THE LAND IRONCLADSOriginally published in The StrandMagazine

December 1903

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I'm very pleased to be able to add H. G. Wells' "The Land Ironclads" tothe collection of his works available online.

In this story, published in 1903, Wells describes how a trench stalemateis broken by armoured vehicles. He obviously draws on the recent South Africanconflict for inspiration for his war between "Townsmen" and "Countrymen". Theuse of entrenchments had been a feature of the Boer War but was by no means new,having been seen in both the Crimea and American Civil War.

The armoured vehicles Wells describes obviously differ in form from thetanks that were actually used in World War One but in principle they areidentical. Wells recognized that such vehicles would need have good levels offirepower, protection and cross-country mobility.

Wells also recognized that such vehicles would need to be applied en-massand that infantry would have to follow close behind to hold the territorygained. In the story the latter use bicycles. The principles of concentrationand consolidation were sometimes forgotten when tanks were used for real.

Personally I find one of the most striking passages in this story is inthe paragraph that begins "Oh- dodges!" Here a character describes the same"Hutier" or "Stormtrooper" infiltration tactics that the Germans would usesuccessfully in the latter part of World War One. Attacks by stealth andinfiltration were by no means new, but Wells clearly spells out how these mightbe used in the context of trench warfare.

When reading this story it is important to bear in mind that StrandMagazine was popular with Gentlemen and that many senior or future seniorofficers would have not only read it regularly but have contributed articles toit themselves. Many of the commanders of World War One had therefore beenintroduced to both the ideas of Armoured vehicles and infiltration tactics as asolution to a trench stalemate.

Where possible I have retained the original formatting and spelling usedin The Strand Magazine.

Brought to you by The Scrapboard.http://www.angelfire.com/art/enchanter/title1.html

The Land Ironclads.

By H. G. WELLS.

1. and down he sat at once without the shadow

OHE young lieutenant lay beside of an attack and began grubbing trenches for

" the war correspondent and himself, as though he meant to sit downadmired the idyllic calm of the there to the very end of time. He was

. " enemy's lines through his field- slow, but much more wary than the worldglass. had been led to expect, and he kept convoys

. "So far as I can see," he tucked in and shielded his slow marchingsaid, at last, "one man." infantry sufficiently well, to prevent any heavy

" What's he doing?" asked the war corre- adverse scoring.spondent. "But he ought to attack," the young

" Field - glass at us," said the young lieutenant had insisted.lieutenant. " He'll attack us at dawn, somewhere along

"And this is war! " the lines. You'll get the bayonets coming"No," said the young lieutenant; "it's into the trenches just about when you can

Bloch." see," the war correspondent had held until a"The game's a draw." week ago."Nu! They've got to win or else they The young lieutenant winked when he said

lose. A draw's a win for our side." that.They had discussed the political situation When one early morning the men the

fifty times or so, and the war correspondent defenders sent to lie out five hundred yardswas weary of it. He stretched out his limbs. before the trenches, with a view to the un-

"Aaai s'w;,se it is!" he yawned. expected emptying of magazines into any"F/ut I" night attack, gave way to causeless panic and" What was that?" blazed away at nothing for ten minutes, the"Shot at us." war correspondent understood the meaningThe war correspondent shifted to a slightly of that wink.

lower position. "No one shot at him," he "What would you do if you were thecomplained. enemy?" said the war correspondent, suddenly.

"I wonder if they think we shall get so " If I had men like I've got now?"bored we shall go home?" "Yes."

The war correspondent made no reply. "Take these trenches."" There's the harvest, of course. . ." " How?"They had been there a month. Since the" Oh-dodges! Crawl out half-way at

first brisk movements after the declaration of night before moonrise and get into touch~ar things had gone slower and slower, until with the chaps we send out. Blaze at 'emIt seemed as though the whole machine of if they tried to shift, and so bag some of 'emevents must have run down. To begin with, in the daylight. Learn that patch of ground!hey had had almost a scampering time; the by heart, lie all day in squatty holes, andInvader had come across the frontier on the come on nearer next night. There's a bitvery dawn of the war in half-a-dozen parallel over there, lumpy ground, where they couldcolumns behind a cloud of cyclists and get across to rushing distance-easy. In acavalry, with a general air of coming straight night or so.. It would be a mere game foron the capital, and the defender-horsemen our fellows; it's what they're made for. . . .had held him up, and peppered him and Guns? Shrapnel and stuff wouldn't stopforced him to open out to outflank, and had good men who meant business."then bolted to the next position in the most " Why don't they do that? "approved style, for a couple of days, until in "Their men aren't brutes enough; that'sthe afternoon, bump! they had the invader the trouble. They're a crowd of devitalized~ainst their prepared lines of defence. He to\\'Ilsmen, and that's the truth of the matter.

l' . dId not suffer so much as had been hoped and They're cl

.

erks, they're factory hands, they're. expected: he was coming on it seemed with students, they're civilized men. They can

his eyes open, his scouts winded the guns, write, they can talk, they can make and do';(I!

all sorts of !hings, but they're poor amateursat war. They've got no physical stayingpower, and that's the whole thing. They'venever slept in the open one night in theirlives; they've never drunk anything but thepurest water-company water; they've nevergone short of three meals a day since theyleft their devitalizing feeding-bottles. Halftheir cavalry never cocked leg over horsetill it enlisted six months ago. They ridetheir horses as though they were bicycles-you watch 'em!They're fools atthe game, and theyknow it. Our boysof fourteen cangive their grownmen points. . . . .Very well-"

The war corre-spondent musedon his face withhis nose betweenhis knuckles.

"If a decentci vilization," hesaid, "cannot pro-duce better menfor War than--"

He stopped withbelated politeness." I mean-"

" Than our open-air life," said theyoung lieutenant,politely.

"Exactly," saidthe war corre-spondent. " Thencivilization has tostop."

"It looks like it," the young lieutenantadmitted.

