White chassis | 1,695 | 1,929 | 2,695 | 575 Reconnaissance | 1,081 | 712 | 1,003 | 320 Staff observation | 1,175 | 1,164 | 1,175 | 189 Equipment repair | 310 | 310 | 310 | 121 H. M. R. S. trucks | 624 | 287 | 416 | 12 ---------------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------- CHAPTER VIII. TANKS. The tank, more than any other weapon born of the great war, may be called the joint enterprise of the three principal powers arrayed against Germany--America, France, and Great Britain. An American produced the fundamental invention, the caterpillar traction device, which enables the fortress to move. A Frenchman took the idea from this and evolved the tank as an engine of war. The British first used the terrifying monster in actual fighting. There is a common impression throughout America that the British Army invented the tank. The impression is wrong in two ways. The French government has recently awarded the ribbon of the Legion of Honor to the French ordnance officer who is officially hailed as the tank's inventor. His right to the honor, however, is disputed by a French civilian who possesses an impressive exhibition of drawings to prove that he and not the officer is the inventor. As this is written a lively controversy over the point is in progress in France. Wherever the credit for the invention belongs, the French were first to build tanks, building them only experimentally, however, and not using them until after the British had demonstrated their effectiveness. In the second place, it was not the British Army which adopted them first in England, but the British Navy. The tank as an idea shared the experience of many another war invention in being skeptically received by the conservative experts. The British Navy, indeed, produced the first ones in England; but to the British Army goes the glory of having first used them in actual fighting and of establishing them in the forefront of modern offensive weapons. Brought forth as a surprise, the tanks made an effective début in the great British drive for Cambrai. Later the enemy affected to scoff at their usefulness. The closing months of the tanks' brief history, however, found them in greater favor than ever, and they were used by both sides in increasing numbers.