I

And what, the reader will ask, is the conclusion of the whole matter?

First, how far did Tanks really contribute to our overthrow of the Germans?

Secondly, what would be the place of the Tank if another war broke out within the next generation; and, thirdly, what place are Tanks going to be given in the reconstituted British Army?

As far as they can be answered, we will reply to these questions in order. For upon the performances of the Tanks in this war, will be—or should be—based the answers to the other questions, and on this point we propose to call the evidence of three or four expert witnesses.

For the rest, the reader has had an opportunity of studying a large mass of evidence for himself.

He has seen how, when the line from Switzerland to the sea had been formed, both armies sought some means of putting an end to the stalemate.

How to both the Allies and the Germans the solution by artillery was the first to occur. How, secondly, we and the Germans each according to our national habits of mind, thought of another solution. The Germans—who were chemists—of gas, used treacherously in despite of signed undertakings to the contrary; we, who were mechanics, of a self-propelled shield, from behind which we could direct an effective fire.

He knows how gas was countered, after the first surprise, by means of various air-filtering devices; but how the Tank gradually revolutionised warfare, because there was no particular specific or antidote to the Tank, which depended not so much upon surprise as on the simple factors of its enormous fire power, and its ability to surmount obstacles. For whether the troops attacked had fought against Tanks before or no, the Tank crushed down wire and smothered machine-gun fire just the same.

Marshal Foch is the first of our witnesses.

He sketches the evolution of the Tank, and describes the circumstances which called it into being, in his foreword to the English translation of his republished Principles of War. He has dealt with the old slowness of “digging in.”

We translate his words literally:

Monsieur Loucheur—in January 1919 French Minister of Munitions—was a strong advocate for Tanks in the French Army.

Sir Douglas Haig’s summing up in his Despatch, though necessarily conservative, is not therefore the less significant:

Lastly, what is the opinion of the enemy?

Herr Maximilian Harden in a speech upon the causes of the German defeat, gave first place to the “physical shock of the Tank,” at which “Ludendorff had laughed.”

Speaking for the Minister of War in the Reichstag, General Wrisberg said:

The G.O.C. of the 51st German Corps, in an Order dated July 23, 1918, remarks: “As soon as the Tanks are destroyed the whole attack fails.”

On October 23 the German Wireless published the following statement by General Scheuch, Minister of War:

The following passage occurred in a German Order issued on August 12, 1918:

The German Press was also very generally inclined to attribute the German failure to the Allied use of Tanks, and their attitude is well illustrated by the following paragraph which appeared early in October, a time when German journalists seem to have been most carefully instructed from official quarters. It was their task to prepare the German people for surrender.

II

The question of the place of Tanks in the next war has been answered with the greatest emphasis by some enthusiastic advocates of this arm.

The possession of a superior weapon, they say, ensures victory to the army which possesses it. In war, any army, even if led by a mediocre General, can safely meet an army of the previous century, though the old force be led by the greatest military genius of his age.

In every case, they say, the superior weapon would have defeated the great tactician before he had had time to show his mettle. To repeat the words of the German journalist: “Their infantry would be opposed to an enemy to whom it could do little or no harm.”

We shall not discuss here the materialistic argument, except to say that if it were entirely true, savages and badly-equipped Tribesmen would never have completely beaten well-armed civilised troops. Yet they have done so on frequent occasions. Witness the First Afghan War, the Zulu Wars, the American-Indian Wars, and a host of minor actions. Material only wins hands down when the moral of the side possessing it is at least fairly comparable to that of its opponents. Otherwise Byzantium with its “Greek Fire” would have ruled the world.

According to this “material” school of thought, we have in Tanks our superior weapon. They will be developed upon more than one line, and we shall have cross-country equivalents for all arms and services except heavy artillery, the Navy and the Air Force.

Mr. Hugh Pollard, writing in the English Review of January 1919 states the case of the mechanical warfare and Tank enthusiasts, with great vigour and ingenuity.

Tanks of various speeds and carrying various weapons, will replace both infantry and cavalry, for one full size modern heavy Tank holding eight men has the aggressive power of a hundred infantry with rifles, bayonets, bombs and Lewis guns. The Whippet has about the same speed and radius as cavalry, and one Whippet holding two men “could withstand the onslaught of a cavalry regiment and kill it off to the last man and the last horse without being exposed to the least danger or inconvenience.” We shall soon regard the heroic tale of how men once exposed their defenceless bodies to machine-gun fire and shells, and depended for the Élan of their assault upon the weight of human limbs and the endurance of human muscles as almost legendary.

