I remember sitting in a mess of the Gordons in the village of Franvillers along the Albert road, and listening to a long monologue by a Gordon officer on the future of the tanks. He was a dreamer and visionary, and his fellow-officers laughed at him.

“A few tanks are no good,” he said. “Forty or fifty tanks are no good on a modern battlefront. We want hundreds of tanks, brought up secretly, fed with ammunition by tank carriers, bringing up field-guns and going into action without any preliminary barrage. They can smash through the enemy’s wire and get over his trenches before he is aware that an attack has been organized. Up to now all our offensives have been futile because of our preliminary advertisement by prolonged bombardment. The tanks can bring back surprise to modern warfare, but we must have hundreds of them.”