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 626 General History of Europe France, had their millions of trained men, owing to their long- established system of universal military service, conscription, as it is called, which makes every able-bodied man liable to service. For a time England tried to increase its army by voluntary enlistments, and on the whole succeeded very well. But after much discussion and opposition she introduced (May, 1916) A TANK a system of universal compulsory military service, which included all able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 41 (later, 50). 1134. The Great Battle of the Somme. Shortly after, the long-talked-of Anglo-French drive, the battle of the Somme, be- gan, which was fought for four months, from July to November, 1916, east and northeast of Amiens. Here a new English military invention made its first appearance, the so-called "tanks," huge .heavily armored motor cars, so built as to break through barbed- wire entanglements and crawl over great holes and trenches. The Germans retreated a few miles, but the cost was terrible, since each side lost six or seven hundred thousand men in killed or wounded.