tors had previously denounced as “too big to fly,” several years elapsed here in America before such airliner was adopted for air service and then not until foreign countries had introduced copies of them.
 After I had spent many years planning an Aircraft Carrier and had presented the plans to the U.S. Army and Navy in 1918, it was a foreign country that first built and operated one of them.
 After I had called attention to the fact in my book, BORN AGAIN, in 1904, that poisoned gas could be used in warfare it was a foreign country that first tried it out in 1914.
 After I had publicly pointed out in 1917 that large troop airplanes could land armies behind the enemy’s lines and fight them both going and coming, it was a foreign country that adopted such war maneuvers first.
 The U.S.A. would be in no condition to wage war single handed against a first class European nation today. This country could not even defend itself from a foreign invasion as it is at present protected.
 There are a million foreign soldiers dressed like American citizens within its own boundaries right now who are just waiting for the opportune moment to strike death to all who uphold the American form of Government in this land of the free. From hotel waiters, office building elevator operators and home servants to government employees they are on the alert to furnish information to foreign intelligence bureaus.
 One sneaking inside enemy, treacherously hacking at our building program can do more damage than one hundred enemies on the outside of our country.
 It takes several years to prepare for war now-a-days and the methods used in one war become obsolete before that next war starts.
 In 1920 a Japanese Imperial Naval Officer spent several days at the Lawson Aircraft Factory in Milwaukee studying my big commercial airliners. He asked me if I could build battleships of the air that could carry big guns. That was more than twenty years ago.
 It is not only possible for a European or Asiatic Enemy to build heavily armed and armored Aircraft that can fly back and forth over the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans and lay in waste any of our American cities that are above ground, but enormous air battlers can be built to float above the earth at great heights indefinitely that can destroy everything above ground below them. They could come in swarms by the millions.
 Every child in America should be taught to fly an airplane. Young boys and girls of 12 to 15 years of age can be taught to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. That is a child’s job.
 In the year of 1912 I offered to fly across the Atlantic Ocean in a monoplane of my own design if somebody would put up the money to build it. But in those days everybody said it was impossible.
 At the conclusion of the last war I pointed out that all forts and airports should be built underground.