also free to carry those ideas wherever they could do the most good. If I had had to comply with the red tape of army officialdom, not only would my own work have been handicapped, but also the ideas and troubles of the private actually handling the machine might never have gone past his sergeant. When the armistice was signed, I was planning to go overseas to observe the difficulties that the men were having at the front, so that I narrowly escaped the khaki.
Whatever my services may or may not have contributed to the defeat of the Germans, at least I have escaped the accusation directed toward many a dollar-a-year man of being overpaid. The usual dollar-a-year man, though the dollar was never paid him, received his expenses, while my contract called for a salary of ten dollars per day without expense money. My original agreement was to include expenses, but some slip was made which always seemed too difficult to correct. This arrangement made my loss even greater than that of those men who received the fabulous amount prescribed by law, for needless to say my weekly stipend was inadequate to cover the one item of railway fare. Still one had to serve to be happy in those days, no matter what the cost. Inasmuch as the Akeley camera also lost heavily on war contracts, I have had the additional satisfaction of escaping governmental investigation on the score of excess profits. After it was all over, I ungrudgingly paid the normal tax on the money I had lost, and I would not swap those months with the Government for anything else in my experience.
