Lord Kitchener, who was entirely favourable, thereupon remitted the project to the Department of the Master General of the Ordnance. This process was mortal to the second attempt to make a tank, and the project was decently interred in the archives of the War Office.
T did not know what had happened as a result of my letter to the Prime Minister, or what the War Office were doing; but I formed the impression that no real progress was being made. and that the military authorities were quite unconvinced either of the practicability of making such engines or of their value when made.
Accordingly, on January 19, 1915 1 sent a minute to the Director of the Air Division instructing him to make certain experiments with steam yellers with a view to smashing in the trenches of the enemy by the mere weight of the engine This particular variant broke down through its mechanical defects, but there is no doubt that it played its partin forming opinions among the Brmoured-can officers and setting ámagination to work for other and mucro helpful solutions. So here are three quite separate efforts to procure he manufacture and adoption of the kind of vehicles afterwards Called tanks, all of which had been "brought to failure either by mechanical defects or by official obstruction.
This deadlock might well have continued for an indefinite period of e. The Duke of Westminster. however, who commanded a squadron of armoured cars, invited me to dine on February 17 to meet several of cers from the.armoured-car squadrons.
As a result of our conversation I went home determined that I would give imperative orders without delay he first 20 tanks. in spite of my protests and the far more potent objections of Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George, were improvident exposed to the enemy at the Bat of the Somme.
Mr. Lloyd George thought this employment of the new weapon in such small numbers premature. I was so shocked at the proposal to expose this tremendous secret to the enemy upon such a petty scale and as a mere make-weight to what I was sure could only be an indecisive operation that I sought an interview with Mr. Asquith, of whom I wns then a very definite opponent The Prime Minister received me in ihe most friendly manner, and tened so patiently to my appeal that I thought I had succeeded in convincing him. But if this were so, he did not make his will effective.
On September 15 (1916) the first tanks, or large armoured cars, as they were called. in the communique. went into action on the front of the Fourth Army attacking between the Comples ravine and Martinpulich. The immense advantage of novelty and surprise was thus squandered while the number of the tanks was small, while their condition was experiment tal and their crews almost untrained.
To achieve this miniature success and to carry the education of the professional mind one stage further forward a secret of war which, well used, would have procured a world shaking victory in 1917 had been recklessly revealed to the enemy.
Providentially, however. the scales of convention darkened also the vision of the German General Staff and clouded even the keen eye of Lude dorf.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.