" Civilization has science, you know," saidthe war correspondent. " It invented and itmakes the rifles and guns and things you use."

"Which our nice healthy hunters andstockmen and so on, rowdy-dowdy cow-punchers and horse-whackers, can use tentimes better than-- What's that?"

" What?" said the war correspondent, andthen seeing his companion busy with hisfield-glass he produced his own. " Where? "said the war correspondent, sw ping the, \

enemy's Imes." It's nothing," said the young lieutenant,

still looking. .

"What's nothing? "The young lieutenant put down his glass

"*,

and pointed. "I thoughtthere, behind the stemsSomething black. Whatknow."

The war correspondent tried tby intense scruti~v. 0 get eVen

" It wasn't anythl1iO''' Sal'd the. Co, youn I

'

~enant, rolhng Qverto regard the darkli g leu-mg sky, and generalized: "T h ng eVen-b h. ere never 'Ie anyt mg any more for ever U I WJj

Th . ness "e war correspondent looked ' .-mqulry"Th .

, ey may getthen stomachswr.ong, or Some-thmg-living with-out proper drains."

A sOund ofbugles came fromthe tents behindThe war corre:spondent slid back-ward down thesand and stood up,"Boom!" camefrom somewherefar away to the left."Halloa !" he said,hesitated, andcrawled back topeer again. "Fir-ing at this time isjolly bad manners."

The young lieu-tenant was incom-municative againfor a space.

Then he pointedto the distantclump of treesagain. "One ofour big guns. They

were firing at that," he said," The thing that wasn't anything? ""Something over there, anyhow."Both men were silent, peering throu,g~

their glasses for a space. "J ust when It stwilight," the lieutenant complained. Hestood up.

"I might stay here a bit," said the warcorrespondent. ,

The lieutenant shook his head. " There snothing to see," he apologized, and the~,wffitdown to where his little squad of s~n

(brown, loose-limbed men had been yarnJn~in the trench. The war corresponde~stood up also, glanced for a moment at t :business-like bustle below him, gave perhaPs-- . .I treetwenty seconds to those emgmatlcaagain, then turned his face towa:'d the camP,

I saw somethingof those trees.it was I don't

" , BOOM!' CAME FROM SO>lEWHEI<E FAR AWAY TO THE LEFT."

--""'"

He found himself wondering whether hiseditor would consider the story of how some-body thought he saw something black behinda clump of trees, and how a gun was' fired atthis illusion by somebody else, too trivial forpublic consul1-t-tion.

"It's the only gleam of a shado,w ofinterest," said the war correspo~t;' "forten whole days."

"No," he said, presently; "I'll write thatother article, 'Is \Var Played Out?'"

He surveyed the darkling lines in per-spective, the tangle of trenches one behindanother, one commanding another, which thedefender had made ready. The shadowsand mists swallowed up their receding con-tours, and here and there a lantern gleamed,and here and there knots of me.n were busyabout small fires. " No troops on earthcould do it," he said. . . .

He was depressed. He believed thatthere were other things in life better worthhaving than proficiency in war; he believedthat in the heart of civilization, for all itsstresses, its crushing concentrations offorces, its injustice and suffering, there laysomething that might be the hope of theworld, and the idea that any people byliving in the open air, hunting perpetually,losing touch with books and art and allthe things that intensify life, might hopeto resist and break that great developmentto the end of time, jarred on his civilizedsoul.

Apt to his thoughtdefender soldiers andgleam of a swingingthe way.

He glanced at their red-lit faces, and oneshone out for a moment, a common type offace in the defender's ranks: ill-shaped nose,sensuous lips, bright clear eyes full of alertcunning, slouch hat cocked on one side andadorned with the peacock's plume of therustic Don Juan turned soldier, a hard brownskin, a sinewy frame, an open, tireless stride,and a master's grip on the rifle.

The war correspondent returned theirsalutations and went on his way.

"Louts," he whispered. "Cunning, ele-mentary louts. And they are going to beatthe townsmen at the game of war! "

From the red glow among the nearer tentscame first one and then half-a-dozen heartyvoices, bawling in a drawling unison thewords of a particularly slab and sentimentalpatriotic song.

"Oh, go it!" muttered the war corre-spondent, bitterly.

came a file of thepassed him in thelamp that marked

n.lT was opposite the trenches called afterHackbone's Hut that the battle began.There the ground stretched broad and levelbetween the lines, with scarcely shelter fora lizard, and it (seemed to the startled, just-awakened men 'who came crowding into thetrenches that this was one more proof of thatgreen inexperien~l the enemy of whichthey had heard s6 much. The war COrre-spondent would not believe his eJ.rs at first,and swore that he and the war artist, who,still imperfectly roused, was trying to put onhis boots by the light of a match held in hishand, were the victims of a common illusion.Then, after putting his head in a bucket ofcold water, his intelligence came back as hetowelled. He listened. " Gollys !" he said;"that's something more than scare firing thistime. It's like ten thousand carts on a bridgeof tin."

There came a sort of enrichment to thatsteady uproar. "Machine guns! "

Then, "Guns!"The artist, with one boot on, thought to

look at his watch, and went to it hopping."Half an hour from dawn," he said.

" You were right about their attacking, afterall. . . ."

The war correspondent came out of thetent, verifying the presence of chocolate inhis pocket as he did so. He had to halt fora moment or so until his eyes were toneddown to the night a little. "Pitch!" he said.He stood for a space to seJ.son his eyesbefore he felt justified in striking out for ablack gap among the adjacent tents. Theartist coming out behind him fell over a tent-rope. It was half-p'lst two o'clock in themorning of the darkest night in time, andagainst a sky of dull black silk the enemywas talking searchlights, a wild jabber ofsearchlights. "He's trying to blind our rifle-men," said the war correspondent with aflash, and waited for the artist and thenset off with a sort of discreet haste again." Whoa! " he said, presently. "Ditches!"

