any other line organised in the same way, was
entirely at the mercy of the tanks.

"The tanks, however, did not make their full weight felt until
August, 1918. They had become a very important factor before that,
and had saved thousands of lives; but from the beginning of the
counter-offensive of last year they were a dominating feature of
the war. Ludendorff had already recognised their importance in
July, after the French use of them in the Battle of Soissons, when
he wrote to his Army Commanders that 'the utmost attention must be
paid to combating tanks. Our earlier successes against tanks led
to a certain contempt for this weapon of warfare. We must now
reckon with more dangerous tanks.'"

The "earlier successes" mentioned were those of the Third Battle of
Ypres. In the Ypres salient, however, the real anti-tank defence was
the mud, and the general conclusions which the German Higher Command
drew from the derelict tanks they captured during the fighting of
October, 1917, were entirely misleading, as they soon discovered to
their cost, a few weeks later, in the First Battle of Cambrai. They
showed, indeed, throughout a curious lack of intelligence and
foresight with regard to the new weapon, both as to its possibilities
and as to the means of fighting it. They were at first entirely
surprised by their appearance in the field; then they despised them;
and it was not till July and August, 1918, at the beginning of the
last great Allied offensive--when it will be remembered that Sir Henry
Rawlinson had 400 tanks under his command--that the Germans awoke--too
late--to the full importance of the new arm.

Thenceforward "the enemy was overcome by a great fear of the Allied
tanks, and in some cases even over-estimated their effect." But it was
now too late to put up an adequate defence against "the more dangerous
tanks," which were already available in large numbers on the Allied
side. It seems incredible, but it is true, that _the Germans never
possessed at any time more than fifteen tanks of their own_, plus some
twenty-five captured and repaired British tanks; and the only action
in which they employed them with any considerable success was at the
capture of Villers Bretonneux, April 24th, 1918 (the success which was
so quickly turned into defeat by the Australians). After last July,
however, the German panic with regard to them grew rapidly, and on the
15th of August we fi