To-day the introduction of the tank on the battlefield entirely revolutionises the art of war in that:
(i) It increases mobility by replacing muscular force by mechanical power.
(ii) It increases security by rendering innocuous the effect of bullets through the feasibility of carrying armour plate.
(iii) It increases offensive power by relieving the man from carrying his weapons or the horse from dragging them, and by facilitating ammunition supply it increases the destructive power of the weapons it carries.
In other words, an army moved by petrol can obtain a greater effect from its weapons in a given time with less loss to itself than one which relies on muscular energy as its motive force. Whilst securing its crew dynamically a tank enables it to fight statically, it is in every respect the “landship” it was first called.
These are our premises and from them we may deduce the following all-important fact: That in all wars, and especially modern wars—wars in which weapons change rapidly—no army of fifty years before any date selected would stand a “dog’s chance” against the army existing at this date, not even if it were composed entirely of Winkelrieds and Marshal Neys. Consider the following examples:
(i) Napoleon was an infinitely greater general than Lord Raglan; yet Lord Raglan would, in 1855, have beaten any army Napoleon, in 1805, could have led against him, because Lord Raglan’s men were armed with the Minie rifle.
(ii) Eleven years after Inkerman, Moltke would have beaten Lord Raglan’s army hollow, not because he was a greater soldier than Lord Raglan, but because his men were armed with the needle gun.
From this we may deduce the fact, which has already been stated, namely, that weapons form 99 per cent. of victory, consequently the General Staff of every army should be composed of mechanical clairvoyants, seers of new conditions, new fields of war to exploit, and new tools to assist in this exploitation. Had Napoleon, in 1805, offered a prize of £1,000,000 for a weapon 100 per cent. more efficient than the “Brown Bess,” it is almost a certainty that, by 1815, he would have got it; for the want of a little foresight and for the want of the understanding that progress in weapons of war is a similar problem to progress of tools in manufacture, he might have saved his Empire and ended his days as supreme tyrant of Europe.
The whole history of the evolution of machine tools is that of the elimination of the workman and the replacement of muscular energy by steam, electricity, or some other form of power. “Fewer men, more machines, higher output” has during the last hundred years been the motto of every progressive workshop. Likewise we believe that from now onwards in every progressive army will a similar motto be adopted. Further than this, we believe that those nations which have proved their ability in the past as leaders of science and mechanical engineering will in the future be those which will produce the most efficient armies, for these armies will be based on the foundations of the commercial sciences.