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To Sir Eustace d’Eyncourt, the only member of the original Committee still officially connected with us, a great debt is due. We have been fortunate to have had at our disposal an engineer of his wide practical experience, who devoted much of his scanty leisure to our guidance both in policy and in detail, whose sagacious counsels have more than once checked the impetuosity of some of his associates.

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Before passing to the aspects of Tank history with which I have been directly concerned, I wish to make reference to two organisations vital to the Tank Corps in the field. For if that represented the point of the spear, they combined to form a most solid and dependable shaft.

The first of these two was the Training Organisations set up in England to produce the men; second, the manufactories which produced the machines.

The task of the Training Centre and the cadet schools was particularly onerous. The organisation of any new instructional centre in the haste and pressure of the time was no easy task—its work was often thankless and subject to much ill-informed and light-hearted criticism.