the prospect of a lagging and uncoordinated industry. The proposal never got out of committee. In May, Walcott wrote the comptroller general for confirmation of his belief that the advisory committee was illegal. It was confirmed. 46 So Walcott disbanded the Committee and once again deactivated the Langley Laboratory. Another attempt to establish a national aeronautical research establishment had died aborning.

CAESARIAN SECTION BY DR. WALCOTT

Walcott took up the cause again the following December. In the intervening months, Europe had embarked upon a war that threatened to draw in the United States. President Wilson was determined to remain neutral, but advocates of preparedness insisted that the United States must be ready for war should it come. Although the election of 1914 had endorsed Wilson's neutrality and marked something of a turning away, at least temporarily, from the Progressive enthusiasms. that had elected Wilson two years before, still there was in the air in late 1914 enough residual Progressivism and active preparedness to make the aeronautical laboratory idea more appealing to Congress than

ever.

If Walcott was to succeed with his project now, he had to avoid the pitfalls fatal to earlier attempts. Bureaucratic objections about duplication of work and infringement of jurisdiction must be answered. The appearance of commercialism or control by private interests, so easy to associate with early Aero Club sponsorship, must be avoided. Congress must not be offended by any show of circumventing congressional intent by unilateral appointment of commissions or committees. A friendly forum must be found on the Hill for introducing the legislation and getting a committee endorsement before bringing it to the floor. Finally, any suspicion entertained by the appropriations committee the previous year that sponsoring a laboratory would inevitably lead to a large new establishment must be dispelled.

The sorry record of past attempts to establish a national aeronautical laboratory may have led Walcott to conclude that his best procedure in 1914 was to propose formation of a modest committee, perhaps on the European model. It should be independent of the Smithsonian Institution, to allay the fear of the military services that empire-building was afoot. Members drawn from private life should not outnumber government members. The armed services should endorse the proposal in draft, and it should then be submitted through friendly congressmen to equally friendly congressional committees, perhaps those on military or naval affairs, where the preparedness fever was at its height.

The more fundamental issue-whether aeronautics was properly in the realm of science or of engineering-would be skirted altogether. In the year since the second closing of the Langley laboratory, Walcott had done everything in his power to restore the reputation of Langley at the expense of the Wright brothers because he was unaware that their use of and respect for science were as great as Langley's. Glenn Curtiss and other Langley supporters had taken the 1903 aerodrome from the Smithsonian to Hammondsport, New York, where they repaired it, altered it, and flew it, proving to their own satisfaction (and for their own purposes) that Langley, as the Smithsonian's Annual Report for 1914 put it, "had succeeded in building the first aeroplane capable of sustained free flight with a man."47 This episode would return to haunt Walcott and his successor, but in 1914 it left the secretary secure in his convictions and free to ignore the comparative ranking of science and engineering in the laboratory he was planning.

Whether or not Walcott consciously considered all the factors at work, his subsequent actions avoided most of the mistakes of the past. In December 1914 he went once again to his board of regents with the idea of establishing a laboratory. The regents empowered him to form a committee with four of their members, including one representative and one senator, to work out a proposal to present to Congress. By the time this committee met in the Capitol on 30 January 1915, all the groundwork had been laid. Walcott had drafted a memorandum outlining the history of the Smithsonian Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the advances being made in Europe, and the advantages the government might expect from similar activities in the U.S., especially a rationalization and coordination of the aeronautical research already being conducted by the federal government within the armed services and the National Bureau of Standards. This memorandum, which served as the basis of the proposal to Congress, left the laboratory in the background and put the primary focus on the advisory committee. The stated aim was prevention of duplication. The model was the British Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the European establishment that had most impressed Zahm and Hunsaker in the summer of 1913. The proposal was modest. There was no mention of a "Bureau organization."48

When Walcott presented this proposal to the regents' committee on 30 January 1915, it was quickly and wholeheartedly endorsed. In fact, so greased were the rails that the Senate joint resolution had already been introduced by Benjamin R. Tillman, chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs. The day after Walcott's presentation, one of the members of the regents' committee, Congressman Ernest W. Roberts, introduced an identical resolution in the House. A slightly modified copy of Walcott's memorandum accompanied each bill. 49

The two resolutions were remarkable for their modesty and simplicity. 50 Hardly anything in them was controversial. Five short paragraphs gave the rationale of the legislation: The United States, where aviation began, was lagging in aeronautical development behind European nations that were pursuing aeronautical research under government auspices, while aeronautical research in the United States remained scattered, uncoordinated, and wasteful for lack of a central body to provide continuity and prevent duplication. The recommended advisory committee was to consist of 14 members: two each from the War and Navy Departments; one each from the Weather Bureau, the Bureau of Standards, and the Smithsonian Institution; and "not more than seven additional persons who shall be acquainted with the needs of aeronautical science, either civil or military, or skilled in aeronautical engineering or its allied science." The purpose of the committee was "to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their practical solution, and to determine the problems which should be experimentally attacked and to discuss their solution and their application to practical questions." The first half of this formulation was lifted verbatim from the British Advisory Committee for Aeronautics; the second half was a paraphrase of what the British had outlined for themselves. The British had required that their committee "research and experiment into these subjects in a properly equipped laboratory, with a trained staff."51 That sounded too much like the "Bureau organization" that had raised objections the previous year; the only reference to a laboratory in the 1915 resolution was the proviso that "in the event of a laboratory or laboratories either in whole or in part being placed under the direction of the committee, the committee may direct and conduct research and experiment in aeronautics in such laboratory or laboratories." As if to emphasize the modest role envisioned for this committee, and to eliminate any fears of its being the foundation of a new empire in Washington, the resolution asked for funding of "$5000 a year, or so much thereof as may be necessary, for five years." Gone were the $200,000 and the $100,000 figures bandied about the Smithsonian in earlier years; gone even was the $50,000 Walcott had requested in 1914. This was not a proposal for a national aeronautical laboratory but a modest arrangement for supervising and coordinating the conduct of aeronautical research already being carried out at existing institutions.

