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THE earliest practical ideas on tank tactics had been evolved by Colonel Swinton, commander of the new British tank arm, in February 1916. In a document entitled "Notes on the Employment of Tanks" which he had been working on since soon after the "Little Willie'* prototype first ran, Swinton postulated some very clear ideas for the future. Most important of all he wrote "tanks must not be used in driblets". Instead he suggested that they should be held secretly until as many as possible could be launched on the enemy in one massive attack with an infantry follow-up, thus taking full advantage of the element of surprise with the new weapon. Though Haig, the British C-in-C, and his staff saw and agreed with this document they conveniently overlooked the "mass attack" theory in their haste to use the available tanks as a new expedient on the Somme for the first ever tank assault. It was not until the Battle of Cambrai that tanks were used in the way Swinton had envisaged-and that was more than a year later.