The above are all under the command of the Air Officer commanding, who is really doing the ordinary duties of a General; but in addition there is the Iraq Army of which King Faisal is nominally the Commanderin-Chief, and which is administered by a Ministry of Defence at Bagdad. This consists of:

3 Regiments of cavalry.
3 Batteries of artillery.
6 Battalions of infantry.

1 Frontier company (infantry).
3 Transport companies.

Thus it will be seen that aeroplanes are really acting in an auxiliary capacity to the military (ground) forces in Iraq, and there is no justification for claiming that 'Air Force Control' has superseded 'Military Command' there and that it might do so elsewhere if it were allowed.

This digression from our geographical survey is, perhaps, not unwarranted, because it will emphasise the fact that outside the British Isles, air power as a part of Imperial defence is essentially subordinate in principle to the older-established defence forces. Aeroplanes may assist, but cannot replace, garrisons in the broken and difficult country of the north-west frontier and in other outposts of Empire, especially at naval bases. Likewise they can assist the fleet, and some day may permit of a certain amount of economy in numbers of auxiliary warships required to keep open the sea routes; but they have neither the range of action, the endurance, nor many other essentials to enable them to do cruisers' duties.

Moving farther East we find little or no air menace to British territory. Japan's growing air force is defensive not offensive, so far as we are concerned, for she is too far removed from Australia and New Zealand to threaten either of those Dominions so long as we have command of the sea.

Where aircraft must be carried in ships to bring them within striking-range of their objectives, sea power, rather than air power, is the true defence against air attack.

This brings us to the question of the United States in relation to British Air Power. That great nation is not lacking in enthusiasts for an independent air service who base their arguments on fantastic pictures of Britain attacking New York from a huge, and incidentally, nonexistent air base in Western Canada. In sober fact there is no genuine air menace of any kind to the United States. Neither the British nor the Japanese fleets could support air warfare against that country on a scale which would have any chance of success, and without the support of sea power neither British nor Japanese air power could be effective at such a great distance from home resources. The converse equally applies, and, in the present stage of aircraft development, the considerable air forces of the United States are not a menace to us. Actually they are organised as specialist branches of the United States navy and army, which is their logical rôle.

We see, therefore, that, reviewing the Empire as a whole, it is only in and from Britain that we may have to wage air warfare on such a scale that it might call for a national force comparable to the Navy and the Army in the late war. The fact that a force of such dimensions might be needed may well justify the maintenance of the Royal Air Force as a separate Service, but does it necessarily justify an Air Ministry, and is that department essential or beneficial to British Air Power?

So far as actual numbers are concerned there is no logical argument for a separate Department. The personnel of the various branches of the Army and Navy swelled to huge figures in the Great War; but this certainly did not call for a separate Ministry to administrate each or any one of them. From an operational point of view, a separate Air Ministry, with a separate Air Staff and its appendage, a separate Air Staff College, is not only undesirable and an unwarrantable extravagance in time of peace, but nothing short of a grave national danger in time of war. The whole structure rests on a confused and befogged conception of air warfare, which regards this as a new kind of war in a new plane, demanding new doctrines of strategy and tactics, and, therefore, a separate and independent system of

command. 'Air warfare' really includes war from the air and war in the air, and it is necessary to differentiate clearly between the two.

As man lives and his possessions rest on the land or in ships floating on the sea, obviously the real objectives for an enemy in war must continue to be those on the ground level and not in the sky. The main purpose of using aircraft in war is therefore to attack such objectives from the air or to give increased vision to land and sea forces. Even war against hostile air forces will be mainly directed against their bases, and to bombing enemy aeroplanes on the ground rather than trying to shoot them on the wing.' In other words, fighting in the air is incidental to war from the air or other uses to which aircraft will be put; it is not their main purpose.

Apart from this principle of true objectives, it is so difficult for aircraft to ensure contact with an enemy in the air and so easy for them to scatter and thus avoid a pitched battle, that engagements between great masses of aeroplanes must be the exception rather than the rule. If fighting in the air does assume serious proportions, it is more likely to occur where aircraft are cooperating with land or sea forces, than in so-called 'independent air operations.' It cannot, by itself, end a

war.

