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A comparative study of the appropriations asked for by the Army and Navy Air Services is worth while. The Army asks for airships. The Navy asks for airplanes. "Terrible", says a constructor of the Navy, "the airship is a naval development". "What is the Navy trying to do, get the air service too just because a compass is used once in a while?" "Where do I get off on this?" asks the coast artilleryman, "that air gang is talking about aerial coast defense, darned if I want and ex-cavalryman over my job." "Told you so," says a shore navy man, "we'll got that Army gang back to their plains and mountains, we'll stop these raids on the public treasury for useless shore forts, let a fellow ashore once in a while with a ship's gun and he will show naval airman; what is the Army Air Service doing so close to the coast anyhow? Let the fleet air reserve take the job off their hands. See what England’s Navy has always done. Why burden the taxpayer with an Army anyhow?"

So or indefinitely. First a defiant and aggressive Army down at the shore with salt water in its boots, stopped only by the sea from overt acts of violence against the world, comforting a timid and quaking Navy that its havens of refuge are safe. Then a great and self assumed Navy whose activities run from the top of Pikes Peak to the islands of the antipodes. Then an enthusiastic Air Service which speaks of great aerial combats over seas and over mountains, of hosts that know no territorial boundaries, of an earth-free from naval and military burdens. What are the poor Congressmen and Senators going to do about it? We have this war to pay for abut any man who knows what the aerial situation is knows it must be met and met promptly? What will be the price, who will run the show?

now, before the war, there was a disreputable calling known as Junkman. He savored of dirty rags, rusty stoves, etc. and held forth on back alleys. The War exalted him to a respectable place in business. Salvage was the wonderful word that did it. Now, people are being tried for crooked salvage operations, running as high as thirty millions. Salvage has filled great warehouses. Salvage is one of our hopst[[strikethrough]]o[[/strikethrough]]o ease the burden of war costs.

Salvage is the word. Why not build our Air Service and our new defense schemes on salvage. Salvage of What? Salvage of the Army and Navy stations now owned. Salvage of the land purchased or rented for cantonments. Salvage of the Arsenals and factories built for war production. Salvage of the personnel, partly trained, but hastily demobilized. Their education is an asset.

But having rescued these items from loss, what sort of a system shall they be part of? Is the Navy to abandon its ships? Is the Army to abandon its calling? Which branch has the most obsolete stations and equipment that can be used in the new projects? Which has the greatest number of personnel rendered idle by the change in events? Which one must revolutionize its stations, equipment and strategy, the most? That is a hard question to propound and here is another question that has probably caused more heated arguments than any other. Shall this nation first make its defensive preparations against attacks from the sea?