In commercial practice, this consideration carries little or no weight, but on active service a breakdown is none the less serious because it is caused merely by a breakage to one link in a chain and not by the entire dislocation of the whole transmission gear. One gathers that, at the present moment, chain-driven machines are in fact being used in the service of the British Army, and in the interests of the success of the scheme in the future, the hope may be expressed that practical experience will show that any fears as to unreliability of this type of transmission from the military standpoint will prove entirely groundless. When the great war broke out, the position was briefly as follows. The subsidy scheme had not been in force for a sufficient length of time to secure through its means the complete fleet required. The War Department itself owned upwards of one hundred lorries of subsidy type, and a limited number were to be found in civilian service. Among these, the Leyland, which was the first type accepted for subsidy, was probably the most prominent. It has been necessary, therefore, to depend not only on a supply of machines of subsidy type, but in the first instance on the requisitioning of other cars of suitable load capacity, and more lately on the steady purchase of new vehicles of types which, if not according exactly to the subsidy requirement, approximate to it sufficiently to secure reasonable facilities for the easy repair and maintenance of the machines of the transport and supply columns, both of our existing Expeditionary Force, and also of the new armies now in course of formation. CHAPTER XI TRANSPORT MOTORS OF CONTINENTAL ARMIES. The French Scheme--Notes on French Vehicles--Benzol and Alcohol Fuels--The German Scheme, Difficulties and Results--Austria, Italy, and Russia. The French subvention scheme, for reasons already explained, has to be more comprehensive in its financial clauses than that in force in Great Britain. Without going into details, it may be summed up in the general statement that the subsidy paid in respect of a lorry of about 3 tons capacity aggregates about £300, spread over a period of four years. [Illustration: _“The Autocar” photograph._ A GERMAN LORRY FITTED FOR REPLENISHING THE SUPPLY OF GAS IN THE ENVELOPES OF ZEPPELIN AIRSHIPS.]