It is hardly known to the general public--which seems a pity--that the Navy has, working on the Western Front, some Air Squadrons who fly only over the land and have not so much as seen the sea, except by chance or from a long distance, from year's end to year's end. They have carried into their shore-going lives a number of Navy ways, like the curt "Thank God" grace at the end of a meal, or the mustering of all hands for "Divisions" (Navalese for "Parade") in the morning, marking off the time by so many "bells," hoisting and lowering at sunrise and sunset the white ensign flown on a flagstaff on the 'drome; they stick to their Navy ratings of petty officers and sub-lieutenants and so on, and interlard their speech more or less with Navy lingo--a very useful and expressive one, by the way, in describing air manœuvres--but otherwise carry out their patrols and air work with, and on about the same lines as, the R.F.C. Naval Number Something is a "fighting scout" Squadron, which means that its sole occupation in life is to hunt for trouble, to find and fight, "sink, burn or destroy" Huns. At first thought it may seem to the Army which fights "on the floor" that this job of a fighting machine is one which need interest no one outside the Air Service, that it is airman fighting against airman, and that, except from a point of mere sporting interest, the results of these fights don't concern or affect the rest of the Army, that the war would roll on just the same for them whichever side had the upper hand in the air fighting. Those who think so are very far wrong, because it is on the fighters pure and simple that the air mastery depends. Air work is a business, a highly complicated, completely organised and efficient business, and one bit of it has to dovetail into another just as the Army's does. The machines which spot for our guns, and direct the shooting of our batteries to destroy enemy batteries which would otherwise destroy our trenches and our men in them; the reconnaissance machines which fly up and down Hunland all day and bring back reports of the movements of troops and trains and the concentration or removal of forces, and generally do work of which full and true value is known only to those Heads running the war; the photographing machines which bring back thousands of pictures of all sorts--the line knows a few, a very few, of these, and their officers study very attentively the trench photos before they go over the top in a raid or an attack, and so learn exactly how, why, and where they are to go; the bombing machines which blow up dumps of ammunition destined for the destruction of trenches and men, derail trains bringing up reinforcements or ammunition to the Hun firing line, knock about the 'dromes and the machines which otherwise would be gun-spotting, reconnoitring, and bombing over our lines--and perhaps some day one may tell just how many Gotha raids have been upset, and cancelled by our bomb-raids on a Hun 'drome--all