LAND NOMCLADS.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 March 1917, Page 3

LAND NOMCLADS.

THEIR FUNCTION IN WAR. A VISION OF JJHIE FUTURE. "The young of oven the most horrible beasts have something piquant and engaging about them," says Mr. H. 6. Wells, in the course of an article on the tanks, "ami so I suppose it is the way of things that the land ironclad, which opens a new ami more dreadful and destructive phase in the human folly of warfare, should appear lirst as if it were a joke. "Never has any such thing completely so masked its wickedness under an appearance of genial silliness. i'lie tank is a creature to which one naturally flings a pet name; the live or six I was shown wandering, rooting, and climbing over obstacles, round a large field near X., were as amusing, as disarming as a little of lively young pigs. ''War is a thing that changes very rapidly, and we have in the tanks only the first of a great series of offensive developments. They are bound to be improved at a great paee. The method of using them will change very rapidly. Any added invention will necessitate the scrapping of old types and the production of new patterns in quantity. It is of supreme necessity to the Allies, if they are to win this war outright, that the lead in inventions and enterprise which the, British have won over the Germans in the matter should be retained. It is our game now to press the advantage for all it is worth. We have to keep ahead to win. We cannoj do so unless we have unstinted men and unstinted material to produce each new development as its use is realised. THE LAND IRONCLAD IDEA. "What lies behind the tank depends upon this fact: there is 110 definable upward limit of mass. Upon that I wo.ild lay all the stress possible, because everything turns upon that. "You cannot make a land ironclad so big and heavy but that you cannot make a caterpillar track wide enough and strong enough to carry it forward. Tanks are quite possible that will carry 20-incu or 25-inc'h guns, besides minor armament. Such tanks may be undesirable, the production may exceed the industrial resources of any empire to produce; but there is no inherent impossibility in such things. iVre are not even the same limital ions as to draught and docking accommodation that set bounds to the size of battleships. It follows, therefore, as a necessary deduction that if the world's affairs are so left at the end of the war that the race of armaments continues, the tank will devleop steadily into a tremendous instrument of warfare, driven by engines .of scores of thousands of horse-power, tracking on a track scores of hundreds of yards wide, and weighing hundreds or thousands of tons. Nothing but a world agreement not to do so can prevent this logical development of the land ironclad idea. Such a structure will make wheel-ruts scores of feet deep; it will plough up, devastate, and .destroy the country it passes over altogether. For my own part I. never imagined the land ironclad idea would get loose into war. I thought that the military intelligence was essentially unimaginative, and that such an aggressive military Power as Germany dominated by military people, would never produce anything ol the sort. I thought that this war would be fought out without tanks, and thja then war would come to an end. For, of course, it is mere stupidity that makes people doubt the ultimate ending of war. I have been so far justified in these e.v pectations of- mine that it is not from military sources that these tilings have come. They have been thrust upon the soldiers from without. But now that they are loose, now that they are in war, we have to face their full possibilities, press on to the end of the war. In support of a photo-aero directed artillery, even our present tanks can be used to complete an invincible offensive. We shall not' so much push as ram. «lt is doubtful if the Germans can get any thing of the sort into action before the spring. We ought to get the Avar 011 t(> German soil before the tanks have grown to more than three or four times their present size. Then it will not matter so much how much bigger they grow. It will he the German landscape that will suffer. A FLAYED STRIP OF NATURE. After one has seen the actual tanks, it is not very difficult to close one's eyes and figure the sort of tank than—given the assent of our military leaders —may be arguing with Germany in a few months' time about the restoration 'of Belgium and Servia and France, the restoration of the sunken tonnage, the penalties of the various Zeppelin and submarine murders, the freedom of the seas and land alike from piracy, the evacuation and reunion of Poland, and the guarantees for the future peace of Europe. The machine will be. perhaps, as big as a destroyer, and more heavily armed and equipped. It will swim over and through the soil at a pace of ten or twelve miles an hour. Ia front of it will he corn land, neat woods, orchards, pasture, gardens, villages, and towns.. It will advance upon its belly, with a swaying motion, devouring the ground beneath it. Behind it masse; of soil and rock, lumps of turf, splintered wood, bits 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 read, from which all soil, all cultivation land will have disappeared. It will not even be a track soil. It will be a track of subsoil laid bare. It will be a flayed strip of nature. In the course of its fighting the monster may have to turn about. It will (hen halt and spin slowly round, grinding out an a era of desolation with a circumference equal to its length. If it haf's to and advance again, these streaks and holes of destruction will increase and multiply. Behind the lighting line these monsters will manoeuvre to and fro, destroying the m.m for all ordinary agricultural purposes for ages to come. The first imaginative account of the land ironclad that was over written concluded with the words: "They are the reductio ad absurdum of war." They are and it is to the engineers, the ironmasters, -the workers, and the inventive talent of Great Britain and France that we must look to ensure that it is in Germany, the {•rea* modern war propagandist, that this demonstration of war's ultimate absurdity is completed.