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The motor-bicycle, indeed, is a vehicle
of such remarkable efficiency, economy,
and speed that personally I believe its use
in warfare is capable of infinite extension.
Just as the tendency of recent times has
been to convert cavalry into mounted infantry,
there seems no reason why brigades
The Motor in Warfare 191
here, too, they have incurred considerable
risk. One of them, the son of a wellknown
British peer, Lord Cowdray, ran
into a troop of Germans, and, along with
a companion, was pushed into the enemy's
trenches. There they were treated with
great brutality and in the thick of an
Portable search-light conveyed on an eighteen-horse-power chassis.
The illustration shows the cable on a drum behind the driver's seat so that the search-light can be operated a considerable
distance from the vehicle.
of motor-cyclist infantry should not be established
for purposes of attack. Fighting
is not all done on open plains nor in
intrenchments, and, in view of the oftrepeated
seizures of roadside villages by
the Germans in Belgium and France,
there must have been many occasions in
which a swiftly moving company of armed
motor-cyclists could have carried the position
and put the enemy to flight. If
attacked by cavalry, moreover, they
could throw down their machines, over
which it would be impossible for horses to
charge without being thrown into confusion,
during which their riders could be
picked off. This, as a matter of fact, has
actually been accomplished in the case of
ordinary cycles.
Motor-cyclists have also been largely
used as escorts for the supply-trains; and
engagement attempted to escape. Lord
Cowdray's son was shot down and killed,
but his friend succeeded in getting clear
and eventually reached the British lines.
And now we come to the vital question
of ammunition and food-supply, without
which no army could live a week. Imagination
reels at the prospect of what
would have happened to the opposing
armies, operating in millions over such extended
fronts, if they had not been able to
count upon mechanical locomotion from
the very opening of the campaign. It
was this factor which enabled the Germans
to make so rapid an onslaught
through Belgium and France, until they
received their historic check almost at the
gates of Paris; it was this factor which enabled
the allied forces to sustain the rigors
of the initial retreat from Mons. The