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The Tank, as a weapon, has been threatened with several crises. Some have been averted by intelligent forecast in specification. Some have been dealt with by the improvisations of the engineers both in France and in England. Some have disappeared before a general improvement in design. You, I think, have touched on one crisis only—the mud crisis. The mud crisis was defeated at long last, but the swamp crisis, never. Although none of the other troubles was of long duration, any one of them, unless cured, would have caused a permanent disappearance of the arm.

Failure of rollers was succeeded by failure of sprockets. Sprockets and rollers were hardly cured when the Germans produced a very reliable armour-piercing bullet. This after a very short innings was defeated by the arrival of the Mark IV. Tank. The Mark IV. Tank was barely rescued from the mud of Flanders by the invention of the unditching beam, when we discovered that the Hindenburg trenches were about one foot too wide to cross without some form of help to the Tank. This difficulty was overcome, but about this time the effect of concentrated machine-gun fire upon Mark IV. Tanks must have become known to the Germans, as also their vulnerability to the ordinary field gun. The position with regard to both splash and casualties from guns firing over the sights, was becoming serious when the arrival of Mark V. Tank, with its increased handiness and speed, put an end to the splash difficulty for ever, and defeated the field gun for a good long time.