April 20, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
13 
better for their country in sticking to their munition 
work. We have had at times all the indications of im- 
pending chaos and the Government has had to improvise 
methods to deal with the situation as it has arisen ; we 
ha\'e thus the Ministry of Munitions controlling our 
munition factories and iirms engaged on Government 
contracts. The difficulty of fixing fair prices for muni- 
tions, machines, etc., which had never been made before 
was thus solved by the simple method of limiting profits, 
so that to-day it is of little national consequence at what 
price orders are placed with a firm under the Ministry 
of JIunitions, since if the profit is excessive it comes back 
to the Exchequer. Though some of the more Urgent 
difficulties have been handled by these means, the result 
is far from perfect. There are many rocks yet to be 
negotiated by further improvised methods and regula- 
tions. 
" Forward " 
All these difficulties have affected and still affect the 
supply of aircraft, and more broadl\- the air service 
malcricl. It may be that the air service is more affected 
than some of the older arms inasmuch as the requirements 
are far more difficult to forecast, either as to type or 
quantity. In the question of personnel and training also 
the provision for the air services is less easy to deal with ; 
new conditions have to be met by new methods. Those 
responsible for our present position may well be 
proud of the results so far achieved ; we have in the 
Royal Fl3dng Corps a service which has never failed to 
hold its own with that of the enemy, and this under 
meteorological disabilities which favour the enemy one 
might almost say in the ratio of two to one. Still the 
motto must be continually " Forward." 
.It is thus clear that under the present conditions our 
second axiom, the plenar\- responsibility of the War Office 
and Admiralty for their men and material has had " willy 
nilly " to be subject to external regulation, the regula- 
tion of the Ministry of Munitions ; and, since it is evident 
tiiat the Ministry of Munitions is of the nature of a make- 
shift, and has not been worked out as an integral part of 
our military and .naval system, its powers and scope are 
determined as a matter of expediency rather than as a 
matter of logic. Hence at present firms which as matter 
of past habit and tradition have been working exclusively 
or nearly exclusively for the Admiralty continue to 
deal with the Naval Contracts Departments and to 
supply the Navy direct. The position with regard to 
aircraft and much of the aeronautical material is 
anomalous in this respect. It is, so far as the needs of 
the Army are concerned, dealt with direct by the 
Director-General of Military Aeronautics, and has not 
been brought into line with army materiel of other 
kinds ; it may be remarked, however, that the functions 
and scope of the Minister of Munitions are liable to be 
extended if circumstances warrant. 
I will now in the light of the above pass to examine 
the suggestions which have been made on the question of 
an independent Air Service, and will firstly deal with the 
current or popular cry that the existing air branches of 
the Army and Navy respectively —namely, the Royal 
Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service involve 
" overlapping " and therefore must be amalgamated into 
a National Air Service, independently controlled. This 
suggestion I propose to show is based on fallacious views. 
If carried out in Mo it infringes absolutely the axioms 
laid down, and can only result in confusion and the 
" evaporation " of responsibilit3^ 
The Slogan : " One Element One Service " 
There is no virtue in mere words, but the general 
public have a tendency to accept an idea neatly ex- 
pressed in an epigrammatic way, or to accept a slogan 
of any kind without enquiring too deeply into its intrinsic 
merits. I propose to deal with this cry " One element 
one service " at the outset. It sounds so very plausible 
and might be easily taken to express some fundamental 
and necessary fact. If it means anything, it means 
that there is some kind of symmetrical relation- 
ship between land, air and water, so far as warfare is 
concerned, that entitle the three so-called " elements " 
to symmetrical treatment, but will this view stand in- 
vestigation ? An army fighting on land is fightinji on 
land ; it can only be directly supported from the sea, or 
it can only be directly in relation to naval operations 
when the zone of hostilities extends to the littoral. A 
navy fighting at sea is fighting at sea ; it can only be 
directly affected, and the two present Services can only 
directly participate in a given operation when that 
operation is in a coastal region. Under these conditions 
the employment of two independent Services under their 
respective Ministerial heads is clearly appropriate. 
. The proportion of the total world area in which hos- 
tilities common to the two Services can take place is 
small compared to the total areas involved. Thus an 
exclusively naval action may take place anywhere on 
the broad ocean, or in our narrower seas, such as the 
North Sea or English Channel. An exclusively military 
operation may take place anywhere in the length and 
breadth of a continent. In neither case will the one 
service be called upon to co-operate directly with the 
other. It is only when the naval operations affect a 
coast line or the military operations stretch to within 
range of naval guns that the two Services are required 
to act in conjunction. 
Is there any analogy to this in the air ? The answer 
is emphatically no. There is no place in the field of 
military operations where aircraft cannot co-operate ; 
the coast line of the air is the surface of the earth and the 
surface of the sea ; there is nowhere on the surface of our 
seas or the broad ocean where aircraft cannot co-operiate 
with the Navy ; thus the conditions are totally dissimilar. 
In the future of military operations the co-operation of 
aircraft — aeroplanes — will be continuous, and the aero- 
nautical arm will be constantly acting in the closest 
possible detailed relationship with the other arms of the 
Service ; it is so acting to-day. In the Navy again 
aircraft, both large dirigibles and aeroplanes, and so- 
called seaplanes, will be acting continuously, undertaking 
reconnaissance, bombing, torpedoing, spotting, and per- 
haps other duties not yet defined. The employment of 
aircraft as an auxiliary to the Navy is relatively back- 
ward, but every month has its record of progress and 
every year will show its accumulated advance ; it may 
be anticipated the relation will ultirnately be as intimate 
(or nearly so) as that in the sister Service. 
Go-operated Action 
The situation is not symmetrical, and the slogan 
" One Element one Service " has no rational foundation 
in fact 
If naval and military operations were interlocked as 
closely as aircraft and military operations are, on the one 
hand, or as aircraft and naval operations give promise of 
becoming on the other, it is more than doubtful whether 
our present system of two independent Services would be 
found the best solution as it is to-day. When it is 
required to conduct joint operations, as in Gallipoli 
recently, and as in many of the great beUigeient opera- 
rions of history, the forces representing the two Services 
are under two separate commands and the success of the 
operations in every case largely depends upon the working 
together of the responsible Commanders. Many ex- 
amples could be quoted from history where a failure of 
close co-operation has resulted in a corresponding failure 
of the operation as a whole. There is no doubt that 
if such operations were the rule rather than the exception 
the system of controlling Army and Navy as two inde- 
pendent Services would be found to possess glaring 
defects. 
But the inter-relation of Army and Navy even under 
conditions of co-operation is by no means so close as that 
which experience has proved necessary and desirable be- 
tween the Army and its Air Service, and the divorcing of 
the one from the other or the division of responsibility, 
however effected between the Flying f orps, by whate\-er 
name it may be called, and the other arms of the military 
service, must be considered impossible to the extent of 
absurdity; hkewise in the R.N.A.S. I am sure that in 
saying this my opinion would receive the support of 
every military officer of experience and of every strategist 
or tactician of repute. 
Almost as insidious a suggestion as that involved in 
the cry " One element one service," is contained in the 
suggestion that the provision of materiel and the training 
of personnel should be vested in a central authority. 
The idea of those who advocate this scheme appears to 
