Marshal Foch is the first of our witnesses.
He sketches the evolution of the Tank, and describes the circumstances which called it into being, in his foreword to the English translation of his republished Principles of War. He has dealt with the old slowness of “digging in.”
We translate his words literally:
“The machine-gun and the barbed-wire entanglement have permitted defences to be organised with indisputable rapidity. These have endowed the trench, or natural obstacle, with a strength which has permitted offensive fronts to be extended over areas quite impracticable until this time.... The offensive for the time was powerless, new weapons were sought for, and, after a formidable artillery had been produced Tanks were invented—i.e. machine-guns or guns protected by armour, and rendered mobile by petrol, capable, over all types of ground, to master the enemy’s entanglements and his machine-guns....
“Thus it is the industrial power of nations that has alone permitted armies to attack, or the want of this power has reduced them to the defensive.”
Monsieur Loucheur—in January 1919 French Minister of Munitions—was a strong advocate for Tanks in the French Army.
“There are two kinds of infantry: men who have gone into action with Tanks, and men who have not; and the former never want to go into action without Tanks again.”
Sir Douglas Haig’s summing up in his Despatch, though necessarily conservative, is not therefore the less significant:
“Since the opening of our offensive on August 8 Tanks have been employed in every battle, and the importance of the part played by them in breaking the resistance of the German infantry can scarcely be exaggerated. The whole scheme of the attack of August 8 was dependent upon Tanks, and ever since that date on numberless occasions the success of our infantry has been powerfully assisted or confirmed by their timely arrival. So great has been the effect produced upon the German infantry by the appearance of British Tanks that in more than one instance, when for various reasons real Tanks were not available in sufficient numbers, valuable results have been obtained by the use of dummy Tanks painted on frames of wood and canvas.
“It is no disparagement of the courage of our infantry or of the skill and devotion of our artillery, to say that the achievements of those essential arms would have fallen short of the full measure of success achieved by our armies had it not been for the very gallant and devoted work of the Tank Corps, under the command of Major-General H. J. Elles.”