THE TASK SET BEFORE THE BUILDERS
THE entire air force of the United States of America broke down and disappeared in the tri- fling contest with the Mexican bandit, Villa, in 1916. A year later the nation whose air forces and material were so pitifully small that they were unable to cope with the reconnaissance problems offered by the activities of a Mexican bandit was called upon to plunge into the greatest aircraft production program and into the training and organization of the largest flying personnel the world had seen.
It was almost as if some armorer of the feudal ages, after making his first arquebus, had been called upon to make modern rifles by the millions. Or, as if the artificers who cast the fifteenth-century "mystery" guns that conquered Constanti-
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