purpose. These gigantic beings of which the engineer is the master
and slave, are neither benevolent nor malignant. To-day they produce
destruction, they are the slaves of the spur; to-morrow we hope they
will bridge and carry and house and help again.

For that peace we struggle against the dull inflexibility of the German
Will-to-Power.




V. TANKS


1

It is the British who have produced the "land ironclad" since I returned
from France, and used it apparently with very good effect. I felt no
little chagrin at not seeing them there, because I have a peculiar
interest in these contrivances. It would be more than human not to
claim a little in this matter. I described one in a story in _The Strand
Magazine_ in 1903, and my story could stand in parallel columns beside
the first account of these monsters in action given by Mr. Beach Thomas
or Mr. Philip Gibbs. My friend M. Joseph Reinach has successfully
passed off long extracts from my story as descriptions of the Tanks upon
British officers who had just seen them. The filiation was indeed quite
traceable. They were my grandchildren--I felt a little like King Lear
when first I read about them. Yet let me state at once that I was
certainly not their prime originator. I took up an idea, manipulated
it slightly, and handed it on. The idea was suggested to me by the