"Ninety per cent. of the Germans in this country wish we would hang the other ten per cent. so they could live in peace. But we can't forget the other ten per cent. They're bad, and they mean business. It's hard to make folks believe it, though. Somehow Americans don't take spies and that sort of thing seriously. It looks sometimes as if they didn't take war seriously." "Yes," said Potter. "There wasn't any big wave of excitement when war was declared. The people took it complacently. They don't realize." "They won't realize until some morning's paper is full of lists of the dead." "Out here we have a sort of attitude that seems to say, 'Well, we've gone to war, but we aren't going to get hurt.'" "It isn't my job to wake them up. I'll be busy keeping information from getting _out_ of this place--and gentlemen with bombs from getting in." "And my job," said Potter, gravely, "is to make motors.... To make motors quickly," he said, his voice coming to life, his eyes awakening to a glow of enthusiasm. "It's a fine job--the best job in the world. Some day the air of France will be dark with American 'planes, and I'll have helped. I can almost see it--hundreds and thousands of aeroplanes with their noses pointed toward Berlin, and nothing on God's footstool to stop them. Enough of them to drive the German out of the air and keep him out.... And then we'll play with him from the air.... A barrage of American aeroplanes behind the German lines--imagine that!--cutting them off, smashing their communications! All we've got to have is _enough_--and the war's over." The Secret Service man looked at Potter quietly. "You're not taking this war so placidly," he said. Potter did not smile. "It will come," he said. "Gradually we're finding out we have a country--and that we love our country. Wait till you see this American people awake and on the job. I don't take it placidly, because the thing was shoved down my throat. I was kicked awake." He turned away and went into the office that he occupied now more often twelve hours a day than eight. Here he remained until noon in constant conference with railroad man, engineer, steel representative, or machinery man come to explain delay in delivery or to promise beyond possibility of performance. At noon he drove down-town to the club for lunch. As he entered the building he saw young Matthews, a frail-bodied millionaire whose hobby was mechanics, gesticulating in the center of an interested group. Will Kraemer saw Potter and beckoned to him. "Something new," he said. "The aeroplane joyrider has come." "What's that?" "Hey, Matthews, tell it to Waite!" Matthews was more than willing. He was angry, excited, but pleased to be commanding so much attention. "Somebody swiped my hydro," he said. "At last Matthews has won a first," laughed Eldredge. "First aeroplane to be stolen in America." "What's the joke?" Potter wanted to know.