and shell-hole immune and unscathed, for Chapters XXVIII, XXXI, and XXXIV; to Lieutenant C. B. Arnold, D.S.O., Commander of Whippet Tank “Musical Box,” for the simple and heroic exploit related in Chapter XXX; to Major T. L. Leigh Mallory, D.S.O., O.C. 8th Squadron, R.A.F., whose energy resulted not only in the cementing of a close comradeship between the two supreme mechanical weapons of the age but of a close co-operation which saved many lives in battle, for much of Chapter XXXII; to Lieutenant-Colonel E. J. Carter, O.C. 17th Tank Armoured Car Battalion, who was as great a terror to the German Corps Commanders as Paul Jones was to the Manchester merchantmen and who had the supreme honour to break over the Rhine the first British flag--the colours of the Tank Corps--for Chapter XXXVIII. It was a great brotherhood, the Tank Corps, and if there were “duds” in it there certainly were not old ones, for the Commander of the Corps, Major-General H. J. Elles, C.B., D.S.O., was under forty, and most of his staff and subordinate commanders were younger than himself. Youth is apt, rightly, to be enthusiastic, and General Elles must frequently have had a trying time in regulating this enthusiasm, canalising it forward against the enemy and backward diplomatically towards our friends. We of the Tank Corps Headquarters Staff knew what we wanted. Realising the power of the machine which the brains of England had created, we never hesitated over a “No” when we knew that hundreds if not thousands of lives depended on a “Yes.” Modestly, looking back on the war from a comfortable armchair in London, I see clearly, quite clearly, that we were right. The war has proved it, and our endeavours were not in vain. We were right, and youth generally is right, for it possesses mental elasticity, its brains are plastic and not polarised. The mental athlete is the young man: the Great War, like all other wars, has proved this again and again. We have heard much of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, but they scoffed at the tank just as Wurmser and Alvinzi scoffed at the ragged voltigeurs of the Army of Italy with which the Little Corporal was, in 1796, about to astonish Europe. We have also astonished Europe, we who wandered over the Somme battlefield with dimmed eyes, and over the Flanders swamps with a lump in our throats.