TANKS.*

A GREAT many new and interesting facts about the administra tive aspect of Tank production are contained in Sir Albert Stern's " Log-Book of a Pioneer." He does not attempt to tell the gallant story of what the Tanks did in the field, nor does he tell the reader very much about the extraordinary work that men and women achieved in. the factories at home when they shaped the strange monsters whose use they could not guess but whose secrets they kept so loyally. It is a romance of bureaucracy, and, though we never, as it were, get beyond the sound of the typewriter, the book does not lack dramatic situations.

Within his limitations, Sir Albert Stern writes from abso- lutely first-hand knowledge, for he was of course one of the men who played a chief part in making possible the perfecting of Tank designs and in pushing on Tank manufacture. The task was an exceedingly difficult one. No Department existed

• Teat% 1014-1918: the Los-Book of a Pioneer. By Sir Albert G. Stern, K.B.E.. C.11;0. Illustrated. London Hodder and Stoughton. [12s. net.J

to deal with the strange amphibian, and every existing Depart- ment was already overworked. The Tank, though Sir Albert Stern gives the credit of its inception to the Admiralty, was the joint-child of the Admiralty and the War Office, and further it

was, once born, well within the province of the Ministry of Munitions, and the administrative complications raised by its

treble nature were of the sort to daunt the most fearless.

Sir E. Tennyson D'Eyncourt describes the enormous diffi- culties the pioneers had to encounter. " We had great difficulty in steering the scheme past the rocks of opposition and the more insidious shoals of apathy which are frequented by red herrings."

Sir Albert Stern gives the reader the impression that there were no Army Tank experiments made before the end of August, 1915. He seems to have entirely forgotten the trials of the Bacon machine. The omission of all references to other trials is, however, unfortunately typical of the book, which, thougL it no doubt obeys the formula for the giving of evidence in that it tells the truth, in many instances produces a false impression

by not even alluding to many relevant facts. For example, in the case of the strained relations which existed between the

Tank Production Department, the Tank Committee, the War Office, the Tank Fighting Side, and G.H.Q. in 1917, Sir Albert Stern quotes his own not very felicitously conceived letter to the Prime Minister :-

" I have had to visit nearly every Department of the War Office on all sorts of vital questions, and naturally with most unsatisfactory results. . . . The Committee is now inter- fering in design and production, which if allowed to continue will result in chaos and disaster. I refuse to allow this. To put the matter on a proper basis is a most simple matter. Those conversant with the whole subject should be consulted and the empty prejudices of the War Office cleared away. The proposi- tion must be clearly stated and an organization formed to suit the case, not some old dug-out organization which suits me: modern requirements at all."

A great deal more of this letter couched in the same style and to the same purpose is quoted, and an account given of a stormy interview with Sir W. Robertson. The whole controversy ended in the removal of Colonel Stern from his post as Head of the Mechanical Warfare Supply Department and his appoint- ment to a Department for co-ordinating Allied and America], Tank construction. The reader is left with the impression that Colonel Stern and his colleague, Sir E. Tennyson D'Eyncourt, were the only reformers. He omits all mention of the part

played by several other Tank enthusiasts, even that of General Sir Hugh Elles, who commanded the Fighting Side, and whose recommendations and remonstrances were quite as strong a-

Colonel Stern's, though tendered in a more urbane style. However, for those who are already familiar with the subject, a good deal of new light is thrown upon the controversy. But the reader will probably have one more complaint to make before he has done with censure—a complaint which concerns the 'extremely loose style in which the book is written and the nonchalant way in which it has been constructed. Readers do not demand literary ability from men of action like Colonel Stern, but this book has been too obviously h^atily pasted together from a collection of papers filed away in a hurry. The passages which are intended to link up the documents quoted are often not a little obscurely expressed. Sir Albert Stern is describing. the financial crisis which followed on the heels of the declaration of war. There was a meeting of bankers at the Bank of England. " Sir Edward Holden was the com- manding figure. ` I must pay my wages on Friday,' he said, ` and we must haye Bank Holidays until enough currency has been printed to be able to do so.' His advice was followed and all the impending disasters were averted."

The book, however, has many good 'points, and is certain to prove of great interest, if not to the general public, at least to all those who are interested in Tank production, and who want to hear hitherto unpublished particulars about Tanks. We

are told, higgledy-piggledy, a great number of curious facts. We learn, for example, a great deal about the trials in the winter of 1915 on Lord Salisbury's ground near Hatfield that has not hitherto been made public. Also how in that October the workmen at Messrs. Foster's manufactory refused to stay with the firm because no war badges could be got for them, and so, owing to the great secrecy of the work on which they were employed,

their comrades thought that they were not doing war work. Sir Albert Stern relates how he was at last obliged to raidthe office of the War Badge Department in Abingdon Street and take away a sackful of badges by force. Then in June, 1916, when the preparations for using about fifty Tanks were in active progress, delays occurred in making the six-pounder armour-piercing shell which they needed, and it was finally discovered that the Japanese had about 25,000 of these shells which were originally made by Armstrongs, and it was arranged that this ammunition should be shipped to England for the use of the Tanks. After the first trial of the Tanks at the battle of the Somme the repre- sentatives of English Tank production went to France to see the French experimental heavy Tanks, and to hold a conference with General Estionne and the makers of the Schneider and St. Chamond machines. " It was discovered that few of the Frenchmen could talk English and few of the English could talk French, but both could, up to a certain point, talk German, and it was by means of this language that they made each other understood."

The book ends with a very brief sketch of the autumn campaign of 1918 and some well-known and conclusive dicta of leading German military authorities upon the shattering effect of our use of " masses of Tanks." There is little doubt that but for the resiliency, enterprise, and unremitting energy of Sir Albert Stern we should not have produced machines in these decisive numbers. We have now—between the present volume and Major Williams-Ellis's The Tank Corps—pretty exhaustive accounts of Tank home organization and Tank warfare. To make the picture complete we need the story of the actual making of Tanks in the factories, and also of what will surely prove the extraordinary campaign fought by our Tanks in Russia.