the Canadians said. "Who wouldn't surrender when a beast
of that kind came up to the door? It was enough to make a man who had
drunk only light Munich beer wonder if he had 'got 'em!'"

Prisoners were a good deal of bother to the tanks. Perhaps future tanks
will be provided with pockets for carrying prisoners. But the future of
tanks is wrapped in mystery at the present.

This is not taking them seriously, you may say. In that case, I am only
reflecting the feelings of the army. Even if the tanks had taken Bapaume
or gone to the Kaiser's headquarters, the army would have laughed at
them. It was the Germans who took the tanks seriously; and the more
seriously the Germans took the tanks the more the British laughed.

"Of all the double-dyed, ridiculous things, was the way that Creme de
Menthe person took the sugar factory!" said a Canadian, who broke into a
roar at the recollection of the monster's antics. "Good old girl, Creme
de Menthe! Ought to retire her for life and let her sit up on her
haunches in a cafe and sip her favorite tipple out of barrel with a
garden hose for a straw--which would be about her size."

However, there was a variation of opinions among soldiers about tanks
drawn from personal experience, when life and death form opinions, of
the way it had acted as an auxiliary to their part of the line. A tank
that conquered machine-gun positions and enfiladed trenches was an
heroic comrade surrounded by a saga of glorious anecdotes. One which
became stalled and failed in its enterprise called for satirical comment
which was applied to all.

We did not personify machine guns, or those monstrous, gloomy, big
howitzers with their gaping maws, or other weapons; but every man in the
army personified the tanks. Two or three tanks, I should have remarked,
did start for Berlin, without waiting for the infantry. The temptation
was strong. All they had to do was to keep on moving. When Germans
scuttling for cover were the only thing that the skippers could see,
they realized that they were in the wrong pew, or, in strictly military
language, that they had got beyond their "tactical objective."

Having left most of their ammunition where they thought that it would do
the most good in the German lines, these wanderers hitched themselves
around and waddled back to their own people. For a tank is an auxiliary,
not an army, or an army staff, or a curtain of fire, and must cooeperate
with the infantry or it may be in