Although not completed in time for war use, an invention for the control and direction by wireless from the air of boats and torpedoes in the water and of airplanes from the ground was mainly developed under the spur of war needs and its promise was high for decisive war usefulness, as it is also for peace-time purposes. To create a new industry and bring it into quantity production; to work out a method of instruction and training; to train thousands of fliers in all the specialized branches of flying to a high degree of skill; to train the tens of thousands of mechanics necessary for the upkeep and supply of a large aviation service; to bring that service up from a point of utter negligibility to a state of such efficiency and importance that it gave aid of high value on the Western front; and during the same time to make contributions of the highest consequence to air navigation--that is the summing up of America’s achievement in the air, in a year and a half, for the prosecution of the war. PART TWO THE NATION BEHIND THE FIGHTERS CHAPTER XXI FINANCING THE WAR Statistics of financial operations usually make dull and dreary reading for all who are not professional financiers. But every figure in the financing of our share in the great war glows with interest. For it is illumined by the high flame of patriotism and the eager wish to serve the needs and the ideals of the nation that animated the whole people. The story of the financing of the war is the story of the enthusiastic giving by young and old, rich and poor, high and lowly, all over the country, of all that their government asked in such overflowing measure as far exceeded its requests. Willingly they took up the heavy burden of increased taxes and gladly they carried to triumphant success four huge loans of government bonds, thus providing an enormous reservoir of credit that enabled the government to pay its mountainous bills, to give a helping hand to other nations, to bend all its energies to the prosecution of the war, and to carry the country over from a peace to a war basis without shock or financial disturbance.