The arguments of those who maintain that the Tank must always be dependent upon the older arms are nearly all based upon the assumption that the Tank is already limited. “It is pointed out that they cannot cross rivers, that they are not proof against shell-fire, against mines, against special forms of attack. The answer is that the Tank of to-day may be subject to casualties, but all the skill and resources of the German nation have failed to produce an effective answer to Tanks, that river after river has been crossed, that line after line of ‘impregnable’ defences have fallen, that deeply Écheloned artillery particularly arranged to fight Tanks has failed before Tank and aeroplane attack. We come to a war of sea, air, and land fleets acting in co-operation. Anti-Tank artillery is vulnerable to armoured planes. The big commercial freight-carrying planes of the future might even fly light Tanks into the heart of hostile territory. The unprotected men and arms of the present day must disappear.”

And here another question is suggested—a question upon which the civilian ought to satisfy himself. Let us for the moment assume that it is superiority in weapons, not better generalship, not a more stubborn “will to win,” that decides the fate of war.

What reason have we to suppose that it will be superiority in Tanks and not in some other weapon, in aeroplanes for example, that will decide the next conflict?

At present, when we try to imagine war upon a foreign army waged on one side by air alone, we encounter a dozen mechanical difficulties even in our attempted picture of the first stages: the enormous paraphernalia of bases, the ground-staff, fuel, weather conditions, difficulties of landing, and finally, what is perhaps the fundamental difficulty.

The aeroplane alone, like the big gun, is not an engine by whose means it is possible to come into decisive contact with an enemy who chooses to remain on the ground. The rabbits can always go to earth when they see the gliding shadow of the hawk.

Till both sides are equipped solely for air combat, Tanks or infantry will still be needed to play the part of ferret.

But these difficulties will almost certainly some day be overcome.

When they have been solved, then the day of the comparatively cumbersome Tank, with its dependence upon shipping and rail transport will be over. But that will not be in our time we are assured. To us, therefore, “War in the Air” remains of a somewhat academic interest. We have got to see to it that we survive the present.

For can the most optimistic of us truthfully declare, as he casts his eye over the world, as he looks from Middle Europe to the Far East, from Russia to Mexico, from the Balkans to Egypt, or from Asia Minor to the confines of India, that we need not even consider the possibility of a war within his own generation? Alas, no!

Now having for the moment dismissed the purely air war from our calculations, we can be pretty certain that a war between civilised countries fought within that period would not differ utterly from the war which is just over, and that a war between a civilised and an uncivilised country would differ from it only along well-known lines.

We have heard a good deal of evidence which makes it appear certain that, every other factor having cancelled out, the fact that the French and British possessed Tanks and the Germans did not, was just enough to win the last war for the Allies. Let us then sedulously cultivate the grub of the present that we may survive to see the more glorious butterfly of the future—perhaps the aerial Tank. Shall we neglect the Tank because it seems likely that in this (as please Heaven in most other affairs) our sons will go one better?

The British and French led, and in 1919 still lead, absolutely with Tanks.

If we like to carry on, we have such a start both in design and manufacturing experience, that we could easily make it impossible for any other nation to draw abreast of us during the period after which we are assuming the “Tank Age” in military evolution may conceivably be over.

It is, of course, impossible to be too discreet as to the new machines which have already been made and tested, or as to the new projects which exist.

Perhaps the position can be best indicated by saying that progress has been so rapid of late that those who know, would probably be delighted to sell any number of Mark V. Tanks to a prospective enemy.

III

The present writers are ignorant whether we have determined to keep our lead or no. Shall we have the foresight, when it comes to the remodelling of the Army, to give to Tanks the place they ought to hold in it? Shall we be willing to spend money on experiments, money which we must spend if we want to keep that lead? Will the Tanks be given the facilities for both mechanical and tactical training that they ought to have? We may so easily slide back into our old groove. It is always hard to turn to new ways, and to give a preponderating place in the “New Model” to Tanks, would certainly be to effect a very radical change. There does seem to be a certain fear that the Army and the public may feel that the Tanks are all right for War, but hardly the thing for soldiering.

And yet how well the requirements of a strong force of Tanks would in reality fit the kind of framework which the wisest minds seem agreed should be our Army of the future. We ought to have, they say, a small and highly specialised Standing Army, and behind that a vast Citizen Army on the basis of the Territorial system. What weapon could be more suitably added to the gun and the aeroplane than the Tank in the Regular Army? Our Standing Army would thus consist of a nucleus of mechanical experts.

Nor need the question of finance ever rise spectre-like between us and the idea of a strong force of Tanks, for the Tank is an absurdly cheap weapon compared with its co-efficient of infantry.

But there is another direction in which, if it claim any considerable place in our Standing Army, the Tank must make good. That army may at any moment be called upon to undertake police work in any part of the world.

