The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-07-13
OF
 TANKS WAS AN ARMORED WAGON
Who invented the tank2


 ican invention adopted by the British and then adopted by the Germans.
 Wrong-you are thinking merely of the tractor machinery-the "caterpil- lar" arrangement by which it crawls over the ground And the tank Is chiefly and essentially an armored ve- hicle for use in warfare.
 As every schoolboy knows, the an- cient Britons dyed themselves blue and used a war chariot with curved knives attached to the hubs. These were armed vehicles. But the first armored vehicle used in battle was in vented and perfected about 1420 by John Zizka, a Bohemian nobleman and follower of John Illus. Inci- dentalIy Johns tanks also humbled Hohenzollern.
 You may never have heard of John greatest military genius of his age and the father of modern tactics. Ger tainly nothing could be more mod ern than his idea for the tank. 1n- deed he had some ideas, forgotten long ago, which might even be revived on the fields of France today.
 Zizka was fighting the full power of Rome and, as 1t turned out, the whole of Europe joined a crusade against him. zizka won. And the way he won was this:
 Zizka's Novel Idea. His fighting forces consisted almost entirely of townsmen, small farmers and farm laborers used to the iron mounted fail, the heavy club, and the short spear. With these forces he had to meet horsemen in heavy ar mor-the picked chivalry of Germany and Hungary. His answer was the armored wagon.
 The German name for tank is as long as snake-about 10 separately articulated syllables spoken like a burst of shrapnel. Zizka's tank also had a hard name-in several senses. It ] was called the Hradba-vozova (pro- nounced as it is spelled,) which means | wagon fort" The wagon fort was iron or steel clad and was drawn by horses. When the Bohemian tank corps was on the defensive, however, the wagons could be opened so that even the horses could find protection | inside. Women and children, habit rated to travelling with the Bohemian | Army, also gathered within and often sent their arrows through the loop holes.
 Used Artillery, too. Against an attack of horsemen the wagon forts were linked together by heavy iron chains, and in four deep columns formed a practically invul- nerable defense. On the offensive they were terrible engines, for they carried artillery. Zizka placed on the seats, next to the drivers, his picked n:arksmen, who soon became the ter TOT of the Germans. Their pieces were the bombards then just coming into use. But the tank corps also carried a few heavy guns-unwieldy weapons which would be toys today, but which set up among the intrench- ments of the iron wagons did great ex- ecution. When the wagon forts got to moving well across the smooth Be- hemian fields Zizka used to direct his drivers on the end of the line to speed up, thus flanking the enemy-a ma roeuver which was considered eX- tremely unfair in those days.
 The Bohemian leaders greatest vic- tory was at Zizka's Hill, near Prague. He had 10000 troops arrayed on a steep slope and protected by wagon forts. Against him there were flung about 150,O0O troops, led by num- Der of German princes, among whom the chief was Frederick of Hohenzol- Tern, who had just become elector of Rrandenburg. Frederick was we'll known robber baron of his period and the ancestor of the present overlord of Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm.
 We'll, Elector Frederick just walked up that hill and then walked down iagain. Incidentally great numbers ot Germans were either killed or driven into the Vitava River by the Bohe- rnians, who hurried down the hill af- ter them in their wagon forts. Then as today, the tank, properly manoeu- yered proved irresistible.