The "Tanks "—A New War-motor.
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The sensation of the news sheets of last week was the initial and prompt success of the British Army's latest fighting machines, deliberately misnamed "tanks." This most-modern application of the motor vehicle to the barbarous purposes of war has roused great public enthusiasm, stimulated adroitly by a Press reeking of what is now commonplace sensation. There is danger that the somewhat-theatrical details of the first achievements of the " tanks " will lead the stay-at-home public to expect too much from a type ofself-propelled armoured vehicle which was bound to come. Imaginative novelists long ago predicted its arrival ; automobile engineers long regarded it as a more-or-less imminent possibility ; many others guessed its coming. The actual mechanical device which ha § rendered this cross-country pachyderm possible is the chain track—the " Caterpillar ' type of driving gear. That is no secret. We naturally do net know all the detail construction of the machine, and even did we, it would not be permissible as yet to write of it, but it is common knowledge that the giant structure of heavy high-resistance armour, and the considerable motor installation, are of immense weight and very considerable length. The British military authorities alone took this
device seriously a number of years ago. One of the earliest machines was, it will be recalled, on parade in the "grand finale" at the last Naval and Military Tournament. Few of us then thought that we were watching the elementary fore-runner and essential basis of the armoured ichthyosaurus. Few of us, indeed, would recognize the Tournament, were one,, in all its modern panoply, to be possible to-morrow.
There will be great developments of the chain-track idea, already well considered before the war, for motor Tploughing and cultivating. Its use is extremely unlikely on common roads, but, for pioneer work and for employment where cross-country journeys are the rule, it will have a great future, and not any the less because of its great and good advertisement of the past 10 days. . We roust not let our exuberance lead to fantastic prophecy as to what the " tanks " will achieve. As a commercial war-motor it is certainly the last word in fundamentals. It has caught the enemy napping ; it must have saved hundreds of lives and cost the Germans many more : that is sufficient, and good. We repeat, it will serve to focus attention on the chain-track, and we shall have more, much more, of itafter the war, and especially for agricultural uses.