They stopped."It's the confounded searchlights," said

the war correspondent.They saw lanterns going to and fro, near

by, and men falling in to march down to the.trenches. They were for following them, andthen the artist began to feel his night eyes."If we scramble this," he said, "and it'sonly a drain, there's a clear run up to. theridge." And that way they took. LIghtscame and went in the tents behind, as themen turned <;Jut,and ever and again they came

to broken ground and staggered and stumbled.But in a little while they drew near the crest.Something that sounded like the impact of avery important railway accident happened inthe air above them, and the shrapnel bulletsseethed about them like a sudden handful ofhail. " Right-ho !" said the war correspon-dent, and soon they judged they had cometo the crest and stood in the midst of a worldof great darkness and frantic glares, whoseprincipal fact was sound.

Right and left of them and all about themwas the uproar, an army-full of magazine fire,at first chaotic and monstrous and then, ekedout by little flashes and gleams and sugges-tions, taking the beginnings of a shape. Itlooked to the war correspondent as thoughtr.e enemy must have attacked in line andwich his whole force-in which case he waseither being or was already annihilated.

"Dawn and theDead," he said,with his instinctfor headlines. Hesaid this to himself,but afterwards, bymeans of shouting,he conveyed anidea to the artist."They must havemeant it for a sur-prise," he said.

It was remark-able how the firingkept on. After atime he began toperceive a sort ofrhythm in thisinferno of noise.It would decline-decline percepti-bly, droop towardssomething that wascomparativelya pause-a pauseof inquiry."Aren't you alldead yet?" thispause seemed tosay. The flicker-ing fringe of rifle-flashes would be-come attenuatedand broken, andthe whack-bang ofthe enemy's bigguns two milesaway there wouldcome up out of

504 THE STRAND MAGAZINE.

the deeps. Then suddenly, east or west ofthem, something would startle the rifles to.

b k . <tfrantIc out rea agam.

The war correspondent taxed his brain forsome theory of conflict that would accOUntfor. this, and was su.d?enl~ aware that th~artIst and he were vIvIdly Illuminated. Hecould see the ridge on which they stoodand before them in black outline a file ofriflemen hurrying down towards the nearertrenches. It became visible that a light rainwas falling, and farther away towards theenemy was a clear space with men-" OUrmen? "-running across it in disorder. Hesaw one of those men throw up his handsand drop. And something else black andshining loomed up on the edge of the beam-coruscating flashes; and behind it and faraway a calm, white eye regarded the world."Whit, whit, whit," sang something in the air,

..SOMETHING ELSE BLACK ANDSHlNING WO"ED UP ON THE EDGE OF THE BEAM.

, I'HH LAN.LJ .J.KULVGLdl.L/J.

and then the artist was running for cover,with the war correspondent behind him.Bang came shrapnel, bursting close at handas it seemed, and our two men were lyingflat in a dip in the ground, and the lightand everything had gone again, leaving a vastnote of interrogation upon the night.

The war correspondent came withinbawling range. "What the deuce was it?Shooting our men down!"

"Black," said the artist, "and like a fort.Not two hundred yards from the first trench."

5U5

And on its carcass the bullets must havebeen battering with more than the passionateviolence of hail on a roof of tin.

Then in the twinkling of an eye the curtainof the dark had fallen again and the monsterhad vanished, but the crescendo of musketrymarked its approach to the trenches.

They were beginning to talk about thething to each other, when a flying bulletkicked dirt into the artist's face, and they,decided abruptly to crawl down into thecover of the trenches. They had got down

" IT HAD THE EFFECT OF A LARGE Ar<D CLUMSY BLACK INSECT."

~

He sought for comparisons in his mind." Something between a big blockhouse anda giant's dish-cover," he said.

" And they were running!" said the warcorresponden t.

" You'd run if a thing like that,searchlight to help it, turned upP~owling nightmare in the middleUlght."

They crawled to what they judged theedge of the dip and lay regarding the un-fathomable dark. For a space they cotllddistinguish nothing, and then a sudden con-Vergence of the searchlights of both sidesbrought the strange thing out again.

In that flickering pallor it had the effect ofa large and clumsy black insect, an insectthe size of an ironcla.d cruiser, crawlingobliquely to the first lme of tr:ell~hes andfiring shots out of portholes III ItS back.

with alike aof the

with an unobtrusive persistence into thesecond line, before the dawn had grown clearenough for anything to be seen. They foundthemselves in a crowd of expectant riflemen,all noisily arguing about the thing that wouldhappen next. The enemy's contrivance haddone execution upon the outlying men, itseemed, but they did not believe it would doany more. " Come the day and we'll capturethe lot of them," said a burly soldier.

" Them? " said the war correspondent."They say there's a regular string of 'em,

crawling along the front of our lines. . . .'Vho cares?"

The darkness filtered away so imper-ceptibly that at no moment could onedeclare decisively that one could see. Thesearchlights ceased to sweep hither andthither. The enemy's monsters were dubiouspatches of darkness upon the dark, and then

)UO 1111.:. 011U"UV.L/ 1¥1-L'iLu'iL11V-'!-.

no longer dubious, and so they crept outinto distinctness. The war correspondent,munching chocolate absent-mindedly, beheldat last il spacious picture of battle under thecheerless sky, whose central focus was anarray of fourteen or fifteen huge clumsyshapes lying in perspective on the very edgeof the first line of trenches, at intervals ofperhaps three hundred yards, and evidentlyfiring down upon the crowded riflemen.They were so close in that the defender'sguns had ceased, and only the first line oftrenches was in action.

The second line commanded the first, andas the light grew the war correspondent couldmake out the riflemen who were fightingthese monsters, crouched in knots andcrowds behind the transverse banks thatcrossed the trenches against the eventualityof an enfilade. The trenches close to thebig machines were empty save for thecrumpled suggestions of dead and woundedmen; the defenders had been driven rightand left as soon as the prow of this landironclad had loomed up over the front ofthe trench. He produced his field-glass, andwas immediately a centre of inquiry from thesoldiers about him.

