Page:Science and War.djvu/39

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protest against their invention being regarded as due to the scientist and would claim that they are wholly the product of the judgment and experience of the practical man. There may be much to say in favour of this view of the invention of the Tanks but it is clear that the very efficiency that secured their success could only have been obtained by making use of the internal combustion engine to drive them.

Without undervaluing the part played by the internal combustion engine in giving us the aeroplane and the tanks I must confess to a feeling that its greatest triumph has been in motor transport. It brought most of our heavy guns up to the front and fed them with their ammunition and indeed by its flexibility and adaptability to the varying needs and opportunities of the moment it was our main agent throughout the war in supplying our armies with necessaries. In one respect the Germans out-distanced the Allies throughout—viz. in the attention they paid to strategical railways which brought up to the front the vast supplies of ammunition and food needful

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