1. That soldiers should make it their function to exert themselves to the utmost of their loyalty and patriotism.

    2. That they should strictly observe decorum.

    3. That they should prize courage and bravery.

    4. That they should treasure faith and confidence.

    5. That they should practise frugality.

    (Order issued by the Emperor of Japan in 1882.)

The standard of proficiency in cavalry work to which we wish to attain is a very high one; our men must, in the first place, be taught—

    (A) To ride well.

    (B) To be able to look after their horses.

    (C) Rifle-shooting and fire discipline.

    (D) The use of at least one personal weapon, when mounted, with good effect.

    (E) Individuality, and to use their brains.

    (F) Bodily and muscular development.

(A) Riding

There is no doubt that our methods of teaching riding have greatly improved of late years.99 The203 recruit is not made afraid of his horse, and of his work in the riding-school, as he often was under the old régime. From the day he joins, no opportunity should be lost of teaching the recruit that amongst his first duties is to love, honour, and have a pride in his horse. He certainly will not recognize this duty, if, as under the old “cast-iron” system, his horse becomes the means of applying an unpleasant discipline to him.

Further, he is now taught to ride in the open, and over a natural country in many cases, picking his own line. In fact he is taught campaign riding, rather than as formerly the elements of haute école; the latter plan was by no means unsuitable if the man had the previous knowledge of riding which many men, brought up in the country, joined with forty or fifty years ago.
(B) Soldier’s Care of Horses

Of all instructions to be given to the young soldier the most difficult is that in campaigning horse-management.

It should be explained that the care of his own horse in a campaign is quite a different matter in the cavalry from what it is in the artillery; in the latter the horses are always under the master’s eye in the first place, and in the second they are kept at a uniform pace, whereas in the cavalry men are detached here and there, and it is only by the individual’s care of his mount that the latter can win through a204 campaign. In fact the difference is as great as if, instead of carrying on his business under one roof, Mr. Whiteley had to send out all his young men and women in troops and sections and as individuals to effect sales. It would certainly lead to a very great diminution of profits, and just as in any great business the profits are effected by small and seemingly petty economies, so in a regiment it is the small economies of horse-flesh which mount up to a great sum in a month or so of campaigning. It is the regiment or squadron, in which, from the start, the man has been taught always to dismount at every opportunity, always to off-saddle and massage his horse’s back when a spare quarter of an hour affords him time to do so, always to give his horse a chance to nibble the short grass, or drink a few go-downs of water, always to report without fail a loose clinch or a swelling on the back, even if the latter is only the size of a shilling, that will constantly show a good return of sound horses. A bad system of horse-management will in a week incapacitate as many horses from work as will a general engagement.

As a rule great things are expected of cavalry in the first week of a campaign; these great things are often to be carried out at all costs—all costs in this case meaning in many instances half the horses overridden and a crop of sore backs100 and incipient injuries205 incurred which the cavalry will not get over for months after. There is also another difficult matter to cope with in the cavalry; it is as follows:—

The ordinary soldier has no idea of the limit of his horse’s capacity for work such as that soon gained by the hunting man or traveller on horseback. In peace-time he will not once in one thousand times be given a task which can possibly injure or cause him to override his horse; further, the latter invariably gets back to his stable, gets the best of food and a rest, or goes to the sick lines if he is evidently out of sorts; the responsibility of overriding his horse is thus not fixed, and the man escapes any punishment. As the man is riding a Government horse and not his own animal, he does not suffer pecuniarily.

We believe that enough has been shown to warrant our saying that the cavalry of an army where (1) a good system of campaigning horse-management101 has been instilled into the individual, and where (2) the officers, from those who order the task to those who superintend it, have the knowledge to do so with a sense of the horse’s capacity as affected by work, food, and drink, weight carried, nature of terrain, will, at the end of one month’s work, possibly have lost 15 per cent of its horses; whereas206 in the cavalry where these matters are not understood, only 15 per cent of the horses will remain available. What was the case in Napoleon’s invasion of Russia? A statement called for by the emperor at Witebsk on the 29th July, twenty-five days after the river Niemen had been crossed, gave the loss as follows: Murat’s cavalry102 reduced from 22,000 to 14,000 horses, the cavalry of army corps by half, Latour Maubourg’s from 10,000 to 6000. Later, on the 9th November, only 1900 horses were left to this immense force of cavalry. The loss by fatigue in the campaign of Ulm, lasting little more than a fortnight, was less, 46 per regiment. One campaign resulted in a victory within eighteen days, whereas the other went on long enough to bring the loss and criminal waste of horses home to those responsible. In campaigns brought to a close in a few days by desperate though successful strategy, these matters, like many matters which occur in small campaigns against natives, never come to notice.