They wanted to look, they asked questions,and after he had announced that the menacross the traverses seemed unable to advanceor retreat, and were crouching under coverrather than fighting, he found it advisable toloan his glasses to 'a burly and incredulouscorporal. He heard a strident voice, andfound a lean and sallow soldier at his backtalking to the artist.

"There's chaps down there caught," theman was saying. "If they retreat they gotto expose themselves, and the fire's toostraigh t. . . ."

"They aren't firing much, but every shot'sa hit."

" '''ho ? "

"The chaps in that thing. The menwho're coming up-"

"Coming up where?" \" "r e're evacuating them trenche~ where

we can. Our chaps are coming back up thezigzags . . . . No end of 'em hit. ;/. . Butwhen we get clear our turn'lI come. Rather!Those things won't be able to cross a trenchor get into it; and before they can get backour guns'lI smash 'em up. Smash 'em rightup. See? " A brightness came into hiseyes. "Then we'll have a go at the beggarinside," he said. . . .

The war correspondent thought for amoment, trying to realize the idea. Then

he set himself to recover his field-from the burly corporal. . . . glasses"The daylight wa~ getting clearerI he clouds were lIfting and I now.lemon yellow amidst the' level m

aa g eall) of

. Sses to theast portended sunnse. He looked a . ethe land ironclad. As he saw it in th

gballl ::tt

d I.

b . e leakgrey awn, ymg 0 IIquely Upon th I 'and on the very lip of the foremo st

et

s opeth

.f rench

e suggestIOn 0 a stranded vessel , . '. . vasver)"

g:eat mdeed. It mIght have been frOll)eIghty to a hundred feet long--it was bh d . a outt~vo un red and fi~ty yards away-its verticalsl~e was ten feet hIgh or so, smooth for thatheIght, and then wit~ a complex patternin~?~er the e~ves of Its flattish turtle cove!:I hIS patter~1mg was a close interlacing ofportholes, nfle barrels, and telescope tubes-sham and real-indistinguishable one fromthe .o.ther. The thing had come into such aposItion as to enfilade the trench, which wasempty now, so far a? he could see, except fortwo or three crouchmg knots of men and thetumbled-looking dead. Behind it, across theplain, it had scored the grass with a train oflinke~ impression~, like the dotted tracingssea-thmgs leave m sand. Left and rightof that track dead men and wou,.rded menwere scattered-men it had picked off as theyfled back from their advanced positions inthe searchlight glare from the invader's lines.And now it lay with its head projecting alittle over the trench it had won, as if it werea single sentient thing planning the nextphase of its attack. . . .

He lowered his glasses and took a morecomprehensive view of the situation. Thesecreatures of the night I-->1.devidently won thefirst line of trenches and the fight had cometo a pause. In the increasing light he couldmake out by a stray shot or a chance expos~rethat the defender's marksmen were Iymgthick in the second and third line of trench~sup towards the low crest ofthe position, and IIIsuch of the zigzags as gave them ~chance of aconverging fire. The men about him were ta]~-ino- of guns. "We're in the line of the bIggubnsat the crest but they'll soon shift o.ne topepper them," th'e lean man said, reassunngly.

"Whup," said the corporal: ,,'. s"Ba g-1-bang! bang! Whlr-r-r-r-r.' It "a.

a sor.~.. of nervous J'um p and all the nfles were, cone-

goin~ off by themselves. The wa\st twOsponclent found himself and the art,. . b h

.d rne of pre-Idle men crouchmg e m a I . h rg-

. ' . cl. en dIsc aoccu pled-baBks of m ustnous m cl, h d move.

ing magazines. The monster a h hailIt continued to move regardless of t e cksthat splashed its skin with bright neW spe

THE LAND IRONG'LADS.

of lead. It was singing a mechanical littleditty to itself, "Tuf-tuf, tuf-tuf, tuf-tuf," and

rsquirting out little jets of steam behind. Ithad humped itself up, as a limpet doesbefore it crawls; it had lifted its skirt anddisplayed along the length of it-fie!! They\I'ere thick, stumpy feet, between knobs andbuttons in shape-flat, broad things, remind-ing one of the feet of elephants or the legsof caterpillars; and then, as the skirt rosehigher, th!! warcorrespond ent,scrutinizing thething throughhis glassesagain, saw thatthese feet hung,as it were, onthe rims ofwheels. Histhoughts whirl-ed back toVictoria Street,Westminster,and he sawhimself in thepiping times ofpeace, seekingmatter for aninterview.

" Mr. - Mr.I>iplock," hesaid; "and hecalled themPedrails . . . .Fancy meetingthem here! ,;

The marks-man besidehim raised hishead andshoulders in aspeculativemood to firem~re certainly-It seemed so natural to assume the attentionof the monster must be distracted by thistrench before it-and was suddenly knockedbackwards by a bullet through his neck. Hisfeet flew up, and he vanished out of themargin of the watcher's field of vision. TheWarcorrespondent grovelled tighter, but aftera glance behind him at a painful little con-fusion, he resumed his field-glass, for the thingWas putting down its feet one after the other,and hoisting itself farther and farther overthe trench. Only a bullet in the head couldhave stopped him loo~ing just th~n. .

The lean man wIth the stndent vOICeIi.....-

507

ceased firing to turn and reiterate his point."They can't possibly cross," he bawled.They--"

"Bang! Bang! Bang, bang! "-drownedeverything.

The lean man continued speaking for aword or so, then gave it up, shook his headto enforce the impossibility of anythingcrossing a trench like the one below, andresumed business once more.

