Editing Tank (section)

===Origins===
On 24 December 1915, a meeting took place at the Inter-Departmental Conference (including representatives of the Director of Naval Construction's Committee, the Admiralty, the Ministry of Munitions, and the War Office). Its purpose was to discuss the progress of the plans for what were described as "Caterpillar Machine Gun Destroyers or Land Cruisers." In his autobiography, [[Albert Gerald Stern]] (Secretary to the Landship Committee, later head of the Mechanical Warfare Supply Department) says that at that meeting:
{{blockquote |text=[[Thomas James Macnamara|Mr. (Thomas J.) Macnamara]] ([[Member of parliament|M.P.]], and [[Secretary to the Admiralty|Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty]]) then suggested, for secrecy's sake, to change the title of the Landship Committee. [[Sir Eustace Tennyson-d'Eyncourt, 1st Baronet|Mr. d'Eyncourt]] agreed that it was very desirable to retain secrecy by all means, and proposed to refer to the vessel as a "Water Carrier". In Government offices, committees and departments are always known by their initials. For this reason I, as Secretary, considered the proposed title totally unsuitable.{{efn|The initials W.C. are a British abbreviation for a [[Flush toilet#Water-closet (WC), the name|water closet]]; in other words, a toilet. However, later in the War, a number of Mk IV Tanks were fitted with grapnels to remove barbed wire. They were designated "Wire Cutters" and had the large letters "W.C." painted on their rear armour.<ref>{{cite book |title=Armoured Fighting Vehicles of the World, Volume One |author=Chamberlain, Peter|publisher=Cannon Publications |year=1998 |pages=49 |isbn=1-899695-02-8|display-authors=etal}}</ref>}} In our search for a synonymous term, we changed the word "Water Carrier" to "Tank," and became the "Tank Supply" or "T.S." Committee. That is how these weapons came to be called Tanks.}}
He incorrectly added, "and the name has now been adopted by all countries in the world."<ref>''Tanks 1914–1918: The Log Book of a Pioneer''. Hodder & Stoughton, 1919, p. 39</ref>

Lieutenant-Colonel Ernest Swinton, who was secretary to the meeting, says that he was instructed to find a non-committal word when writing his report of the proceedings. In the evening he discussed it with a fellow officer, [[Walter Dally Jones|Lt-Col Walter Dally Jones]], and they chose the word "tank". "That night, in the draft report of the conference, the word 'tank' was employed in its new sense for the first time."<ref>''Eye-Witness, And the Origin of the Tanks''; Major-General Sir Ernest D. Swinton; Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1933, p. 161</ref> Swinton's ''Notes on the Employment of Tanks'', in which he uses the word throughout, was published in January 1916.

In July 1918, ''Popular Science Monthly'' reported:

{{Blockquote|Because a fellow of the [[Royal Historical Society]]* has unintentionally misled the British public as to the origin of the famous "tanks", [[Sir William Tritton]], who designed and built them, has published the real story of their name&nbsp;... Since it was obviously inadvisable to herald "Little Willie's" reason for existence to the world he was known as the "Instructional Demonstration Unit." "Little Willie's" hull was called in the shop orders a "water carrier for Mesopotamia"; no one knew that the hull was intended to be mounted on a truck. Naturally, the water carrier began to be called a "tank". So the name came to be used by managers and foremen of the shop, until now it has a place in the army vocabulary and will probably be so known in history for all time.<ref>Popular Science Monthly, July 1918, p. 7.</ref>}}
(*F.J. Gardiner, F.R.Hist.S.)

D'Eyncourt's account differs from Swinton's and Tritton's:

{{Blockquote|...&nbsp;when the future arrangements were under discussion for transporting the first landships to France a question arose as to how, from a security point of view, the consignment should be labelled. To justify their size we decided to call them 'water-carriers for Russia'&nbsp;—the idea being that they should be taken for some new method of taking water to forward troops in the battle areas. Lt.-Col. Swinton&nbsp;... raised a humorous objection to this, remarking that the War Office pundits would probably contract the description to 'W.C.'s for Russia', and that we had better forestall this by merely labelling the packages 'Tanks'. So tanks they became, and tanks they have remained."<ref>A Shipbuilder's Yarn; E.H.W.T. d'Eyncourt, Hutchinson & Co., 1948, p. 113</ref>}}

This appears to be an imperfect recollection. He says that the name problem arose "when we shipped the first two vehicles to France the following year" (August 1916), but by that time the name "tank" had been in use for eight months. The tanks were labelled "With Care to Petrograd," but the belief was encouraged that they were a type of snowplough.