_Flammenwerfer_ were as old-fashioned as
high explosives and shrapnel. Bombing encounters in saps had no
variation. The ruins of the village taken to-day could not be told from
the one taken yesterday except by its location on the map. Even the
aeroplanes had not lately developed any sensational departures from
habit. One paid little more attention to them than a gondolier pays to
the pigeons of St. Mark's. Curtains of fire all looked alike. There was
no new way of being killed--nothing to break the ghastly monotony of
charges and counter-charges.

All the brains of Europe had been busy for two years inventing new forms
of destruction, yet no genius had found any sinuous creature that would
creep into dugouts with a sting for which there was no antidote.
Everybody was engaged in killing, yet nobody was able to "kill to his
satisfaction," as the Kentucky colonel said. The reliable methods were
the same as of old and as I have mentioned elsewhere: projectiles
propelled by powder, whether from long-necked naval guns at twenty
thousand yards, or short-necked howitzers at five thousand yards, or
rifles and machine guns at twenty-five hundred yards, or trench mortars
coughing balls of explosives for one thousand yards.

True, the gas attack at Ypres had been an innovation. It was not a
discovery; merely an application of ghastliness which had been
considered too horrible for use. As a surprise it had been
successful--once. The defense answered with gas masks, which made it
still more important that soldiers should not be absent-minded and leave
any of their kit out of reach. The same amount of energy put into
projectiles would have caused more casualties. Meanwhile, no staff of
any army, making its elaborate plans in the use of proved weapons, could
be certain that the enemy had not under way, in this age of invention
which has given us the wireless, some new weapon which would be
irresistible.

Was the tank this revolutionary wonder? Its sponsors had no such hope.
England went on building guns and pouring out shells, cartridges and
bombs. At best, the tanks were another application of an old,
established form of killing in vogue with both Daniel Boone and
Napoleon's army--bullets.

The first time that I saw a tank, the way that the monster was blocking
a road gorged with transport had something of the ludicrousness of, say,
a pliocene monster weighing fifty tons which had nonchalantly lain down
at Piccadilly Circus whe