And all thewhile that greatbulk was cross-ing. Whenthe war corre-spondentturned his glasson it agaIn ithad bridgedthe trench, andits queer feetwere raspingaway at thefarther bank,in the attemptto get a holdthere. It gotits hold. Itcontinued tocrawl until thegreater bulk orit was over thetrench - untilit was all over.Then it pausedfor a moment,adjusted itsskirt a littlenearer the

ground, g~vean unnervll1g"toot, toot,"and came onabruptly at apace of, per-

haps, six miles an hour straight up the gentleslope towards our observer.

The war correspondent raised himself onhis elbow and looked a natural inquiry atthe artist.

For a moment the men about him stuck totheir position and fired furiously. Then thelean man in a mood of precipitancy slidbackwards, and the war correspondent said"Come along" to the artist, and led themovement along the trench.

As they dropped down, the vision of a hill-side of trench being rushed by a dozen vastcockroaches disappeared for a space, and

"THE MEN AUOUT HIM STUCK TO THEIJ< I'OSITJUN MW FU<EO nHIOUSLY."

instead was one of a narrow passage, crowdedwith men, for the most part receding, thoughone or two turned or halted. He neverturned back to see the nose of the monstercreep over the brow of the trench; he nevereven troubled to keep in touch with theartist. He heard the" whit" of bullets abouthim soon enough, and saw a man before himstumble and drop, and then he was oneof a furious crowd fighting to get into atransverse zigzag ditch that enabled thedefenders to get under coveI up and downthe hill. It was like a theatre panic. Hegathered from signs and fragmentary wordsthat on ahead another of these monstershad also won to the second trench.

He lost his interest in the general courseof the battle for a space altogether; hebecame simply a modest egotist, in a moodof hasty circumspection, seeking the farthestrear, amidst a dispersed multitude of dis-concerted riflemen similarly employed. Hescrambled down through trenches, he tookhis courage in both hands and sprintedacross the open, he had moments of panicwhen it seemed madness not to be quad-ru pedal, andmoments ofshame when hestood up andfaced about to seehow the fight wasgoing. And hewas one of manythousand verysimilar men thatmorning. On theridge he haltedin a knot ofscrub, and wasfor a few minutesalmost mindedto stop and seethings out.

The day wasnow fully come.The grey sky hadchanged to blue,and of all thecloudy masses ofthe dawn thereremained only afew patches ofdissolving fleeci-ness. The worldbelow was brightand singularlyclear. The ridgewas not, perhaps,

more than a hundred feet or so abo1 I.

b.

h . Ve thegenera p am, ut m t IS flat region it suffito give the effect of extensive view A cedon the north side of the ridge, little. and \~::were the caI1.1ps,the ord.ered waggons, all th~gear of a bIg army; wIth officers gallop.about and men doing aimle~s t?ings. H~~~and there men were falhng-m, howevand the cavalry was forming up on t~lr,plain beyond the tents. The bulk o~men who. had been in the trenches werestill on the move to the rear, scattered likesheep without a shepherd over the fartherslopes. Here and there were little rallies andattempts to wait and do-something vague.but the general drift was away from any con~centration. Then on the southern side wasthe elaborate lace work of trenches anddefences, across which these iron turtles,fourteen of them spread out over a line ofperhaps three miles, were now advancing asfast as a man could trot, and methodicallyshooting down and breaking up any persistentknots of resistance. Here and there stoodlittle clumps of men, outflanked and unableto get away, showing the white flag, and the

/'

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~.~..

.. r T AWA¥.""HERE AND THERE STOOD LITTLE CLUMPSOF ME". OUTFLAI:iKEDAND U"ABLE TO GE

jnvader's cyclist. infantry was advancing nowacross the open, In open order but unmolested,to complete the work of the machines. Sofar as the day went, the defenders alreadylooked a beaten army. A mechanism that\\,a5effectually ironclad against bullets, thatcould at a pinch cross a thirty-foot trench,and that seemed able to shoot out rifle-bulletswith unerring precision, was clearly aninevitable victor against anything but rivers,precipices, and guns.

He looked at his watch. " Half-past four!Lord! What things can happen in twohours. Here's the whole blessed army being\\'alked over, and at half-past two-

" And even now our blessed louts haven'tdone a thing with their guns! "

He scanned the ridge right and left of himwith his glasses. He turned again to thenearest land ironclad, advancing nowobliquely to him and not three hundredyards a,:"ay, and then scam;ed the groundover whIch he must retreat'lf he was not tobe captured.

"They'll do nothing," ne said, and glancedagain at the enemy.

And then from far away to the left camethe thud of a gun, followed very rapidly by arolling gun-fire.

He hesitated and decided to stay.Ill.

THE defender had relied chiefly upon hisrifles in the event of :m assault. His gunshe kept concealed at various points upon andbehind the ridge ready to bring them intoaction against any artillery preparations foran attack on the part of his antagonist. Thesituation had rushed 'upon him with thedawn, and by the time ~he gunners had theirguns ready for motion, the land ironclads werealready in among the foremost trenches.There is a natural reluctance to fire into one's?wn broken men, and many of the guns, beingIntended simply to fight an advance of theenemy's artillery, were not in positions to hitanything in the second line of trenches. Afterthat the advance of the land ironclads wasswift. The defender-general found himselfsuddenly called upon to invent a new sort ofwa~fare, in which guns were to fight aloneamIdst broken and retreating infantry. He~ad scarcely thirty minutes in which to thinkIt out. He did not respond to the call, andwhat happened that morning was that theadvance of the land ironclads forced thefight, and each gun and battery made whatplay its circumstances dictated. For themost part it was poor play.

L

Some of the guns got in two or three shots,some one or two, and the percentage ofmisses was unusually high. The howitzers,of course, did nothing. The land iron cladsin each case followed much the same tactics.As soon as a gun came into play the monsterturned itself almost end on, so as to get thebiggest chance of a glancing hit, and madenot for the gun, but for the nearest point onits flank from which the gunners could beshot down. Few of the hits scored were veryeffectual; only one of the things was disabled,and that was the one that fought the threebatteries attached to the brigade on the leftwing. Three that were hit when close uponthe guns were clean shot through withoutbeing put out of action. Our war corre-spondent did not see that one momentaryarrest of the tide of victory on the left; hesaw only the very ineffectual fight of half-battery 96B close at hand upon his right.This he watched some time beyond themargin of safety.

