h conservatives
probably have prevented many improvements from materializing, and
probably they have also saved the world from many futile creations which
would only have wasted time and material.

Happily both for geniuses and fools, who all, in the long run, let us
hope, receive their just deserts, there is no downing an idea in a free
country where continued knocking at doors and waiting in hallways
eventually secure it a trial. Then, if it succeeds, the fellow who
thought that the conception was original with him finds his claims
disputed from all points of the compass. If it fails, the poor thing
goes to a fatherless grave.

I should like to say that I was the originator of the tank--one of the
originators. In generous mood, I am willing to share honors with rivals
too numerous to mention. Haven't I also looked across No Man's Land
toward the enemy's parapet? Whoever has must have conjectured about a
machine that would take frontal positions with less loss of life than is
usual and would solve the problem of breaking the solid line of the
Western front. The possibility has haunted every general, every
soldier.

Some sort of armadillo or caterpillar which would resist bullet fire was
the most obvious suggestion, but when practical construction was
considered, the dreamer was brought down from the empyrean, where the
aeroplane is at home, to the forge and the lathe, where grimy machinists
are the pilots of a matter-of-fact world. Application was the thing. I
found myself so poor at it that I did not even pass on my plan to the
staff, which had already considered a few thousand plans. Ericsson
conceiving a gun in a revolving turret was not so great a man as
Ericsson making the monitor a practicable engine of war.

To Lieutenant-Colonel Swinton, of the Engineers, was given the task of
transforming blue-print plans into reality. There was no certainty that
he would succeed, but the War Office, when it had need for every foundry
and every skilled finger in the land, was enterprising enough to give
him a chance. He and thousands of workmen spent months at this most
secret business. If one German spy had access to one workman, then the
Germans might know what was coming. Nobody since Ericsson had a busier
time than Swinton without telling anybody what he was doing. The
whisperers knew that some diabolical surprise was under way and they
would whisper about it. No censor regulations can reach them. Sometimes
the tribe