With the Air Service under separate control, financially as well as in an executive and administrative sense, is it certain that the Admiralty will be able to obtain machines and personnel in the necessary numbers to carry out all the experimental and training work that is essential for efficiency in action?
Is it also beyond doubt that unity of command at sea, which is essential to victory, will be preserved?
In view of all the possibilities which the future holds now that the airship and aeroplane have arrived, it is well that there should be no doubt on such matters, for inefficiency might in conceivable circumstances spell defeat.
Then there is the question of the personnel of the fleet.

It would be most unwise to allow the strength of the trained personnel of the Navy to fall below the limit of reasonable safety, because it is upon that trained personnel that the success of the enormous expansions needed in war so largely depends.

This was found during the late struggle, when the personnel was expanded from 150,000 to upwards of 400,000, throwing upon the pre-war nucleus a heavy responsibility in training, equipment and organizing.

Without the backbone of a highly trained personnel of sufficient strength, developments in time of sudden emergency cannot possibly be effected.

In the late war we suffered in this respect, and we should not forget the lesson.
In future wars, if any such should occur, trained personnel will be of even greater importance than it was in the Great War, because the advance of science increases constantly the importance of the highly trained individual, and if nothing else is certain it can surely be predicted that science will play an increasing part in warfare in the future.