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The aeroplane remains now more than ever the instrument of victory upon the western front. Aerial ascendancy, properly utilised, is victory. But the mobile armoured big gun and the Tank as a machine-gun silencer must enormously facilitate an advance against the blinded enemy. Neither of them can advance against properly aimed big gun fire.
Armoured cars also remained in Hebron. The infantry and field artillery occupied the roads during the day, and the heavy guns came along at night and joined the infantry as the latter were about to set off again.
But everywhere there was the greatest desire to know what would be done next. It was the general opinion that the two armoured vessels were merely tenders to the submerged machines which had done the mischief. Having fired no guns, nor taken any active part in the combat, there was every reason to believe that they were intended merely as bomb-proof store-ships for their formidable consorts.
Fortified by the necessity, common to her class, of knowing thoroughly the more patent side of public affairs; armoured by the tradition of a culture demanded by leadership; inspired by ideas, but always the same ideas; owning no master, but in servitude to her own custom of leading, she had a mind, formidable as the two-edged swords wielded by her ancestors the Fitz-Harolds, at Agincourt or Poitiers a mind which had ever instinctively rejected that inner knowledge of herself or of the selves of others; produced by those foolish practices of introspection, contemplation, and understanding, so deleterious to authority.
each carrying: 2 Nordenfeldt guns 1 quick-firing 12-pounder gun 1 Howitzer 4 Maxims 1896 Class Armoured Screw Gunboats : the Fateh, The Naser, the Zafir each carrying: 1 quick-firing 12-pounder gun 2 6-pounder guns 4 Maxims Old Class Armoured Stern-wheel Gunboats : the Tamai, the Hafir*, the Abu Klea, the Metemma each carrying: 1 12-pounder gun 2 Maxim-Nordenfeldt guns Steam Transport
The Town Guard were ready; the Light Horse, the Imperial troops, and the armoured train were also to the fore. This formidable combination was soon on its way to the Schmidt's Drift Road, where it found shelter behind some friendly ridges. The Boers occupied Spitzkop and were looking across at us with curiosity not unmingled with uneasiness, we felt sure.
It was in their minds to dash upon the guard of armoured knights, to attempt a rescue, but they knew how vain their sticks would be against the keen blades of swords.
As I have stated previously, the end car of the enemy armoured train had a 6-inch gun, but it was mounted so high that the whole platform could be swept with rifle-fire. The reason for the high mounting was to enable two machine guns to be worked along the track from the bed of the car under the heavy gun.
But the commanders of the British ships were brave men. They had started to run down the strangely armoured American craft, and run her down they would, if they could. They put on more steam, and went ahead at greater speed. In such a furious onslaught the crabs might not dare to attack them. But they did not understand the nature nor the powers of these enemies.
It transpired that his Government was negotiating with the Argentine Republic for the purchase of two powerful armoured cruisers, built for the Government of the latter country at Genoa; and Mr Kuroda suggested that if the negotiations resulted successfully, it might suit me to go out in one of them as an officer, the date of my commission to be advanced accordingly.
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