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The position, therefore, in June 1915, as far as the War Office was concerned, was as follows: Proposals had been put forward by Colonel Swinton, Admiral Bacon, and Captain Tulloch, and submitted to the War Office; certain trials had been made, the result of which was, in the view of the authorities, to emphasise the engineering and other difficulties. It was only in June that the War Office ascertained that investigations on similar lines were being carried out by the Admiralty.

For the Admiralty, with a large land force at its disposal, had been for some time casting about for means whereby the men of that force might go into battle more in Navy fashion, that is (to misquote the “heroic Spanish gunners”) with something better than serge, “joined to their own invincible courage,” between them and the enemy’s bullets.

Mr. Churchill had, as early as January 1915, written a letter to the Prime Minister expressing his entire agreement with Colonel Hankey’s remarks “on the subject of special mechanical devices for taking trenches.”