Yet we have a Ministry and a Staff sedulously isolating themselves from those ministries and staffs whose respective business it is to conduct war on land and on the sea, evolving separate doctrines and tenets for the part aircraft is to play in such warfare, and bent on infusing the personnel of the Royal Air Force with a spirit of being independent of the older Services. Cooperation is at best a compromise, but it is a necessary one in the case of two Services, like the Navy and Army, whose chief functions lie in two different elements. In the case of war from the air, there is no justification whatever for co-operation, implying divided command, where unity of control can and should be effected, and war from the air is the chief function of the Royal Air Force. Under the present régime, the staffs of the Army and Navy, instead of being increasingly permeated with a knowledge of the use of aircraft as a weapon of war,

are unable to develop that knowledge because they are denied the training and control of air forces whose chief métier in war should be the same in principle as that of the Army and Navy. Inefficiency and extravagance seem to reach a climax in a system which maintains an organisation under the War Office responsible for our anti-aircraft defences and another under the Air Ministry charged with home air defences.

Such division of command and isolation of warthought is a very weak spot in our national defences. It is beneficial to neither our sea, land, nor air forces, but only to an unnecessary and expensive host of bureaucrats, Civil Service officials, and clerks in the Air Ministry. An attempt has been made by this Department to create a sort of Trade Union in flying. It was soon demonstrated that so far as naval air work was concerned, this could not be divorced from sea training. The result has been inter-departmental warfare lasting over a period of years and forever smouldering. The Air Ministry was forced to leaven their Trade Union with 70 per cent. of naval officers as pilots, and 100 per cent. as observers for the Fleet Air arm; but political influence was brought to bear to save the face of a Government Department whose foundations are exceedingly insecure, and any naval officer who flies an aeroplane must take the Trade Union ticket in the form of a temporary commission in the Royal Air Force. The position is Gilbertian in the extreme; on the bridge of an aircraft carrier these officers are Lieutenants, R.N.; in the hangar of the same ship they are Flight Lieutenants, R.A.F. Afloat they are under naval command and discipline; on shore they come under the ægis of the Air Ministry although they still belong to the Fleet Air Arm. The effect is to produce administrative chaos, inefficient training, heartburning and dissatisfaction amongst the personnel, and a system which could not possibly survive the test of war.

The Army has not progressed as far as the Navy in wringing from a reluctant Air Ministry its essential needs in air services, and Army co-operation, so called, is far from perfection. The Trade Union ring is closed far more rigidly against military than against naval intrusion, for the Air Ministry realise that the weakest

spot in their constitution is due to the fact that the greater part of the Royal Air Force exists to perform the same functions as the Army, i.e. the attack and defence of territory, and that these functions should logically be co-ordinated in one department and under one staff, responsible in war for what is essentially military, as distinct from naval, strategy.

There remains that side of the Air Ministry which deals with civil aviation. This is often regarded as one of the stoutest planks in their structure, for it is argued that flying is such a tender growth that civil and Service aviation should be closely allied and should help each other. This is yet another myth which merits exposure.

Civil aviation, it is generally admitted, cannot yet fly alone,' and while there is need for a Government subsidy, it is not unnatural that there should be some degree of State control. Under the Air Ministry system, however, the taxpayer is paying not far short of £500,000 per annum towards British civil aviation, and the results are very meagre. In the Air Estimates for 1926 we find a sum of £462,000 for civil aviation, aerodromes, air routes and surveys, technical equipment, works and lands, and subsidies; a further £14,467 in respect of the Directorate of Civil Aviation, and £7900 for meteorological services at civil aerodromes, making £484,367 in all. This section of the Ministry should also, of course, be debited with some share of the cost of the office of the Secretary of State for Air, as the latter exists not only to administer the Royal Air Force, but also the directorate of civil aviation.

For this large sum the country only secures :

1. A share in Imperial Airways, Ltd., whose total fleet is no more than 14 aeroplanes.

2. An interest in the, so far, very little developed Imperial air routes.

3. An interest in a very nebulous scheme for the development of commercial airships.

4. An interest in the promotion of half a dozen small aeroplane clubs.

With the exception of the most useful efforts of these