The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1916-09-23
FARM TOOLS AND WAR.


1t is a truism that the source of all wealth
is the land, but who would have dreamed
that the greatest weapon of modern land
warfare should come from the farm!
Those wonderful land cruisers which
crossed trenches, spanned shell craters, up
rooted trees, and paid no more attention to
stumps than so many scraps of paper, spit
ting DEATH reducing entire lines of de-
invulnerable-are just
caterpillar tractors one sees on every hand
in the big agricultural centers, with the adj
dition of armor plate and machine guns.
They dig bitches and p1ow fields and
drag wagons here at home, and adapted to
war, they are the big surprise of the year
as big surprise as the giant howitzers of
the Germans, and weapon that from all
indications will have greater effect on the
war than the submarine
Describing the awful power of this 100
horsepower caterpillar OF steel, weighing
$4,000 pounds, and laying its own track as
it goes, M. NJ. Baker, vice president of the
manufacturing company in Peoria, H.,
says:
at is true that these tractors go ahead over
almost anything They straddle a trench, go
through swamp, roll over logs, or climb through
along the ground, just like huge caterpillar In
thick forest if they encountered trees they could
not brush out of their way, they could easily up
root them and clear their paths.
Speaking broadly, the tractor crawls on two
49, belts, with corrugated surfaces either side OF
the body The corrugated surface is on the ground.
On the inside of the belts, each side of the body
are two lines of steel rails, making four lines in
all. These rails are in short sections, pointed, and
operate a cogged mechanism that actually
lays them down with their belt attachments as the
tractor ahead and picks them up again, so
that the It's Self-made track con-
tinuously The short joints in the rails make it
easy to turn to the right or left"
So far the big land cruisers, or tanks, as
they are called by the British soldiers, have
annihilated the enemy at their leisure when
they didn't surrender: simply straddling
trench and directing an enflading fire or
its defenders entirely exposed. With the
enemy's big guns silenced by adequate ar
tillery preparation, there is nothing that
can hurt these monsters, which are inper-
vious to rifle and machine gun fire, and fol
| lowed by the infantry, victorious advance
is reduced to mere matter of routine.
The South, a good many years ago, in
vented a new weapon which promised tc
lift the blockade and probably defeat the
Union The first DAYS battle of the Merri
mac more than justified the expectation:
of its designers, but the North had invented
the Monitor, and the usefulness of the Mer
rimac was destroyed.
| Will Germany be able to invent some
thing to beat these tanks? Germany may
! build some herself, but that she can pro
duce enough on short notice to stop thu
thousand land cruisers England can put il
the field, with an unlimited supply avail
able, is extremely problematical; and i
Germany is unable to meet force with forc'
and tank with tank, who knows but wha
the humble farming implement will haste1
the end of the war and give the victor
which the greatest battleships, the larges
Zeppelins, and the most marvellous feats o
military engineering were unable to win