I have mentioned the broad lines on which the organization of the air services was built up before and during the war. We have seen that the initial foundations and framework remained and bore the great systematic structural development which was gradually required. In August, 1914, there were some 240 officers, 1800 men and 200 machines; in November, 1918, 30,000 officers, 170,000 men, and 22,000 machines, all of them better and of a higher performance than those of 1914. Our casualties during the war were about 18,000; air formations had been active in some fifteen theatres of operations; 8,000 enemy machines and 300 observation balloons had been destroyed; some three-quarters of a million photographs taken over hostile country, and 12,000,000 rounds had been fired from the air at ground targets. At Home two organizations had expanded independently from the same seed until, impeding one another's growth, their trunks had joined and a single and improved tree was the result. This is the only country where a unified air service has been adopted. In war the arrangement was successful. Against its continuance in peace the Army and Navy urge that, with the best of wills, there is a great difference between having an integral branch of a service to work with other services and having to deal with an independent organization, and argue increased cost, duplication, competition and disjointed action. There is no doubt that the liaison of the General, Naval and Air Staffs must be closened, and if co-operation with the senior services was really becoming less satisfactory, a return to the old system should be considered amongst other alternatives, but I do not think that it should be so. It must also be remembered that, although air co-operation is vital to naval and military operations, it is fortunately unlikely that there will be another war for a long time and, meanwhile, the growing essential, independent strategic action would be irretrievably impaired by the reabsorption of the Air into the Army and Navy. On the other hand, even apart from supply, such a reversion would also cause much duplication, e.g. training. The solution and the correct and logical outcome of the unification of the Air service is the close grouping of the three arms in a Ministry of Defence, and this, even in face of the obvious practical difficulties, should be adopted and co-ordination thus increased step by step. Apart from Supply, some of the services in which this could be effected are the medical, education, chaplains, mobilization stores, transport, works and buildings, accounting, communications, ordnance and national factories. A modified scheme might also be studied in which, under a Ministry of Defence, the Army and Navy each had tactical air units of seconded personnel for artillery co-operation, spotting and reconnaissance, and the Air Ministry dealt with supply, research, initial training and reserves, civil aviation and an independent air force.