contrivances of a certain Mr. Diplock, whose "ped-rail" notion, the
notion of a wheel that was something more than a wheel, a wheel that
would take locomotives up hill-sides and over ploughed fields, was
public property nearly twenty years ago. Possibly there were others
before Diplock. To the Ped-rail also Commander Murray Sueter, one of the
many experimentalists upon the early tanks, admits his indebtedness,
and it would seem that Mr. Diplock was actually concerned in the earlier
stage of the tanks.

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