the latter mainly for daylight work. In the frenzy of scribbling which has beset the question of air defence lately, it has been customary to speak almost exclusively of the last two weapons, and to forget the essentialsthe 'equivalent aircraft.' The result is unfortunate and disappointing, but nothing else was to be expected. Luckily the Navy have the sole charge of airships, and the heavy-weight long-range seaplane is also their province; so that, for all our unpreparedness, we may look for some relief. There were certain obvious reasons, and probably correct ones, for entrusting, some two and a half years ago, the sole charge of airships to the Navy; notably their greater familiarity with problems of navigation, their aptitude in handling large craft, and last and not least their freedom from War Office financial domination and easier access to the essential funds. The approach to the country's coast-line, by whatever medium, seems also to fall appropriately under Admiralty control, since assailants must in any case cross the water. This disposition, unsuccessful as it has been, we must perforce approve until we are guarded by a totally separate Air Service. It may be useful for the Navy to call in the Royal Flying Corps to help, as is being done at present; and no one can suggest that either Service is likely to shirk its share.

What weighs with us more is that with our fighting forces constituted as they are now, the demands of our armies in the field are the first business of our Military Aeronautics, and that the supply for this purpose should on no account be encroached upon. Our real defence, our speediest defence, against air-raids is undoubtedly the decisive defeat of the enemy; and no massing of protective devices against raids at home can by any stretch of the imagination warrant the weakening of our main offensive or defensive. The determination as to where we had best concentrate the main strength of our aerial devices is a purely military matter; and we shall play into the enemy's hands and make his airships worth while' indeed, if by political pressure we override our military strategists, even though we may be actuated by the highest motives of pity for the civilians, women and children in large part, who have suffered from the enemy's bombs. Let us merely say that it is fortunate

for us that the main decision is being fought on other soil than our own, and help those best able to secure the favourable decision-the Generals in charge.

The question of establishing a new Ministry of the Air was keenly debated a short time ago. Now the creation of new Ministers is accompanied by a dilution of the collective responsibility of the Cabinet which makes all thinking men very shy of such suggestions. If a popular demand results in the work of an existing Minister being taken away from him, it implies, at the least, that he is overburdened. Thus the shackles of the War Office Financial Department had recently to be removed from the purchase and manufacture of munitions; and a separate Ministry was created to discharge a task with which the existing organisation could not satisfactorily cope. Does the exceptional position of the new Arm warrant a similar procedure?

We have heard it urged, in favour of an Air Ministry, that the following advantages would be gained:

(1) The unification of the purchasing system of the two Services, and a central responsibility for whatever moneys are spent on air-work. (2) The extinction of inter-Service jealousy and competition. (3) The abolition of the secretiveness which prevents the information possessed by the Naval and Military Wings of the Royal Flying Corps, and the fresh knowledge acquired by airmen and experts, from becoming the common property of both. (4) An escape from the precedents and procedure of the War Office Finance Department. (5) The removal of competition for a lion's share of the annual money grants which might exist between the Army proper and its Air Section, or between the Navy proper and its Air Section. (6) The securing of continuity in the interest taken in the Aërial Arm after the special enthusiasm due to the war has died out. (7) The fostering and regulating of that side of aeronautical activity which has been introduced or stimulated by recent experience, e.g. the study of the upper air in general, of organised aërial fighting in squadrons and fleets, of bomb-work at long range, of methods of countering the enemy's long-range bombwork, and of a host of minor problems which do not fall within the province of the Army or the Navy as

constituted-such as the aërial magnetic compass, the finding of the vertical aërial dead-reckoning, wireless work in the upper air, and even the international legal position of aeronautics.

Now, it is well to know that each of these advantages (excepting those relating to finance), if advantages they be, existed completely in the scheme on which the Royal Flying Corps was originally formed, a scheme which continues officially to exist at the present day, though it has become in practice a dead letter for causes which may be indicated. In 1912 the Air Service of Great Britain was constituted as one body, firmly supported on two sturdy limbs, the Naval Wing of the R.F.C. and the Military Wing of the R.F.C. Legally it remains so to-day. This body was fed from one source, the Central Flying School at Upavon, with an eminent sailor at its head and a distinguished soldier as his right-hand man. This School was paid for out of joint Admiralty and War Office funds.