Just after he heard the three batteriesopening up upon his left he became awareof the thud of horses' hoofs from the shelteredside of the slope, and presently saw first oneand then two other guns galloping into posi-tion along the north side of the ridge, wdlout of sight of the great bulk that was nowcreeping obliquely towards the crest andcutting up the lingering infantry beside itand below, as it came.

The half-battery swung round into line-each gun describing its curve-halted, un-limbered, and prepared for action. . . . .

" Bang! "The land ironclad had become visible over

the brow of the hill, and just visible as along black back to the gunners. It halted,as though it hesitated.

The two remaining guns fired, and thentheir big antagonist had swung round andwas in full view, end on, against the sky,coming at a rush. ..,

The gunners became frantIc In theIr hasteto fire again. They were so near t~e w,~rcorrespondent could see the expresslOn'.\their excited faces through his field-glass.As he looked he saw a man drop, and realizedfor the first time that the ironclad wasshooting.

For a moment the big black monstercrawled with an accelerated pace towards thefuriously active gunners. Then, as if movedby a generous impulse, it turned its full broad-side to their attack, and scarcely forty yardsaway from them. The war correspondentturned his field-glass back to the ~nners and

perceived it was now shooting down themen about the guns with thp. most deadlyrapidity. '

Just for a moment it seemed splendid andthen it seemed horrible. The gunners weredropping in heaps about their guns. To laya hand on a gun was death. "Bang! " wentthe gun on the left, a hopeless miss, and thatwas the only second shot the half-batteryfired. In another moment half-a-dozen sur-viving artillerymen were holding up theirhands amidst a scattered muddle of dead andwounded men, and the fight was done.

The war correspondent hesitated betweenstopping in his scrub and waiting for anopportunity to sur-render decently, ortaking to an adjacentgully he had dis-covered. If he sur-rendered it was cer-tain he would getno copy off; while,if he escaped, therewere all sorts ofchances. He de-cided to follow thegully, and take thefirst offer in the con-fusion beyond thecamp of picking upa horse.

IV.SUBSEQUENTauthorities havefound fault with thefirst land ironcladsin many particulars,but assuredly theyserved their purposeon the day of theirlppearance. Theywere essentially long,narrow, and verystrong steel frameworks carrying the engines,and borne upon eight pairs of big pedrailwheels, each about ten feet in diameter, eacha driving wheel and set upon long axles free tpswivel round a common axis. This arrange\ment gave them the maximum of adapt-\ability to the contours of the ground. Theycrawled level along the ground with one tOothigh upon a hillock and another deep ina depression, and they could hold them-selves erect and steady sideways upon evena steep hillside. The engineers directedthe engines under the command of thecaptain, who had look-out points at smallports all round the upper edge of the

adjustable skirt of twelve-inch iron-plat'which protec~ed the whole affair, and ~~~could also raIse or depress a conning-towset about the portholes through the centre e~the iron top cove.r. The rift~men each occ~-pied a small cabm of peculIar constructionand these cabins were slung along the side'of and before and behind the great [nai~framework, in a manner suggestive of theslinging Of the seats of an Irish jauntinf'-car. Their rifles, however, were ve(yJifferent pieces of apparatus from the simplemechanisms in the hands of their adversaries.

These were m the first place automaticejeded their cartridges and loaded agai~

from a magazineeac~ time they fired,untIl theammuni-tion store was at anend, and they hadthe most remarkablesights imaginable,sights which threw abright little camera-obscura picture intothe light-tight boxin which the rifle-

man tat below.This camera-obscurapicture was markedwith two crossedlines, and whateverwas covered by theintersection of thesetwo lines, that therifle hit. The sight-ing was ingenio~slycontrived. The rifle-man stood at thetable with a th!nglike an elaboratlO~1of a draughtsman s

" dividers in his hand," HE DECIDED TO FOLLOW THE GCLL\". and he opened and. .

d that they wereclosed these dlvl ers, so,

.f

.t was ant height-J Ialwavs at the apparen h nted. J. . f the man e wa

ordmary-slzed man---:-o d f wire liketo kill. A little tWIsted stran Oh' 'm ple-.. . from t IS I

an electric-lIght wire ran as the dividersment up to the gu~, and. or down.opened and shut the sIghts went ~fmosphere,Chancres in the clearness of the t by an0

f/~ t e were me

due to changes 0 mOlstUr , . lly sen-h t eteorologlca cl

ingenious use of t a . m d hen the lansitive substance, catgut, an . ~ts got a com-ironclad moved fo.rwa~dthe SJgd

'

ct ion of itsfl . ", the Ire . hPensatory de ectlOll m . his pltc -.ft stood up III . e

motion. The rI eman he little plctUrdark chamber and watched t

\ ,)

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If,"

~- 7)'If" -.J;>-

I" '"\

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before him. One hand held the dividersfor judging distance, and the other graspeda big knob like a door-handle. As hepushed this knob about the rifle above swungto correspond, and the picture passed to andfro like an agi-tated panorama.When he saw aman he wantec;ltoshoot he broughthim up to thecross -lines, andthen pressed afinger upon alittle push like anelectric bell-push,convenientlyplaced in thecentre of theknob. Then theman was shot. Ifby any chance therifleman missedhis target hemoved the knoba trifle, or read-justed his dividers,pres~ed the push,~nd got him thesecond time.

This rifle and itssights protrudedfrom a porthole,exactly like a greatnumber of otherportholes that ranin a triple rowunder the eaves ofthe cover of the land ironclad. Each portholedisplayed a rifle and sight in dummy, so thatthe real ones could only be hit by a chanceshot, and if one was, then the young manbelow said" Pshaw!" turned on an electriclight, lowered the injured instrument intohis C2m~ra, replaced the injured part, orput up a new rifle if the injury was con-siderable.

