Thus a concentrated essence of fighting power, rather than bulk, will be the aim of the tank designers of the future, just as the organizers of armies will pin their faith on quality instead of quantity, turning for inspiration to Alexander Xenophon and Gustavus Adolphus in place of Clausewitz. Not “how large,” but “how good” will be the standard of to-morrow. To sum up our deductions――The land “punch” of the future will be delivered by fleets of tanks, their communications, maintained by cross-country and air vehicles, offering no fixed and vulnerable target for an enemy blow, either on land or from the air. These quick-moving and quick-hitting forces will advance by rapid bounds into the enemy country to strike at its vitals, establishing behind them, as they progress, a chain of fortified bases, garrisoned by heavy artillery and land marines――_late_ infantry. A proportion of land marines might also be carried in this tank fleet to be used as “landing parties” to clear fortifications and hill defences under cover of the fire from the tank fleet. Speed, on land as in the air, will dominate the next war, transforming the battlefields of the future from squalid trench labyrinths into arenas where surprise and manœuvre will reign again, restored to life and emerging from the mausoleums of mud built by Clausewitz and his successors. EPILOGUE The critic may ask why this survey has been confined to weapons already known, why, in our forecast, we have not endeavoured to imitate the imaginative flights of a Jules Verne or an H. G. Wells in the past? The future may bring to fruition the sensational dreams of the novelist――discovery in bacteriological and electrical science may lead to the wars of the future being waged by means of the germs, or the green, purple, and other “death” rays, lurid in hue and effect, which form the properties of the prophetic novelist. But for a reasoned attempt to forecast the future of war we cannot rely on hypothetical discoveries of a revolutionary nature――which may prove but chimeras in the desert. For our suggestions to have a practical value, they must be based, not on the shifting sands of speculations, but on solid rock――the evolutionary development of weapons and powers already available. We appreciate that further scientific discoveries may modify our conclusions as to the means by which the moral objective is gained――but the goal itself will remain true.