The technical expertise of the British Flying Corps was and is centered in one brilliant body, the Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (often known as Lord Rayleigh's Committee), on which sit service-men flyers and specialists, with certain Fellows of the Royal Society and others who have made a study of aërial matters. This Committee is in intimate relation with, on one side, the Royal Aircraft Factory, a laboratory for full-scale experimental work and design from which have emanated the now well-known B.E. and F.E. types of aeroplane; on the other, with the National Physical Laboratory, whose valuable work is done by research on models in the National wind channels, and whose funds are derived directly from the Treasury and not from either Service. It seems that, on paper, nothing could be more unified than the British Air Service; its various heads, naval, military, technical, educational, and political, meet on a central committee called the Air Committee; the Navy was to handle all airships and seaplanes, the Army all aeroplanes; and all knowledge acquired was to be their common property through this common centre.

Why then should there be, as there certainly is, a strong demand for a change which would bring about the aforesaid advantages by a process of unification?

It seems impossible to believe that the actual organisation, prior to Lord Derby's appointment, was really what has just been described; but so it is. The mischief has arisen from the fact that the matter has been profoundly misunderstood by publicists, and hence by those Parliamentarians who, with good intentions, have spasmodically interested themselves in the things of air. This misunderstanding spread to the Services themselves before the régime had had time to make itself felt. A part of the Press vaguely supported the Royal Flying Corps arrangement; another part, in assailing details of development, unwittingly attacked it; and the two camps have found their counterpart in the Services. The camp which decried the existing scheme claimed that everything was to be gained by developing into a separate school the small seaplane school which existed at Eastchurch. Shortly afterwards there appeared a large increase in the number of aeroplanes (not seaplanes) at that place. This was hailed as an important relief from the competitive method of purchase which the financial dictators of the War Office had decreed; and such no doubt it was. The backward state of seaplane design in itself warranted this development, though perhaps the incidental or partial boycott by the Navy of the Central Flying School and of the Royal Aircraft Factory was to be regretted, since it was here that the separation of the two elements of the Air Service began.

The camp which supported the position as by law established did not perceive, and indeed no one could have had such prophetic power as to foresee, that in this departure from the agreed basis of development the seed of a strongly marked separation of feeling was sown. All that was observed was that the authorities were moving. It was not till the trial of war came upon us that the severance became sufficiently glaring to call for comment; it was then noticed that there were two services using different names, a different motto, a different uniform, different schools, different grading of officers, both doing precisely the same thing but competing with one another for the supplies of aeroplanes and aeroplane materials, to the not inconsiderable pecuniary loss of the State. The camp which had unknowingly fostered this state of things at once took

credit to itself for the consequent flourishing condition of the aircraft and aircraft-engine industry in general, to the very comprehensible satisfaction of those industrials who, instead of competing for orders, found themselves the object of competition. The requisite rigour of inspection was in some parts relaxed; one recognised object of a Government dockyard-that of keeping prices to a sane level-was also swept away; and the Royal Aircraft Factory, which had fulfilled this unpopular function, could no longer discharge it with much effect at precisely the time when it was most needed, since the war had increased the demand out of all proportion to the size of this establishment.

If now we enquire why the Central Air Committee' so easily lost control of its component elements, we find the answer in its one weak point: viz. that each of the Wings (Naval and Military) had access to funds, limited it is true, but completely independent of the governing committee. They could and did snap their fingers at its agreements and resolutions. It is safe to prophesy that precisely the same fate awaits the new Committee under Lord Derby, unless, with his characteristic commonsense, he awakes to the fundamental weakness of its position. The zeal of the 'new broom' era will of course carry things along for awhile, especially at a time of hotly awakened patriotism; but let us hope that at an early date he will discover that his committee's policy, whatever it is, calls not only for funds but for the power to grant or withhold independently of those elements which he has been called in to control and unify. Whether this necessarily means that he must be a Minister of the Crown depends chiefly on the magnitude of the funds controlled; and this again depends on the attitude of Parliament towards the significance of Aeronautics in our task of maintaining our status as a firstclass Power. For ourselves, we think that the threat by air is sufficiently great; and, so thinking, the sooner we turn our air committee into an Air Office or an Airvy the better, and by all means let Lord Derby be the First Air Lord.