MOTORS IN WAR.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10060, 3 June 1910, Page 3

MOTORS IN WAR.

Internal combustion vehicles have proved themselves of undoubted utility in several distinct roles, for the purpose of modern warfare. General Officers and their staffs find the high-power motor a machine perfectly adapted for transporting them swiftly from one point in the scene of operations to another. Id fact, in these ; days of vast armies and wide dispersion, the value lo the Headquarter Staff ot these space-annihilating vehicles is incalculable. In all future operations m countries provided with goad roads, fast motors will be in universal use by General Officers and their staffs, until superseded by some still more advanced means of transport—aeroplanes, perhaps. The number of motors thus absorbed for the headquarters of an army wiil of course be comparatively small, and there will remain avail able in this country an enormous number of cars, of various patterns, • and differing largely from one another in power and speed. In the event of invasion there la no doubt that, under certain circumstances, these hundreds of automobiles could be satisfactorily utilised for carrying small reinfocrements raoidly to any desired point. To get any real good, however, out of this mass of carß, they should be registered and organised in peace time, in order that when the occasion arises groups of motors, of about the same power and speed, may be used together. If Britain be invaded, it will probably be on the east, and there the absance of steep hills will aliow of almost any kind of car being successfully used. The motor car, besides its capapilities for carrying a certain number of fully equipped infantry quickly to any place where they may be required, can equally well be used for taking a machine gun,with its ammunition and a couple of men to work it. Britain is the home of tna cyclist, and cyclist corps have a great part to play in campaigns o£ the future. With well organised troops of motors, it would often be possible to stiffien the cyclist net, spread oat ahead of an army, at any point where the enemy might threaten to break through the meshes. If Britain be attacked, we must expect our invaders to use large, numbers of cycliat infantry, and comparatively few cavalry. It will be with the enemy's screen of cyclist troops that our own cyclists must first come into collision. Motor-carried infantry and machine guns should undoubtedly be used in conjunction with the cycliat corps, to reinforce them rapidly, wherever needed. The motor bicycle, though of great use for the special work of carrying messages speedily, and maintaining communication between the flanks of the cyclist net, can never supercede the bicycle as a means of transport for mobile troops, owing to its noisiness and weight. It is the machine, par excellence, for orderly work, and is not likely to be used for aoyth ing else. We now come to another vary important use for motors, more especially the commercial types of vans and tractors. One of the most critical present-day questions is the shortness of our horse supply. This dearth of horses can be remedied, to a limited extent, by substituting motor transport. The ammunition columns, which carry supplies both of small j arms ammunition for infantry and J cavalry, and gun ammunition for the j artillery, can be largely composed of mechanically propelled vehicles. Unfortunately, the class of linrae which the motor tractor will to a large extent replace, is not the kind of horse most difficult to get. The heavy draught horses used for agricontinued on Page 7)