The Tank, even the old Mark I., is, as we saw at Gaza, suitable for desert warfare. The Mark V. and Whippets with General Denikin’s force in Russia have been prodigiously successful, and there are probably few species of campaign against a semi-civilised enemy in which the newer “Medium” Tanks would not do admirably.

Another point is that “minor wars” are fought by us with as much avoidance of bloodshed as is compatible with the bringing of our opponents to reason.

A weapon which admittedly affected the moral even of admirably disciplined troops like the Germans to a phenomenal degree, is particularly well adapted to this purpose.

It is infinitely more humane to appal a rioter or a savage by showing him a Tank than to shoot him down with an inoffensive looking machine-gun.109

There is yet one final consideration.

The reader may still very properly object: “Though the Tank may, as it rather begins to appear, have been the decisive factor in the last War, and though it might be very convenient to use it again, before we put our money on it, literally and metaphorically, for the future, are we sure that it is a weapon which suits the British soldier? Time was when at the direction of Military Experts we spent a great deal of money upon the building of forts at home and abroad which were never of the slightest use to any one, because they did not suit our style of fighting. What reason have we to suppose that we shall like the Tank as a permanent addition on a large scale to the equipment of our Army?” The present authors consider this line of criticism a very proper one. They differ from the “hardshell” advocates of the superior weapon in considering it of the greatest importance that the balance and poise of the broadsword should suit the hand that is to wield it. But they believe that the Tank, like the ship and the aeroplane, is a weapon peculiarly suited to the British temperament, and that fundamentally it was for that reason that we, and not some other nation, first evolved it. For good or ill, our Commanders both on land and sea have certain peculiarities. Our men dislike standing on the defensive. They hate digging, and in the present War were beaten by the Germans every time at this particularly unpopular form of activity. Also, almost worse than digging, do they hate carrying things on their backs, and we are noted among all nations as the least tolerant of burdens. All these peculiarities have filled the ranks of the Navy and of the Cavalry, and all these peculiarities are suited by the aeroplanes and the Land Ships. Our Commanders, like their men, prefer to be the attackers, and like a war of movement. Almost the whole creed of Nelson, our most popular fighting-hero, was expressed in his assertion that the first and last duty of an Admiral was to find out the enemy’s fleet and to attack it, and in his famous signal, “Engage the enemy more closely.”

Further, our leaders particularly and temperamentally dislike a large butcher’s bill. It was, indeed, their extreme reluctance to send unprotected men to meet the hail of bullets from German machine-guns, that lay behind most of the ostensible reasons for which the Tanks were first given a trial. It was a deciding factor. We may even perhaps say without seeming fantastic that it was their inhumanity which cost the Germans the War. They had no bowels of compassion, and were just as ready to send the “infantry equivalent” (say seventy unprotected men) over the top as they were to put in seven men enclosed in armour. To them it was the coldest question of military expediency. Purely upon military considerations they decided against the seven clad in armour. Our Commanders, though in theory they were inclined to agree with the German Higher Command, though they recognised the ultimate cruelty of the policy of “cheap war,” and knew, with Nelson, that they had not come to the Western Front to preserve their lives, were yet tempted by the idea of using steel and petrol in place of flesh and blood. More than once in the course of the chequered career of the Tanks it was this consideration which saved the Corps from extinction.

But it is not, of course, enough that the Tank offers protection to those who fight in it. A trench or a hole in the ground will do the same. But the Tank is essentially a mobile weapon of offence. It is the weapon for the nation which does not fight willingly, but when it fights, fights to win, and to win quickly with as little bloodshed as possible. It is the weapon for men who, if they must fight, like to fight like intelligent beings still subjecting the material world to their will, and who are most unwillingly reduced to the rÔles of mere marching automata, bearers of burdens and diggers of the soil, rÔles from which the patient German did not seem averse.

IV

The creed of the present writers can be very briefly summarised. A considerable amount of evidence points to the conclusion that in the phase at which military science has arrived, and at which it will probably remain for at least a generation, a superior force of Tanks can always tip the scales of the military balance of power.

Within the period of a generation, a time may again come when we shall have to defend our lives and our liberties. We lead the world in the design and manufacture of Tanks. Let us not abandon that lead in the production and use of a vital weapon.

We know too well the tragic cost of one day of war, and it has been said that had we been visibly prepared the Germans would not have attacked.

Obviously we cannot be going to fall again so quickly into an old error. We certainly intend to be armed, but who can say that through sheer absence of mind it will not be with arquebuses? Surely not for the sake of Army precedent, for the sake of emphasising our pacific intentions, for the sake of saving a little money, or even—dearest of all—for the luxury of “not bothering” about our Army, must we lose our present unparalleled position of advantage. This advantage is not only a material one. The Tanks are accustomed to win. Do not let us throw away a fine tradition of victory.

Of all that, in our agony of striving we gained by the way, let us lose nothing.

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