autocratic control, and he’ll set up an airtight government monopoly of research, development, and production that will lay the dead hand of bureaucracy on our new art and paralyze its glowing young spirit.” All the smile had gone out of Leighton’s voice and deadly earnestness replaced the half-banter with which he had discussed his job. “Well,” he sighed, “there’s just one man standing between Mitchell and the attainment of his personal ambition for power.” He paused. “And that man,” he concluded, “is William Adger Moffett.”