Senator Smoot, in a sensational speech, referred to his vain efforts to secure for the country a fleet of fifty sea-going submarines and twenty-five coast-defence submarines. Now, he declared, the United States would pay for its indifference to danger. In the House of Representatives, Gardner and Hobson both declared that our forts were antiquated, our coast-defence guns outranged, our artillery ridiculously insufficient, and our supply of ammunition not great enough to carry us through a single month of active warfare. On the night of my arrival in Manhattan I walked through scenes of delirious madness. The town seemed to reel in a sullen drunkenness. Throngs filled the dark streets. The Gay White Way was no longer either white or gay. The marvellous electrical display of upper Broadway had disappeared--not even a street light was to be seen. And great hotels, like the Plaza, the Biltmore, and the new Morgan, formerly so bright, were scarcely discernible against the black skies. No one knew where the German airships might be. Everybody shouted, but nobody made very much noise. The city was hoarse. I remembered just how London acted the night the first Zeppelin floated over the town. At five o’clock the next morning, Mayor McAneny appointed a Committee of Public Safety that went into permanent session in Madison Square Garden, which was thronged day and night, while excited meetings, addressed by men and women of all political parties, were held continuously in Union Square, City Hall Park, Columbus Circle, at the Polo Grounds and in various theatres and motion-picture houses. Such a condition of excitement and terror necessarily led to disorder and on May 11, 1921, General Leonard Wood, in command of the Eastern Army, placed the city under martial law. And now on every tongue were frantic questions. When would the Germans land? To-day? To-morrow? Where would they strike first? What were we going to do? Every one realised, when it was too late, the hopeless inadequacy of our aeroplane scouting service. To guard our entire Atlantic seaboard we had fifty military aeroplanes where we should have had a thousand and we were wickedly lacking in pilots. Oh, the shame of those days! In this emergency Rodman Wanamaker put at the disposal of the government his splendid air yacht the _America II_, built on the exact lines of the _America I_, winner of across-the-Atlantic prizes in 1918, but of much larger spread and greater engine power. The America II could carry a useful load of five tons and in her scouting work during the next fortnight she accommodated a dozen passengers, four officers, a crew of six, and two newspaper men, Frederick Palmer, representing the Associated Press, and myself for the London _Times._