“Mr. Langston, there are some big surprises ahead for the American people and for the Germans,” continued the inventor. “They say America is as helpless as Belgium or China. I say nonsense. It’s true that we have lost our fleet and some of our big cities and that the Germans have three armies on our soil, but the fine old qualities of American grit and American resourcefulness are still here and we’ll use ‘em. If we can’t win battles in the old way, we’ll find new ways. “Listen to this, my friend. Have you heard of the Committee of Twenty-one? No? Very few have. It’s a body of rich and patriotic Americans, big business men, who made up their minds, back in July, that the government wasn’t up to the job of saving this nation. So they decided to save it themselves by business methods, efficiency methods. There’s a lot of nonsense talked about German efficiency. We’ll show them a few things about American efficiency. What made the United States the greatest and richest country in the world? Was it German efficiency? What gave the Standard Oil Company its world supremacy? Was it German efficiency? It was the American brains of John D. Rockefeller, wasn’t it?” “Is Mr. Rockefeller one of the Committee of Twenty-one?” “Of course, he is, and so are Andrew Carnegie, James J. Hill, J. P. Morgan, John Wanamaker, John H. Fahey, James B. Duke, Henry B. Joy, Daniel B. Guggenheim, John D. Ryan, J. B. Widener, Emerson McMillin, Philip D. Armour, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Elihu Root, George W. Perkins, Asa G. Candler and two or three others, including myself. “The Germans are getting over the idea that America is as helpless as Belgium or China. Von Mackensen is going slow, holding back his army because he doesn’t know what we have up our sleeve at the Potomac. As a matter of fact, we have mighty little except this liquid chlorine and--well, we’re having trouble with the steel containers and with the releasing device.” “You mean the device that drops the containers from the aeroplanes?” “That’s it. We need time to perfect the thing. We’ve spread fake reports about wonderful electric mines that will blow up a brigade, and that helped some, and we delayed von Mackensen for two weeks south of Fredericksburg by spreading lines of striped cheese-cloth, miles of it, along a rugged valley. His aeroplane scouts couldn’t make out what that cheese-cloth was for; they thought it might be some new kind of electrocution storage battery, so the whole army waited.” As we talked, the train stopped at Hyattsville, a few miles out of Washington, and a well-set-up officer in uniform came aboard and approached us with a pleasant smile. “Mr. Edison? I am Captain Campbell of General Wood’s staff,” he said. “General Wood is outside in his automobile and asks you to join him. The General thought it would be pleasanter to motor down to Mount Vernon.” “That’s very kind,” said Edison, rising.