THE HUSTLING YANKEE.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 January 1918, Page 8

THE HUSTLING YANKEE.

MARVELLOUS AOHIEVEMKXTS, OUT TO BREAK THE KAISER, Writes Ralph A. Hayes (secretary to the United States Secretary of War): — ''Let us take a random, fleeting look at another of the War Department's activities—its transportation work, whether by locomotive, or anto-truelc, or airplaiip. On August 0 thpre was delivered to the War Department a finish-ed-locomotive, twenty working days tny flip contract for it had beei| lot. Smce that time an average of three completed locomotive.-; have been delivered each working (lay. Since the beginning of the present mobilisation more than a million men have been transported by the railroads for the War Department.— many of them over distances totalling thousands of miles—and yet that vast movement lias been conducted without a single renoiN accident and without appreciable ir.'errniHioii 1o regular freight of passenger irafiic. ftQMAiCCE OP THE LIBERTY MOTOR, "As to tlie airplane, there is none of us whose pulse lias not been quickened by the story of the Liberty motor. Even those of us who lack the scientific knowledge to understand or analyse the allAmerican engine had recn the lack of standardisation in t!i< aircraft industry jilld |i:id viewed with :;iiine alarm the statements qf European experls lhat from seven |o niiiii.moiij.lis were required to develop a new type of engine, from (lie design j:(| tho ywming. So there is wee l|i |.lin story of tiuit group of engipeej's wjio iqef j| t rjiylv June, who ren>,ii»nd five d;i.vs ii) session, who pooled their trade secrets, and wiio. (■venty-four days later, on the morning of Independence Dav. saw the composite motor that their united skill had devised, in actual operation at (ho Rure.ui pf Standards. Xpw in hupdreds of factqr: ips lhat simple and standardised iiiaehine is being multiplied with a rapidity hitherto unparalleled 'Not, less spectacular in its develppment or lass valuable in its acquisition than (,hp Liberty motor is tbo standardised iflptor truck. Wheji flip Ameyi|ea:i fnpeps were on the Mexican bordef tliif'tcqp jypps of tpueks were fepfesent- , ?;!. It ijq stfetpii pf 'lrnqginftfipq to picjii) : e flip pccpssap- mi)]fipliqatjpn of spare parts in' rppair sl|qps. jliaiiffenrs and mechanics, tlie lack of intercliaußcabilily of meil tlul mat.cfia.ls. thp

retarded mobility of the forties, and all tho othcv attendant evils. LIBERTY MOTOl; TRUCKKR. "After tho return from the Southern border, tho Quartermaster's Corps, actim; in co-operation with the Society of Automotive Engineers, called into conference a group t>f tho. nation'* tprcmußß truck designers arid nskcij ilium to forget their private ntUiuUnges, their pride of ownership, Ik;.' mamihtetiiring *>• cr«W. and to devoir ; •••"•••■elves to the liieh purpose of providing n finale standard army tr»<lr, Those men did not leavo that, task until they had devised (t machine that contained all tlial. was be'.i in their combined brains. Blueprints were made and sent 1o one of the <|oimti<i''s larfjcst. motor corporations, with the tacit understanding that tV< Oovernment. would he satisfied \vij!| with, •na: '«* than the turning qf that 'scrap of paper® into a running engine in twen-ty-five days—the fir c f airplane motor. I von will remember, was manufactured in twenty-four days, and (he first locomo. tive in twenty days, The result. Is I nowhere better expresspd thnn by a laconic, telegram which came to the War Department'ruip night and whie.li simply | sni:l: 'Tho fli-st, military truck engine j ran on its own power n't 1 o'clock this | morning, nineteen day? and eighteen' hours after the receipt of blue-print.' I Completed weil ahead of its speeded-tip | programme, tlie first pair of Liberty I trucks was driven from the Middle West through tlm maniita'ms to Washington, and presented personally to t.he President. and tho Secretary of War: and so sturdily simple was the conltivauce that the latter, though he bad never before sat in a truck, drove it hhn-elf around the White Houso at tho conclusion of a brief !(ddrt=s pf acoPptanco. H _