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And here are others that may cause people to sit up and really think. Shall this nation prepare first against aerial attack or against naval attack? From what direction will the attack come and what forms will it take? Will it be made by a foreign Navy or by a foreign Air Service? Will it be a joint air and navy attack? Will it come from a land base or a floating base? Will it be first an attempt to seize a land base or a harbor in which airplane carriers can operate or will it be a bolt from the skies damaging our great crowded cities and our principal routes of communication? Or will we wake up some fine morning to find detachments of foreigners here and there all over the country with guns at the heads of officials or explosives where they can do the most damage if there is opposition? These two later are probably the most remote contingencies, but the joint Navy and air attacks are not matters of the future, they are feasibilities of today. 

How can we meet them, not tomorrow but today? Our harbor defenses can delay entrance to our harbors if we will protect the batteries against airplane attacks. Our mobile coast defense armament can make a harbor base untenable. Our land aircraft can attack their planes as they fly between the harbor base and the cities they are attacking. Our mobile air defenses can help too. But what of attacks from floating bases far out at sea, coupled with ship's fire at intervals from extreme gun range. The real air enthusiasts claim that this form of attack can be met by aircraft alone. At twenty miles from the shore, perhaps it can. The hostile fleet would certainly be handicapped because the shore planes would have short trips back and forth from the flying fields and could drop bombs at the ships, machine gun their searchlights andnight and attack their aircraft in a way to make them soon desist.

But then, when the line of communication from shore stretched out, the shore planes attacking the fleet would have the same argument against themselves that they had at first against the ship's planes. Here it begins to look as though we needed plenty of floating equipment if we wanted the fleet to leave the vicinity or to destroy it. Now, the question comes up. Is there a difference between Army Aviation and Navy aviation. Shall the Navy, which is already short of deep sea ships and personnel get back into the old habit of spending its money on the purchase and maintenance of innumerable shore stations which absorb its personnel, stirring up public wrath and ridicule against anchored fleets, land sailors, and political ship yards?  

Shall the Army continue forever being quartered as a spending machinery in the political bailiwick of favored politicians? Shall the Air Service under the pretext of climate, be the pawn of politicians and land speculators?

No; Before it is too late, let us do with the Air Service, things most urgently needed. Blue sea air equipment for the Navy, vis., floating bases with special planes, sea planes, rigid dirigibles, fire control [[crossed out]] , [[/crossed out]] kites and airships, [[crossed out]] and [[/crossed out]] landing [[crossed out]] . [[/crossed out]] ,storage and training concessions at Army shore stations in the United States and their own shore stations on islands under purely naval control. In the great colonial possessions, the degree of Army or Naval preponderance should decide the matter of control.