You must conceive these cabins ashung clear above the swing of the axles, andinside the big wheels upon which the greatelephant-like feet were hung, and behindthese cabins along the centre of the monsterran a central gallery into which they opened,and alon'g which worked the big compactengines. It was like a long passage intowhich this throbbing machinery had beenpacked, and the captain stood about themiddle, close to the ladder that led to hisconning-tower, and directed the silent, alertL Vol. xxvi.-96.

engineers-for the most part by signs. Thethrob and noise of the engines mingled withthe reports of the rifles and the intermittentclangour of t.he bullet hail upon the armour.Ever and agam he would touch the wheel that

raised his conning-t?wer, step uphis ladder untilhis engineerscould see nothingof him above thewaist, and thenc<?medown againwith orders. Twosmall electriclights were all theillu mination ofthis space - theywere placed tomake him mostclearly visible tohis subordinates;the air was thickwith the smell ofoil and petrol,and had the warcorrespond e n tbeen suddenlytransferred fromthe spacious dawnoutside to thebowels of thisapparatus hewould havethought himselffallen into an-other world.

The captain, ofcourse, saw both sides of the battle.When he raised his head into his con-ning - tower there were the dewy sunrise,the amazed and disordered trenches, theflying and falling soldiers, the depressed-looking groups of prisoners, the beaten guns;when he bent down again to signal" Halfspeed," " Quarter speed," "Half circle roundtowards the right," or what not, he was inthe oil-smelling twilight of the ill-lit engine-room. Close beside him on either side wasthe mouthpiece of a speaking-tube, and everand again he would direct one side or otherof his strange craft to "Concentrate fireforward on gunners," or to "Clear outtrench about a hundred yards on' our rightfront. "

He was a young man, healthy enough butby no means sun-tanned, and of a type offeature and expression that prevails in HisMajesty's Navy: alert, intelligent, quiet. He

.. THE PICTURE PASSED TO AlW FRO LIKE AN Ar,ITATEDI'A"OJ<AMA."

and his engineers and his riflemen all wentabout their work, calm and reasonable men.They had none of that flapping strenuousnessof the half-wit in a hurry, that excessive strainupon the blood-vessels, that hysteria of effortwhich is so frequently regarded as the properstate of mind for heroic deeds. If theirmachine had demanded anything of the sortthey would, of course, have improved theirmachine. They were all perfectly sober andin good training, and if any of them hadbegun to ejaculate nonsense or bawl patrioticairs, the others would probably have gaggedhim and tied him up as a dangerous, un-nerving sort of fool. And if they were freefrom hysteria they were equally free fromthat stupid affectation of nonchalance whichis the refuge of the thoroughly incapable indanger. Death was abroad, and there weremarginal possibilities of the unforeseen, but itis no good calculating upon the incalculable,and so beyond a certain unavoidable tighten-ing up of nerve and muscle, a certain firmnessof the lips, this affected them not at all.

For the enemy these young engineers weredefeating they felt a certain qualified pityand a quite unqualified contempt. Theyregarded these big, healthy men they wereshooting down precisely as these same big,healthy men might regard some inferior kindof nigger. They despised them for makingwar; despised their bawling patriotisms andtheir emotionality profoundly; despised them,above all, for the petty cunning and thealmost brutish want of imagination theirmethod of fighting displayed. "If theymust make war," these young men thought,"why in thunder don't they do it likesensible men?" They resented the assump-tion that their own side was too stupid to doanything more than play their enemy's game,that they were going to play this costlyfolly according to the rules of unimagi-native men. They resented being forcedto the trouble of making man - killingmachinery; resented the alternative ofhaving to massacre these people or enduretheir truculent yappings; resented the wholeunfathomable imbecility qf war.

Meanwhile, with something of the me-chanical precision of a good clerk posting aledger, the riflemen moved their knobs andpressed their buttons. . . .

The captain of Land Ironclad NumberThree had halted on the crest close to hiscaptured half-battery. His lined-up prisonersstood hard by and waited for the cyclistsbehind to come for them. He surveyed thevictorious morning through his conning-tower.

He read the general's signals. " Five aFour are to keep among the guns to th l

ndd e eft

an prevent any attempt to recover thSeven and Eleven and Twelve, stick to ~~.guns you have got; Seven, get into positio~to command the guns taken by Three. Th, d h

.I en

we re to. 0 somet mg e se, are we ? Six andOne, qUicken up to about ten miles an hoand walk round ~ehind that camp to t~;levels near the rIver - we shall bag the

whole crowd of them," interjected the youngman. "Ah, here we are! Two and ThreeEight and Nine, Thirteen and Fourteen'space out to a thousand yards, wait for th~word, and then go slowly to cover theadvance of the cyclist infantry against anycharge of mounted troops. That's all right.But where's Ten? Halloa! Ten to repairand get movable as soon as possible. They'vebroken up Ten! "

The discipline of the new war machineswas business-like rather than pedantic, andthe head of the captain came down out ofthe conning-tower to tell his men. "I say,you chaps there. They've broken up Ten.Not badly, I think; but anyhow, he's stuck!"

But that still left thirteen of the monsters

in action to finish up the broken ,rmy.The war correspondent stealing down his

gully looked back and s~w them ~ll lyingalong the crest and talkmg fluttenng con-gratulatory flags to one a~other. .Their ironsides were shining golden m the lIght of therising sun.

