tual
assistance, is a question that stirs deep feeling, so that the very
virtues which make men serviceable to their country are ranged in
opposition one to another. The old allegiances are not easily forgotten;
when a sailor learns to fly he remains a sailor, and the air for him is
merely the roof of the sea. The knowledge, moreover, gained from his
life at sea is knowledge not only useful but essential to him if he is
to do good work in the Naval Air Service. He must be able to recognize
the various types of war vessels, and the various nationalities of
vessels of the merchant marine. He must know all about the submarine,
the mine, and the torpedo. He must be well versed in weather
observation, and able to navigate safely without the aid of landmarks.
He must understand naval tactics, and must be able to bear a part in
them. All this, it has been urged by many sailors, is a much more
complicated and experienced business than the mere flying of an
aeroplane. The Naval Air Service, they contend, should be a part of the
navy.

There is force and weight in these contentions, yet they are not
conclusive. If the navy were itself a new invention, a very similar kind
of argument might be used to subordinate it to the army. The main
business of the navy, it might be said, is to supply the army with
transport facilities and mobile gun-platforms. But this is absurd; the
sea will not submit to so cavalier a treatment. Those who believe in a
single air force base their opinion on certain very simple
considerations. As the prime business of a navy is the navigation of the
sea, so, they hold, the prime business of an air force is the navigation
of the air; all its other activities depend on this. The science of
aeronautics is yet in its childhood; its development must not be cramped
by tying it too closely to a service which works under narrower
conditions. If there should be another great war (and though no one
desires it, no one dares to think it impossible), the fittest man to
hold the command of united land and sea forces might well be a Marshal
of the Air. But the strongest argument for a single air force is not so
much an argument as an instinct. Every kind of warfare develops in men
its own type of character. The virtues of the soldier and the virtues of
the sailor are not the same; or, if they are the same (for courage and
duty can never be superseded), they are the same with surprising
differences. The soldier is drilled t