From Our Own Conssaroxpexe San Francisco, Dee. 2.
I suppose there are few Britons 'Shanghai, especially those who took part in the World War, who not.believe implicitly that the tank was a British invention, That lumbering jcontrivanee which was probably' the greatest sensation of the war, and which so surprised the enemy, is now claimed not to be a British invention at all, but American. Comes one Francis J. Lowe, formerly a tractor sales. man but now a real estate operator in New York, who says the real father of the tank is Mr. Edwin 'Wheelock, of Winona, Minn. Whee-Jock has' for many "years been a tractor engineer. probably did, for a 60,000-pound armoured tractor, but even Mr. Lowe (the gentleman making the claim) admits the modern tank bears little relation to the Wheelock plans, though the principle embodied in basis of construction, {is identical which would doubtless apply to another dozen set of plans from another dozen individuals, All the same, it is interesting to note how in different parts of the world men' were working' simu'tancously on the idea, working oat into practical mechanics the thought which flashed through the vivid brain of H. G.'Wells. as he sat in his study writing half score of years before, Here is Lowe's story:
"In. April, 1918, T went to Europe to selt'some caterpillar tractors, took with me sine blueprint Tractor made. by. Wheelock proposed 60,000-pound armour wont to. Col. Sir 'Henry Capel-Leat Holden, director of mechanical trans: pert at the War Ofice in London, When"he learned: that the" armoured weighing more than 26 tractor plana elle fora machine Cline, 'Come, come—this Yankee' invention to win this Would Break down" an Belgium, and,_ besides, don't you Know that "we drive. to the left of the Toad instead of t2°the right, that" ie wil lock trafic as well, "Finally, however, Col, Holden introduced me toa Major Wilson, who took the "plans and. said that' he would let me know whether T'was any orders, but T heard noth~ until after the Battle of the Somme, when it was reported. that funny looking cheese boxes" were over the top and chasing the Going back to see Col. Holden, continues the story, Lowe prevailed upon him to ascertain what had happened, and meantime Wheelock was madly' telegraphing across the Atlantic "wondering what had become of his plans. "I also got in touch with Sir William. Tritton," aid Lowe to an Associated Press sri, when he divulged his story a day of two ago, "Sir William, of Fosters Limited, the firm that built the tanks for the British. At first 'Tritton thought I was a news-Paper man, and talked freely, but when I asked him if he knew' Holden and Wilson, he asked me point-blank what I was really after. I Yold-him that T wanted to win' the £30,000 prize money the British Government was offering to the inventor of the tank, but he said that under the terms of the Govern. ment only British inventors could get it"
Of course, nothing of this came out at the time, and it may all be fairy tale, though I do not think so. T happen to know, however, that at the time there were many sets of plans for tanks, The tank had actually been born in idea form long before the war, for as far back as 1903 H. G. Wells deseribed it in a novel.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.