The present writers are ignorant whether we have determined to keep our lead or no. Shall we have the foresight, when it comes to the remodelling of the Army, to give to Tanks the place they ought to hold in it? Shall we be willing to spend money on experiments, money which we must spend if we want to keep that lead? Will the Tanks be given the facilities for both mechanical and tactical training that they ought to have? We may so easily slide back into our old groove. It is always hard to turn to new ways, and to give a preponderating place in the “New Model” to Tanks, would certainly be to effect a very radical change. There does seem to be a certain fear that the Army and the public may feel that the Tanks are all right for War, but hardly the thing for soldiering. And yet how well the requirements of a strong force of Tanks would in reality fit the kind of framework which the wisest minds seem agreed should be our Army of the future. We ought to have, they say, a small and highly specialised Standing Army, and behind that a vast Citizen Army on the basis of the Territorial system. What weapon could be more suitably added to the gun and the aeroplane than the Tank in the Regular Army? Our Standing Army would thus consist of a nucleus of mechanical experts. Nor need the question of finance ever rise spectre-like between us and the idea of a strong force of Tanks, for the Tank is an absurdly cheap weapon compared with its co-efficient of infantry. But there is another direction in which, if it claim any considerable place in our Standing Army, the Tank must make good. That army may at any moment be called upon to undertake police work in any part of the world. The Tank, even the old Mark I., is, as we saw at Gaza, suitable for desert warfare. The Mark V. and Whippets with General Denikin’s force in Russia have been prodigiously successful, and there are probably few species of campaign against a semi-civilised enemy in which the newer “Medium” Tanks would not do admirably. Another point is that “minor wars” are fought by us with as much avoidance of bloodshed as is compatible with the bringing of our opponents to reason. A weapon which admittedly affected the _moral_ even of admirably disciplined troops like the Germans to a phenomenal degree, is particularly well adapted to this purpose. It is infinitely more humane to appal a rioter or a savage by showing him a Tank than to shoot him down with an inoffensive looking machine-gun.[109] There is yet one final consideration.