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Page 62
"He certainly did. He said he wouldn't give five cents for the German
fleet after Widding's plan is put into operation."
"Ah!" reflected the Crown Prince.
"Would Your Imperial Highness allow me to ask a question?" I ventured.
His eyes met mine frankly. "Why, yes--certainly."
"I have no authority to ask this, but I suppose there might be an
exchange of prisoners. Edison and Widding are important to America
and--".
"You mean they might be exchanged for me?" his face grew stern. "I would
not hear of it. Those two Americans alone have the secret of this Widding
invention, I am sure of that, and it is better for the Fatherland to get
along without a Crown Prince than without a fleet. No. We shall keep Mr.
Edison and Mr. Widding prisoners."
He said this with all the dignity of his Hohenzollern ancestry; then he
rose to end the interview.
CHAPTER XX
THIRD BATTLE OF BULL RUN WITH AEROPLANES CARRYING LIQUID CHLORINE
I now come to those memorable weeks of November, 1921, which rank among
the most important in American history. There was first the battle that
had been preparing south of the Potomac between von Mackensen's advancing
battalions and General Wood's valiant little army. This might be called
the third battle of Bull Run, since it was fought near Manassas where
Beauregard and Lee won their famous victories.
Although General Wood's forces numbered only 60,000 men, more than half
of them militia, and although they were matched against an army of
150,000 Germans, the American commander had two points of advantage, his
ten miles of entrenchments stretching from Remington to Warrenton along
the steep slopes of the Blue Ridge mountains, and his untried but
formidable preparations for dropping liquid chlorine from a fleet of
aeroplanes upon an attacking army.
In order to reach Washington the Germans must traverse the neck of land
that lies between the mountains and the Potomac's broad arms. Here clouds
of greenish death from heaven might or might not overwhelm them. That was
the question to be settled. It was a new experiment in warfare.
I should explain that during previous months, thanks to the efficiency of
the Committee of Twenty-one, great quantities of liquid chlorine had been
manufactured at Niagara Falls, where the Niagara Alkali Company, the
National Electrolytic Company, the Oldburg Electro-Chemical Company, the
Castner Electrolytic Alkali Company, the Hooker Electro-Chemical Company
and several others, working night and day and using 60,000 horsepower
from the Niagara power plants and immense quantities of salt from the
salt-beds in Western New York, had been able to produce 30,000 tons of
liquid chlorine. And the Lackawanna Steel Company at Buffalo, in its
immense tube plant, finished in 1920, had turned out half a million thin
steel containers, torpedo-shaped, each holding 150 pounds of the deadly
liquid. This was done under the supervision of a committee of leading
chemists, including: Milton C. Whitaker, Arthur D. Little, Dr. L. H.
Baekeland, Charles F. McKenna, John E. Temple and Dr. Henry Washington.
And a fleet of military aeroplanes had been made ready at the immense
Wright and Curtiss factories on Grand Island in the Niagara River and at
the Packard, Sturtevant, Thomas and Gallaudet factories, where a force of
20,000 men had been working night and day for weeks under government
supervision. There were a hundred huge tractors with double fuselage and
a wing spread of 200 feet, driven by four 500 horse-power motors. Each
one of these, besides its crew, could carry three tons of chlorine from
Grand Island to Washington (their normal rate of flying was 120 miles an
hour) in three hours against a moderate wind.
I visited aviation centers where these machines were delivered for tests,
and found the places swarming with armies of men training and inspecting
and testing the aeroplanes.
Among aviators busy at this work were: Charles F. Willard, J. A. D.
McCurdy, Walter R. Brookins, Frank T. Coffyn, Harry N. Atwood, Oscar
Allen Brindley, Leonard Warren Bonney, Charles C. Witmer, Harold H.
Brown, John D. Cooper, Harold Kantner, Clifford L. Webster, John H.
Worden, Anthony Jannus, Roy Knabenshue, Earl S. Dougherty, J. L. Callan,
T. T. Maroney, R. E. McMillen, Beckwith Havens, DeLloyd Thompson, Sidney
F. Beckwith, George A. Gray, Victor Carlstrom, Chauncey M. Vought, W. C.
Robinson, Charles F. Niles, Frank H. Burnside, Theodore C. Macaulay, Art
Smith, Howard M. Rinehart, Albert Sigmund Heinrich, P. C. Millman, Robert
Fowler.
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