tervals over
a six-mile front awaiting the cue of zero for the attack at dawn and the
mist still holding to cover both tanks and men, the great Somme stage
was set in a manner worthy of the debut of the new monsters.

A tactical system of cooerdinated action had been worked out for the
infantry and the untried auxiliary, which only experienced soldiers
could have applied with success. According to the nature of the
positions in front, the tanks were set definite objectives or left to
find their own objectives. They might move on located machine gun
positions or answer a hurry call for help from the infantry. Ahead of
them was a belt of open field between them and the villages whose
capture was to be the consummation of the day's work. While observers
were straining their eyes to follow the progress of the tanks and seeing
but little, corps headquarters eagerly awaited news of the most
picturesque experiment of the war, which might prove ridiculous, or be a
wonderful success, or simply come up to expectations.

No more thrilling message was ever brought by an aeroplane than that
which said that a tank was "walking" up the main street of Flers
surrounded by cheering British soldiers, who were in possession of the
village. "Walking" was the word officially given; and very much walking,
indeed, the tank must have seemed to the aviator in his swift flight. An
eagle looked down on a tortoise which had a serpent's sting. This tank,
having attended to its work on the way, passed on through Flers bearing
a sign: "Extra Special! Great Hun Victory!" Beyond Flers it found itself
alongside a battery of German field guns and blazed bullets into the
amazed and helpless gunners.

The enemy may have heard of the tanks, but meeting them was a different
matter. After he had fought shells, bullets, bombs, grenades, mortars,
bayonets and gas, the tank was the straw that broke the camel's back of
many a German. A steel armadillo laying its bulk across a trench and
sweeping it on both sides with machine guns brought the familiar
complaint that this was not fighting according to rules in a war which
ceased to have rules after the bombing of civilian populations, the
sinking of the _Lusitania_, and the gas attack at Ypres. It depends on
whose ox is gored. There is a lot of difference between seeing the enemy
slaughtered by some new device and being slaughtered by one yourself. No
wonder that German prisoners who had escaped alive from a trenc