Military control of travel is, of course, a war-time measure, and with the passing of the emergency which gave it birth it will almost certainly disappear, along with most of the other activities of Military Intelligence. Though I am heartily in favor of completely restoring the country to a peace-time basis, and of abolishing the many highly arbitrary measures made necessary by the war, it seems to me that it might be a good idea to continue some form of travel control which would prevent the entry into the United States of undesirable aliens. We have quite enough of them as it is. VIII “TREAT ’EM ROUGH!” It is rather a curious circumstance that the idea from which was evolved one of the most formidable weapons of the war, and one which proved a prime factor in bringing Germany to her knees, was obtained by an Englishman in Germany, from under the very noses of the Germans themselves, who did not have the vision to recognize its amazing military possibilities. About a year before the Teutonic wave surged across the frontiers of France, the representative of a California manufacturing concern was giving demonstrations in the larger German cities of a singular device known as the Holt caterpillar tractor. Though this contrivance, in spite of its grotesque and clumsy appearance, could cross ditches and surmount obstacles with amazing agility, it did not arouse particular interest among the Germans, for it was intended for the pursuits of peace, whereas they were even then seeking new means for making war. But it chanced that among the onlookers at one of the demonstrations was an English traveller, who had the imagination to see in the clumsy machine, as it waddled across an apparently impassable terrain with the relentlessness of fate, something more than an agricultural appliance. Upon his return to England he described the tractor to Colonel E. D. Swinton, who evinced the liveliest interest in the subject, closely examining the pictures and asking countless questions. I might add that General Swinton, for he has since been promoted, has, unlike most professional soldiers, a highly developed imagination, as is shown in the stories he has written, the best known of which is entitled _The Green Curve_. Colonel Swinton, who had served in the South African campaign, had long had in mind an idea for an armored fighting-machine, a sort of small fort on wheels, which could be propelled by its own power over ground impassable to any other type of vehicle. The caterpillar tractor gave him the means of propulsion which he had been seeking. But, as might have been expected, the hidebound, brassbound officials of the War Office condemned the suggestion as fantastic and impractical, it not being until 1915, when the gloom of despondency overhung the land and people snatched at straws of hope, that Swinton’s plans were taken from their pigeonhole for reconsideration and he was reluctantly given permission to show what he could do.