[Editor: This article, regarding Lancelot Eldin de Mole (1880-1950), was published in Aussie: The Cheerful Monthly (Sydney, NSW), 15 April 1920.]
The swindling of de Mole.
One of the most disgraceful features of the disgraceful treatment given to Tank-inventor Corporal L. E. de Mole by the War Office (although the British Awards to Inventors’ Board in England described the invention which he submitted to the W.O. in 1912, and again at the outbreak of war, as superior to the Tank that was actually used by the British Army — he received no share of the £19,000 that was divided among inventors of other Tank designs) was that Major Wilson, Secretary of the Tank Designs Branch at the War Office, whose report upon de Mole’s invention was responsible for its being refused in 1918, received an award of £7,500 from the Board for his Tank design.
A man would have to be something extra in duds who couldn’t invent a thing when he had access to other people’s plans. But if he had accepted the plan of de Mole (a mere Corporal and one of those impossible Australians, dontcherknow) it is possible that the Inventions’ Board would not have considered his own design worth £7,500. One must think of these little things in the expensive times of war.
Source:
Aussie: The Cheerful Monthly (Sydney, NSW), 15 April 1920, p. 13
Editor’s notes:
dontcherknow = (English vernacular) “don’t you know”
duds = clothes, especially work clothes or clothes of rough appearance
[Editor: The original text has been separated into paragraphs.]
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