"But one of us will be ready," Potter said, "and that's me. I'm going to be ready for the day when the country needs that twenty thousand 'planes. I'm going to know how to build them, and I'm going to know where and how they can be built. Dad, the day's coming when the main business of the Waite Motor Car Company will be the building of aeroplane engines." "Fiddlesticks!" said Fabius Waite, and there could be no doubt of his sincerity. Fabius Waite considered himself a good American. He was a good American, but, like millions of other able, sincere, honest, country-loving men in those summer days of the year 1915; those days which were seeing Italy's entrance to the war, which were witnessing Mackensen's war-machine crushing the Russians out of Galicia, capturing Przemysl and then Lemberg; wondering if Calais and the Channel ports could be held;--like those other millions Fabius Waite was asleep. Potter's voice was of one crying in the wilderness. All ears were shut against him. CHAPTER VII If every young man could be put in a position where he could do nothing but think for a matter of a couple of months just at that time when he is ready to take up the major business of his life, one may well believe the history of the world would be other and better than it is. Potter Waite was injured early in May. Three months passed before he was able to take the air even in a slowly driven, pillowed limousine. If ever a chance were given a human being to check up on his accounts, take a trial balance, and arrive at definite conclusions with respect to himself, Potter had that chance. Not only had he the opportunity, but a vital consideration had intervened, urging him to wider, deeper, bolder considerations. He thought much about Potter Waite, but the time in which he lived, the world turmoil which surrounded him, the pressure of great events on his own life, compelled him to think about himself with respect to grave, impending affairs and to the requirements of his country, which he had come, in some measure, to know. This state of affairs developed in him a rare singleness of purpose. From the beginning of time men with rare singleness of purpose have been regarded as monomaniacs, cranks. They have been derided. The world has whispered about them behind its hands and snickered. This was an attitude which Potter was to encounter, first from his father, later from those who had formerly been his cronies. Fabius Waite became more and more irritated by his son's absorption in aeronautics, for he was a practical business man, and when he could not see how a profit could be entered in the ledger from a given transaction, he deleted the transaction.