The most recent French trials were hardly completed when war broke out. They were as usual well patronised, but not calculated on the whole to try the machines to the utmost. It was intended in subsequent years to introduce new and more stringent regulations, but the opinion was fairly generally expressed among manufacturers that the Government in doing so were differentiating their own needs too far from ordinary business requirements, and that it would be impossible to find a market for the types indicated. Early in the year, another series of trials of considerable importance was held in France, for the purpose of testing new types of four-wheel driven tractors. These machines are needed particularly for the haulage of artillery, and further reference to them will therefore be deferred until that subject comes up for consideration.
The South African War--The Italian Transport in Tripoli--The Balkan Campaigns.
Although mechanical transport was employed during the South African war, the experiences then gained must not be applied with too much rigidity to the conditions of the conflict taking place in Europe. In South Africa, a considerable number of traction engines were put into service, while steam motor lorries were also used. Colonel R. E. Crompton, C.B., who was in charge of the British transport columns, has described how “De Wet, knowing the country, destroyed bridge after bridge until the roads and the railways were only islands, disconnected by things called ‘deviations’--horrible places, full of dead animals, horse transport, animal transport of all kinds, which had died there, simply because there was practically no road.... The fact that we were able, even though we had broken engines, to repair them from our spares, so that the dead engines became live engines, so impressed Lord Roberts that he felt that we were at the birth of real, practical mechanical military transport with all the advantages it gives.”
There can be no doubt that the experience obtained during the South African war pointed directly to the use in the first case of steam tractors, and later--when they could be sufficiently perfected--of internal combustion tractors with a bigger radius of action. These conclusions resulted not only from the inherent conditions of military service, but also from the local conditions of the country in which this particular war took place.