This subject has been gone into at some length under the training of the man, because without his co-operation in the individual care of his horse no cavalry general can hope to be successful. His best-laid schemes “gang aft agley.” The cavalry soldier should feel that he will get a horse, good, bad, or indifferent, accordingly as he shows himself a good, bad, or indifferent horseman and horsemaster, and should be made perfectly aware that he will be punished with the greatest severity for every act of carelessness, neglect, or ill-treatment of his horse.207 Whilst, on the other hand, a well-cared-for horse should be a certain passport to the good graces of his leader. A squadron leader, careless of this mode of procedure, never has good and well-cared-for horses on service.

A very successful way of teaching the soldier to care for his horse is to let it form part of the test before he passes from the recruit stage to that of the trained soldier, that he should by himself ride his horse to a place 70 to 100 miles away, report on some bridge or other topographical feature, and return, enough money being given him for the subsistence of himself and his horse for the necessary number of days—the condition of the latter being carefully scrutinized on his return.

Other forms of long-distance rides and patrols (as distinct from long-distance races, a cruel form of competition with which no horse-lover can have any sympathy) are most useful, as they teach the men how to regulate their paces, spare their horses, and judge distance by time and pace.

Often arrangements have been made to take some N.C.O.’s out with the regimental pack of hounds, local pack, or on a drag-hunt or paper-chase; all these forms of instruction teach the men to ride fast in a reasoned fashion and not in the Johnny Gilpin and “making the running” style of the amateur horseman or horsewoman, and to think properly of their horse, and not as the old lady, who said to the coachman, when he had reported the brougham horse was lame, “He is a horse and he must go.”

208 That the care of the horse is the weak link in the cavalry chain, and the most difficult one in which to give such instruction as may render it strong and reliable, is clear. Every day we get fewer men accustomed before they are recruited, to work with horses, and the use of the horse as a means of locomotion, by all ranks in Great Britain, is quickly dying out. Strong measures are needed to counteract our daily growing ignorance of horsemastership.103
(C) Shooting and Fire Discipline

The cavalry are now armed with a rifle equal to that of the infantry, and can hold their own in rifle-shooting. The greatest interest is taken in this exercise; tests similar in all respects to those in vogue in the infantry are exacted before the man is entitled to get his full rate of pay. Practically all officers and many N.C.O.’s of cavalry now possess Hythe certificates,104 and there is no reason why fire discipline in the cavalry should not be equal to that in the infantry. In many cavalry regiments it undoubtedly is so. In others there is too much talking and the Jack ashore kind of behaviour, which renders difficult the control of the larger parties. If the209 officers recognize that good fire discipline is essential in order to kill their enemy, they will take more trouble to instil it. As our cavalry are undoubtedly the best shooting cavalry in the world, it is a pity to spoil the ship for this ha’porth of tar (fire discipline).
(D) The Personal Weapon

Fencing and single stick (and other exercises such as boxing, non-essential in themselves, but which quicken the eye and make the man cool in combat) will do a great deal towards teaching men the use of the sword, while a little tent-pegging and a great deal of work at the dummies will teach the unrivalled value of the queen of weapons.

In many cavalry training-grounds can now be seen an acre of ground in which are a score or more of self-adjusting dummies of varying heights, and representing horse and foot; there is no better practice than to send half-a-dozen horsemen into this tilting ground at a sharp gallop, and let them practise for the mêlée for a minute or so.

The French cavalry lay great stress on these pointing exercises; they do not expect to turn out many real swordsmen in a squadron, but they want every man to be able to ride his horse at an enemy, and run him through.
(E and F) Mens sana in corpore sano

In addition to the four headings mentioned above, there is the preparation requisite to meet the210 hundred-and-one eventualities ............