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§ 101. The Command of the Air, and its Limitations. The term "command of the air" can never be taken to carry a meaning so wide or far-reaching, or in any sense so comprehensive, as that understood when we speak of the "command of the sea." Sea-power has its origin and secret in the fact that (as rightly insisted by Mahan) the seas control the main highways of international commerce and communication; thus sea-power is necessarily world-power. It would not, strictly speaking, be true to say that the command of the sea essentially involves world-wide supremacy; but so far as a navy is provided with fully equipped bases, so far will its power extend in its plenitude. It has sometimes been rashly assumed by writers that in the future air-power is not only going to exercise an influence as wide-spread and decisive as sea-power, but is, in fact, about to take a superior position, and that the latter will lose some of its present character and importance. No such conclusion can at present be justified. It is, of course, to-day considered bad form to call any engineering project impossible; but in view of the fact that, after making every reasonable allowance for possible developments, the maximum distance that can be flown by an aeroplane without replenishment is less than 2,000 miles, it is clear that the range or radius of action of an air fleet must be