V.THE private adventures of the war corre-spondent terminated in surrender about oneo'clock in the afternoon, and by that timehe had stolen a horse, pitched off it, andnarrowly escaped being rolled upon; foundthe brute had broken its leg, and shot it withhis revolver. He had spent some hours inthe company of a squad of dispirited rifle-men, who had commandeered his field-glassand whose pedestrianism was exemplary,and he had quarrelled with them abouttopography at last, and gone off by hims~1fin a direction that should have brought himto the banks of the river and didn't. More-over, he had eaten all his chocolate andfound nothing in the whole world to drink.Also, it had become extremely hot. Frombehind a broken, but-attractive, stone wall hehad seen far away in the distance the defenderhorsemen trying to charge cyclists in openorder, with land ironclads outflanking themon either side. He had discovered thatcyclists could retreat over open turf beforehorsemen with a sufficient margin of speed to

~..u~ .Ld'H~ -~.__.-

" HE HAD SrE"T SO>lE HOURS I" THE COMPANY OF A SQUAI) OFDISPIRITED RIFLEMEN."

allow of frequent dismounts and muchterribly:effective sharpshooting j and he hada sufficIent persuasion that those horsemen,having charged their hearts out, had haltedjust beyond his range of vision and surren-dered. He had been urged to suddenactivity by a forward movement of one oftho3e machines that had threatened to enfiladehis wall. He haddiscovered a fear-ful blister on hisheel.

He was nowin a scrubbygravelly place,sitting down andmeditating onhis pocket-hand-kerchief, whi c hhad in someextraordinaryway become inthe last twenty-four hours ex-tremely ambigu-ous in hue. "It'sthe whitest thingI've got," hesaid.

He had knownall along that theenemy was east,west, and southof him, but whenhe heard warironclads Num-bel's One and Six talking in their measured,deadly way not half a mile to the north hedecided to make his own little unconditionalpeace without any further risks. He wasfor hoisting his white flag to a bush andtaking up a position of modest obscuritynear it, until someone came along. Hebecame aware of voices, clatter, and thedistinctive noises of a body of horse, quitenear, and he put his handkerchief in hispocket again and went to see what was goingforward.

The sound of firing ceased, and then as hedrew near he heard the deep sounds of manysimple, coarse, but hearty and noble-heartedsoldiers of the old school swearing withvigour.

He emerged from his scrub upon a biglevel plain, and far away a fringe of treesmarked the banks of the ri,'er.

In the centre of the picture was a stillintact road bridge, and a big railway bridgea little to the right. Two land Ironclads

.....

rested, with a general air of being long, ham~-less sheds, in a pose of anticipatory peaceful-ness right .and left o! the picture, completelycommandmg two mIles and more of the riverlevels. Emerged and halted a little from thescrub was the remainder of the defender'scavalry, dusty, a little disordered and obviouslyannoyed, but still a very fine show of men.

In the middledistance three orfour men andhorses were re-ceiving medicalattendance, anda little nearer aknot of officersregarded the dis-tant novelties inmechanism withprofound dis-taste. Everyonewas very dis-tinctly aware ofthe twelve otherironclads, and ofthe multitude oftownsmen sol-diers, on bicyclesor afoot, encum-bered now byprisoners andcaptured war-gear but other-wise thoroughlyeffective, whowere sweepll1g

like a great net in their rear." Checkmate," said the war correspondent,

walking out into the open. " But I surrenderin the best of company. Twenty-four hoursago I thought war was impossible-and thesebeggars have captured the whole blessedarmy! Well! Well!" He thought of histalk with the young lieutenant. "If there'sno end to the surprises of science, thecivilized people have it, of course. As longas their science keeps going they willnecessarily be ahead of open-country men.Still. . . ."

He wondered for a space what might havehappened to the young lieutenant.

The war correspondent was one of thoseinconsistent people who always want thebeaten side to win. When he saw all theseburly, sun-tanned horsemen, disarmed anddismounted and lined up j when he sawtheir horses unskilfully led away by the sin-gularly not equestrian cyclists to whom theyhad surrendered j when he saw these trun-

A"U'~ "".eLL-.ur£'.

cated Paladins watching this scandaloussight, he forgot altogether that he had calledthese men" cunning louts" and wishedthem beaten not four-and-twenty hours ago.A month ago he had seen that regiment inits pride going forth to war, and had beentold of its terrible prowess, how it couldcharge in open order with each man firingfrom his saddle, and sweep before it anythingelse that ever came out to battle in any sortof order, foot or horse. And it had had tofight a few score of young men in atrociouslyunfair machines!

"Manhood versus Machinery" occurredto him as a suitable headline. Journalismcurdles all one's mind to phrases.

He strolled as near the lined-up prisonersas the sentinels seemed disposed to permitand surveyedthem and com-pared theirsturdy propor-tions with thoseof their lightly-built captors.

"Smart de-generates," hemuttered."An::emic cock-neydom."

The surren-de red officerscame quiteclose to himpresently, andhe could hearthe colonel'shigh-pitchedtenor. Thepoor gentlemanhad spent threeyears of ardu-

ous toil upon the best material in the worldperfecting that sho?tin~. from. the saddkcharge, and he was mqumng with phrases ofblasphemy, natural under the circumstanceswhat one could be expected to do againstthis suitably consigned ironmongery.

"Guns," said someone."Big guns they can walk round. You

can't shift big guns to keep pace with themand little guns in the open they rush. isaw 'em rushed. You fi.light do a surprisenow and then-assassmate the brutes,perhaps-"

"You might make things like 'em.""What? More ironmongery? Us?..""I'll call my article," meditated the war

correspondent, " 'Mankind versus Iron-.mongery,' and quote the old boy at the

beginning."And he was

much too gooda journalist tospoil his con-trast by remark-ing that thehalf-dozen com-paratively slen-der young menin blue pyjamaswho were stand-ing about theirvictorious landironclad, drink-ing coff~e a.ndeating biSCUIts,had also in theireyes and c:ar-riage somethmgnot altogetherdegraded beJowthe level of aman.

;'>i.f"""

"SUMErHING NOT hL TOGETHER DEGRADE" BELOW THt: LEVELOF A MAN."

..o"''''~

Originally published in The Strand MagazineDecember 1903

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