"TANKS."

Wanganui Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15192, 12 April 1917, Page 4

"TANKS."

A London cable states that an extraordinary feature of the fighting on the Western front was the Use of a variety of new inventions, including "tanks" of a new model, which are considerably faster than the old, and they move in battalion instead of singly. Our readers will recall the fact that six months ago a former resident of Wanganui, and now with the Red Cross, writing from England, said that large numbers of new and "improved tanks" of the 1916 model were under construction, but he was not permitted to say how many. The question was raised at Home some months ago whether the Germans would be in a position to employ "tanks," and Mr H. G. Wells answered the question. This well-known writer has some claims to be (heard on the subject of what he terms the "land ironclad," for the almost indescribable monster has an appreciable kinship with the weird creations of his own fancy. Mr Wells expressed the opinion that the Germans would not have time for any important development of the "tank" idea; but he believed that the British military authorities, if they knew their business (and he is rather too fond of suggesting that they don't know their business), should soon be ready with land ironclads as big as a destroyer and more heavily armed and equipped. He thus enlarged on his vision in the authentic "TonoBiingay" sttiain—which, however, is not necessarily an impracticable strain:

The machine will be, perhaps, as big as a destroyer, and more heavily armed and equipped. It. will swim over and through soil at a pace of ten or twelve miles an hour. In front of it will be corn land, neat woods, orchards, pasture, gardens, villages, and towns. It will advance upon its belly, with a swaying motion, devouring tie ground beneath it. Behind it masses of soil and rock, lumps of turf, splintered wood, bite of houses, occasional streaks of red, will drop from its track and it will leave a wake, six or seven times as wide as a high road, from which all soil, all cultivation, all semblance to cultivated or cultivable land will have disappeared.

Looking further ahead, Mr Wells predicted—and there is reason to believe that his forecast in at least one particular is not astray— that the awful potentialities of the land ironclad may not only hasten the end of the war, but even bring in the lasting reign of Peace, by reducing war to the ultimate absurdity.