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scattering whole columns of German
troops, and one of them dashed through
the line of fire and rescued three airmen
whose aeroplanes had been brought down.
Sundry faults of construction, however,
were disclosed in the first batch, as the result
of experiences in the Antwerp region,
and the later patterns built to the Admiralty's
order have been less heavily
The Motor in Warfare 199
but of a very different type. They are
more heavily protected than the Admiralty
vehicles, and motor-lorry chassis are
employed accordingly, with solid tires.
Inevitably, they are not capable of the
same degree of dash which their Admiralty
rivals can display, but even a motorlorry
is twice as speedy as a horse and
could easily outpace cavalry. It is not
difficult to imagine situations, of course,
in which the robuster form of armored car
will score over the faster and lighter
vehicle, but it will be none the less instructive,
when the great war is over, to
learn which type has placed the greater
number of successes to its credit.
From a photograph, copyright by Brown Brothers.
A German motor-car with a gun designed for the destruction of air-ships.
loaded with armor. The frames, too, have
been stiffened and twin-wheels have been
fitted to the rear, while the tires employed
are neither pneumatic nor ordinary solids,
but of the rubber-filled type. With a single
machine-gun weighing two hundred
pounds, and about one thousand eight
hundred pounds of armor-plating, the total
weight is not beyond the capacity of a
touring chassis, duly reinforced, to support,
and the Admiralty policy of associating
high speed with the power of attack
will, I believe, be justified in the long run,
The British War Office made a move,
at a later date, in favor of armored cars,
It might be interesting, from the statistical
point of view, if one could give in
precise figures the total motoring equipment
of the respective armies, but this is
entirely impossible. All alike are using
the automobile wherever and whenever
possible; even the Russian army set off
with a motoring equipment, to the astonishment
of an Austrian attache who inquired,
just before he left Petrograd, why,
considering that the roads of Russia were
mostly bad, it was thought that the cars
would be of any use. His query was met
with the rejoinder: "Yes, but yours are
good !" Since then the Russian Government
has ordered large numbers of both
cars and motor-bicycles from English factories.
At a very moderate estimate I
should put the total number of motor-vehicles
now in service at something like a
hundred thousand; but, whatever the exact
figure may be, it is daily on the up-