TANKS OR ARMORED LAND

SHIPS are perhaps the most interesting of the many mechanical contrivances which the World War brought into being. When the war had settled down into one of the vast systems of continuous entrenchments, defended by wire entanglements and machine guns, any advance had to be preceded by terrific bombardments which, besides involving the expenditure of vast quantities of shell, and giving the enemy ample warning of an attack, rendered the ground bombarded very difficult to cro . The need was felt at an early stage of some form of moving armored fortre , able to resist rifle fire, crush down wire, pa over parapets and trenches, and prepare the way quickly for infantry. In 1915 the Brit. military authorities -began experimenting, and under conditions of the greatest secrecy the first of the tanks —which owed their misleading name to this circumstance—were designed and built. Several types were produced in succe ion, embodying in turn improvements suggested by hard experience. In shape and arrangement they all followed the same general lines. On each side of a central armored chamber, or body, containing a powerful gasoline motor (or motors), and most of the mechanism, was a large frame, armored on the outside vertical face and projecting fore and aft beyond the body. Round the frames ran continuous tracks of plates fixed to the links of powerful chains engaging with large sprocket wheels inside the frames, to which motion was imparted from the engine through shafts and gears. In front, the track frames sloped upwards gradually several feet to allow the tank to negotiate objects of considerable height; and their outline at the bottom was a flat section under the center of gravity, turning up slightly also towards the rear, in a curve which ensured an equal length of track making contact fore and aft of the center of gravity when the apparatus sank into soft earth. The lower parts of the tracks were therefore in effect part of the periphery of huge, wide-tired wheels, giving so large an area of contact that, though the weight of the heavy tanks ranged from 27 to 34 tons, the pre ure per sd. in. never exceeded 30 lb. on the flat, and, as the tracks sank in, feli in some cases to a little over 6 Ib. by the time the belly of the body was touching the ground. The French built a large number of 5-ton Renault tanks, carrying three men, a 1)4-in. gun, and machine guns. These were used very succe fully in the closing months of the war. The first appearance of tanks in action was on Sept. 15, 1916, during the battle of the Somme, when they took the enemy completely by surprise and, though some of them failed from mechanical and other defects, undoubtedly saved many you sands of lives, besides giving great confidence to our infantry and having a correspondingly adverse moral effect on the enemy. In the battle of Cambrai, Nov. 20, 1917, tanks in ma ed formation cro ed the formidable Hindenburg Line without any previous artillery preparation, and so opened an entirely new phase of warfare. In spite of counter-measures taken by the Germans in the form of providing their troops with special armor-piercing bullets fired from heavy rifles, land-mines, and anti-tank gun batteries, the only reliable protection against tanks was found to be a river or marshy ground. In the future even a river may prove no obstacle, as the construction of huge amphibious tanks is by no means an improbability; and land wars may conceivably be decided by great moving fortre es traveling at high speed and able to manceuvre freely in any but mountainous country. Scot. poet and weaver; 6. Paisley; drowned himself; wrote The Bonnie Wood o’ Craigielea and Je ie the