During August and September 1914, armoured cars had been employed with considerable success in Belgium and north-western France. This no doubt brought with it the revival of the idea. Be this as it may, in October of this year Lieutenant-Colonel (now Major-General) E. D. Swinton put forward a suggestion for the construction of an armoured car on the Holt tractor or a similar caterpillar system, capable of crushing down wire entanglements and crossing trenches.
At the same time, Captain T. G. Tulloch, manager of the Chilworth Powder Company, was also devoting his attention to the possibility of constructing a land cruiser sufficiently armoured to enable it to penetrate right up to the enemy’s gun and howitzer positions. In November the idea was communicated by Captain Tulloch to Lieutenant-Colonel Swinton and to Lieutenant-Colonel (now Colonel Sir Maurice) Hankey, Secretary to the “Committee of Imperial Defence,” and later on to Mr. Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, who, in January 1915, wrote his now historic letter to Mr. Asquith:
“I entirely agree with Colonel Hankey’s remarks on the subject of special mechanical devices for taking trenches. It is extraordinary that the Army in the field and the War Office should have allowed nearly three months of warfare to progress without addressing their minds to its special problems.
“The present war has revolutionised all military theories about the field of fire. The power of the rifle is so great that 100 yards is held sufficient to stop any rush, and in order to avoid the severity of the artillery fire, trenches are often dug on the reverse slope of positions, or a short distance in the rear of villages, woods, or other obstacles. The consequence is that the war has become a short-range instead of a long-range war as was expected, and opposing trenches get ever closer together, for mutual safety from each other’s artillery fire.
“The question to be solved is not, therefore, the long attack over a carefully prepared glacis of former times, but the actual getting across 100 or 200 yards of open space and wire entanglements. All this was apparent more than two months ago, but no steps have been taken and no preparations made.