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THE MOTOR IN
WARFARE
POWER AND SPEED IN THE GREAT EUROPEAN CONFLICT
BY CHARLES LINCOLN
FREESTON
Member of the General Committee of the Royal Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland; Founder Member of
the Royal Aero Club; author of "The High Roads of the Alps," etc.
From a photograph by the Record Press, London.
English motor-cyclist in France.
The place of the galloping orderly has been taken by the motor-cyclist.
HIS is not a war of men. It
is a war of machines."
Such was the dictum of a
distinguished officer when
the great European war had would have been impossible.
been eight weeks in progress
and it had become evident that the
quick-firer and the machine-gun were the
most potent weapons of offence on either
side.
But the war is also one of "machines"
in a totally different sense; and whereas
quick-firers and Maxims, though more
liberally employed than in any previous
campaign, are no new things of themselves,
the feature which is new and paramount
alike is the use of the "petrol" motor in
its every shape and form. Without it,
indeed, history might conceivably have
had to record another Thirty Years' War.
With millions of men drawn up in battle
array at one and the same time, to handle
them effectively by old-time methods
Even before
the opposing fronts were extended to
their fullest degree in France alone, they
were officially declared to have attained
a length of three hundred miles, and one
of two hundred and seventy miles in the
east—figures which not only convey some
indication of the stupendous size of the
engaging forces, but even more emphatically
suggest the tremendous responsibilities
of the commanders-in-chief.
Nevertheless, although they have to
deal with millions instead of tens of thousands,
the commanders concerned have
never had their forces so completely under
VOL. LVII.—19 185