There is little evidence of opposition to this seemingly innocuous piece of legislation, at least not within the friendly naval affairs committee to which it was referred. The real problem was time. Would there be enough time to pass the bill before the 63rd Congress expired on 4 March? The major effort was concentrated on the House, where earlier

attempts to pass such legislation had been stalled. Two steps were required.

First, approval had to be obtained from the navy. This was forthcoming on 12 February, when Acting Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to the chairman of the House Committee on Naval Affairs that he "heartily [endorsed] the principle" on which the legislation was based, though he had two caveats. 52 First, he asked for deletion of a section of the resolution lamenting the dearth of aeronautical research carried on by the government, for he believed the navy had "done a great deal to develop the art and the science of aeronautics." "However," he continued, "we will be only too pleased to have an advisory committee that will bring about the cooperation of the private activities," an interpretation of the committee's role considerably less grandiose than Walcott and other enthusiasts seem to have had in mind. Roosevelt went on to suggest reduction of the total committee membership to ten, with only three unspecified members joining the seven government representatives identified in the original draft. Said Roosevelt:

The departments of the Government most interested in the development of aeronautics will be the ones that will be coordinated by the advice of this committee, individually carry out the work required, and be responsible for the expenditures of money appropriated by Congress. Therefore, the representatives of the Government should always have the controlling interest in the activities of this proposed committee. The interests of private parties must be more or less commercial and influenced by such considerations. We should guard against even any suspicion that the work of this committee is thus influenced.

Besides restating his concept of the modest role the advisory committee was to play, Roosevelt's qualified endorsement was also good Progressive doctrine. It clearly demanded that the committee place the interests of the government foremost and that its primary function be coordination (i.e., improving efficiency through elimination of duplication and waste).

The second hurdle the joint resolution had to face in the House was Walcott's testifying before the Naval Affairs Committee. He appeared on 19 February, just two weeks before the termination of the 63rd Congress and just one week after Roosevelt's letter was sent to the committee. 53 The letter was one of the topics Walcott was asked to address, and he and Congressman Roberts, sponsor of the House resolution and one of the Smithsonian regents, quickly dispensed with the membership issue in what now looks like a prearranged compromise. Walcott said he agreed with the Navy Department that the com

mittee "should be controlled by the people in connection with the Government who are interested so as to have the Government actually in control of the committee," and that he was not particularly set on having the seven at-large members proposed in the original draft. When Roberts suggested that they compromise at five members from private life to serve with the seven government members, Walcott quickly agreed. All else in Walcott's appearance before the committee was harmony and cordiality. The committee made a few minor changes in wording and sent the draft legislation to the full House the same day. 54

By that time, however, chances of passage before the termination of the Congress appeared slight. The crush of business was simply too great. Once more, there was little opposition to the bill, but many doubted that it was important enough to win space on the crowded calendar.55 So Walcott used a tactic he had learned in the Geological Survey in the 1880s, "a period when legislation normally got through only by stealthily clinging to appropriation bills";56 he suggested adding the advisory-committee resolution to the naval appropriations bill, a piece of legislation assured of passage, what with the war in Europe and the bipartisan support then abounding for a strong navy. Chambers had tried this expedient in 1913 and Walcott himself had attempted it in 1914; the difference now was that the Naval Affairs Committees of the two houses had already seen the advisory-committee legislation and were generally in favor of it. They were the two bodies with the opportunity—and the power-to amend the naval appropriations bill and see the amendment through to passage. That is just what they did. The naval appropriations bill, containing the joint resolution on an advisory committee for aeronautics, passed both House and Senate on 3 March 1915. President Wilson signed it into law the same day, thus formally creating the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, as it was called in the legislation, on the last day of the 63rd Congress. 57

What, in retrospect, can be said about congressional intent? Not much, except that it differed from the intent of the enthusiasts who had been promoting the legislation for more than four years. Those men wanted to establish an aeronautical research capability in the United States to rival those in Europe and restore the birthplace of modern aviation to a preeminent position. They clearly wanted to create a government laboratory. Most of them wanted to see it established in the name of and on the site of the old Langley laboratory at the Smithsonian Institution, fitting tribute to a man they felt had played a critical role in the advance of American aviation. Others of their number, while willing to involve the United States more actively in aeronautical research, would have preferred to expand existing laboratories like those at the Washington Navy Yard or the Bureau of Stand