Since my return I have been able to see the Tank at home, through the courtesy of the Ministry of Munitions.  They have progressed far beyond any recognisable resemblance to the initiatives of Mr. Diplock; they have approximated rather to the American caterpillar.  As I suspected when first I heard of these devices, the War Office and the old army people had practically nothing to do with their development.  They took to it very reluctantly—­as they have taken to every novelty in this war.  One brilliant general scrawled over an early proposal the entirely characteristic comment that it was a pity the inventor could not use his imagination to better purpose. (That foolish British trick of sneering at “imagination” has cost us hundreds of thousands of useless casualties and may yet lose us the war.) Tanks were first mooted at the front about a year and a half ago; Mr. Winston Churchill was then asking questions about their practicability; he filled many simple souls with terror; they thought him a most dangerous lunatic.  The actual making of the Tanks arose as an irregular side development of the armoured-car branch of the Royal Naval Air Service work.  The names most closely associated with the work are (I quote a reply of Dr. Macnamara’s in the House of Commons) Mr. d’Eyncourt, the Director of Naval Construction, Mr. W. O. Tritton, Lieut.  Wilson, R.N.A.S., Mr. Bussell, Lieut.  Stern, R.N.A.S., who is now Colonel Stern, Captain Symes, and Mr. F. Skeens.  There are many other claims too numerous to mention in detail.

But however much the Tanks may disconcert the gallant Colonel Newcomes who throw an air of restraint over our victorious front, there can be no doubt that they are an important as well as a novel development of the modern offensive.  Of course neither the Tanks nor their very obvious next developments going to wrest the decisive pre-eminence from the aeroplane.  The aeroplane remains now more than ever the instrument of victory upon the western front.  Aerial ascendancy, properly utilised, is victory.  But the mobile armoured big gun and the Tank as a machine-gun silencer must enormously facilitate an advance against the blinded enemy.  Neither of them can advance against properly aimed big gun fire.  That has to be disposed of before they make their entrance.  It remains the function of the aeroplane to locate the hostile big guns and to direct the tir de demolition upon them before the advance begins—­possibly even to bomb them out.  But hitherto, after the destruction of driving back of the defender’s big guns has been effected, the dug-out and the machine gun have still inflicted heavy losses upon the advancing infantry until the fight is won.  So soon as the big guns are out, the tanks will advance, destroying machine guns, completing the destruction of the wire, and holding prisoners immobile.  Then the infantry will follow to gather in the sheaves.  Multitudinously produced and—­I write it with a defiant eye on Colonel Newcome—­properly handled, these land ironclads are going to do very great things in shortening the war, in pursuit, in breaking up the retreating enemy.  Given the air ascendancy, and I am utterly unable to imagine any way of conclusively stopping or even greatly delaying an offensive thus equipped.