The Colonel, with a quizzical smile, here called attention to the fact that the principal German weapon of slaughter was the invention of an American—Hiram Maxim—and he thought it quite fitting that the weapon to combat it should be credited, at least in part, to the American inventor of the tractor. Continuing, he said:
“By October, 1914, I had a fair conception of the kind of engine which might be relied upon to neutralize the growing German power in machine guns, combined with the most elaborate fortifications ever built on a grand scale. You see, their fire ascendency in the meantime had enabled them to dig in with their usual thoroughness. In October I returned to England to try to interest the authorities at the War Office in my idea. I had my troubles, but I did not have as many troubles as I might have had, because other men of their own accord were working along the same lines.
“You must get this very straight, mind. Whatever credit there may be for inventing the tanks belongs not to any one man, but to many men—exactly how many nobody knows. It is even rather unfair to mention any names, my own as well as those of others. For, besides those men who actually worked to perfect the tanks, there were others who had conceived very similar ideas.
“Still another proof of the plurality of tank inventors is the fact that while one group of us were endeavoring to interest the War Office in the idea, another group of men, entirely ignorant of what we were doing, were trying to get the Admiralty to take up a similar line of experimentation. And it is no more than fair to point out that the first money provided for experimentation with landships, as we called them, came from Winston Spencer Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty. But he was only one of a number of men who played parts in the development of the finished engine. For example, there were two men in particular who worked out the mechanical problems. I wish I could give you their names, but I cannot.”
To the suggestion of the writer in The Post that it seemed strange that so many minds should have been working out the same idea at the same time, Colonel Swinton replied emphatically:
“Not when you consider the situation. The tank, after all, is merely an elaboration, the last word, of military devices as old as the history of military engineering. Its ancestors were the armored automobile, the belfry or siege tower on wheels of the middle ages, and the Roman testudo. The need for the tank became apparent to many who studied the military problems demonstrated on the Western front. That is often so in the history of inventions, you know. A given problem occupies many minds simultaneously, and generally several reach a solution about the same time, even though perhaps one receives the credit for the invention above all the others.”
“You spoke about the mechanical problems of the tanks. What were they?”
“Ah, there you are getting on delicate ground. I am glad to tell you all I can about the tanks, but I can’t describe them—not beyond a certain point, that is. I will say just this—the peculiar original feature of them, upon which their efficiency most depends, is the construction of their trackage. It is the feature which enables them not only to negotiate rough and broken ground, but to surmount obstacles and knock down trees and houses. But the full description of the tanks cannot be written until after the war.”
Colonel Swinton described the uproarious mirth of the British infantry on that morning when they had their first sight of the unwieldy tanks clambering over trenches, hills, small forests, and houses, spitting flames as they rolled, lolloping forward like huge armored monsters of the prehistoric past.
“It gave our men quite a moral lift,” he said. “They forgot their troubles. But they soon came to see that the tanks were more than funny, for wherever they attacked the infantry had comparative immunity from machine gun fire, and it is the German machine gun fire which always has been the principal obstacle for our troops.”