wide
belts of wire which they had to destroy before the rest could follow.
These squadrons of Tanks were led into action by the General
Commanding their corps, who carried his flag on their own Tank--a most
gallant gentleman, full of enthusiasm for his monsters and their brave
crews, and determined that this day would be theirs. They moved
forward in small groups, several hundreds of them, rolled down the
Germans' wire and trampled down its lines, and then crossed the deep
gulf of the Hindenburg main line, pitching nose downward as they drew
their long bodies over the parapets, and rearing themselves again with
forward reach of body, and heaving themselves on to the German parados
beyond.... The German troops, out of the gloom of the dawn, saw these
grey inhuman creatures bearing down upon them, crushing down their
wire, crossing their impregnable lines, firing fiercely from their
flanks and sweeping the trenches with machine-gun bullets." A captured
German officer thought "he had gone mad," as he watched the Tanks,
while his men ran about in terror, trying to avoid the bursts of fire,
and crying out in surrender. "What could we do?"

Meanwhile, our own men, English, Irish, and Scottish troops, went
behind the Tanks, "laughing and cheering when they saw them get at the
German wire and eat it up, and then head for the Hindenburg line, and
cross it as though it were but a narrow ditch."

And yet, after this experience, the Germans still delayed to make
Tanks! No doubt they argued that, after all, the Cambrai attack, in
spite of the Tanks, had ended in a check for the British, and in the
loss of much of the ground which had been gained by the surprise
attack of the "grey monsters." Meanwhile, the Russian front was
rapidly breaking down, and in their exultant anticipation of the fresh
forces they would soon be drawing from it to throw against the British
Armies, the standing contempt of the German Command for "British
ideas" and a "battle of material" won the day.

The German General Staff, therefore, maintained its refusal to spare
labour and material to make Tanks, and the refusal must have seemed to
them fully justified by the initial success of their March offensive.
Tanks played practically no part in the fighting withdrawal of the
British Armies in March and April, 1918. But all this time Tank
development was going on; and the believers in Tanks were working away
at the improvement of the types, convinced now, as