I. Instruction from History.

I have gone at considerable length into the opinions of Sir John French, as expressed in his Introduction to von Bernhardi\'s work—partly because it is more important for us to know what our own Cavalrymen think than what German Cavalrymen think, and partly because it will be easier for the reader to estimate the value of the German writer\'s views if he is already familiar with Sir John French\'s way of thinking. We should expect, of course, to find identity between the views of the two men, since Sir John French acclaims the German author as the fountain of all wisdom; but on that point the reader would be well advised to reserve judgment.

I shall now discuss "Cavalry in War and Peace," and first let me say a few more words on a very important point—the circumstances of its composition.

When General von Bernhardi wrote his first[Pg 54] book, "Cavalry in Future Wars," he did not take the current German Cavalry Regulations as his text, because they were too archaic to deserve such treatment. He condemned them in the mass, and, independently of them, penned his own scheme for a renovated modern Cavalry. After about nine years of complete neglect, during which the two great wars in South Africa and Manchuria were fought, the German authorities decided that some recognition of modern conditions must be made. They have recently re-armed the Cavalry with a good carbine, and issued a new book of Cavalry Regulations. These circumstances induced the General to write his second book, "Cavalry in War and Peace," and to throw it into the form of a direct criticism of the official Regulations, which he constantly quotes in footnotes and uses in the text of his own observations and constructive recommendations.

What is the result? The first point to notice is that he regards the new official Regulations, "though better than the old ones," as thoroughly and radically bad. His writings, he says, "have fallen on barren soil." He condemns them almost invariably for precisely the same reason as before, namely, that they virtually ignore the rifle in practice, and continue the ancient and worn-out traditions of the steel, with mere lip-[Pg 55]service to the modern scientific weapon. But a disappointment was in store for those who had hoped that the mental process involved in criticizing concrete Regulations, as well as the vast mass of instructive phenomena presented by the two wars which, when he wrote first, were still "future wars" to him, would arouse the General himself to a realization of the inconsistencies in his own earlier work.

These hopes have been falsified. The fascination of the arme blanche was proof against the test, and the result is one of the strangest military works which was ever published. Bitter satire as it is on the official system of training, any impartial reader must end by sympathizing, not with the satirist, but with the officials satirized. They at any rate try to be logical. Their concessions to fire are the thinnest pretence; their belief in shock undisguised and sincere. Whatever follies and errors this belief involves them in, they pursue their course with unflinching consistency, sublimely careless of science and modern war conditions.

Their critic, on the other hand, keenly alive to the absurdities inculcated, has not the mental courage to insist on the only logical alternatives. Faced with the necessity of proving their absurdity, he refuses to use the only effective weapon avail[Pg 56]able, gives away his own case for fire by weak concession to shock, and succeeds in producing a work which will convince no one in Germany, and the greater part of which, as a practical guide to Cavalrymen, in this country or any other, is worthless. A mist of ambiguity shrouds what should be the simplest propositions. We move through a fog of ill-defined terms and vague qualifications. We puzzle our brains with academical distinctions, and if we come upon what seems to be some definite recommendation, we are pretty sure to find it stultified in another chapter, or even in the same chapter, by a reservation in the opposite sense. The key to each particular muddle, to each ambiguity, to each timid qualification, to each confusing doctrinaire classification, is always the same—namely, that the writer, from sheer lack of knowledge of what modern fire-tactics are, at the last moment shrinks from his own theories about their value. What has happened is exactly what one would expect to happen. In Germany the General admits his failure, and in England he is hailed by Sir John French, who politely ignores his blunders about fire-action, as the apostle of the steel, instead of what he really is, the apostle, though the ineffectual apostle, of the rifle.

Let us first be quite clear as to his opinion of[Pg 57] the present German Cavalry. "While all other Arms have adapted themselves to modern conditions, Cavalry has stood still," he says on the first page of his Introduction. They have "no sort of tradition" for a future war (p. 5). Their training creates "no sound foundation for preparation for war." It is "left far behind in the march of military progress." "It cannot stand the test of serious war." It is trammelled by the "fetters of the past," and lives on "antiquated assumptions" (p. 6). Its "mischievous delusions" will result in "bitter disappointment" (p. 175). Many of the new Regulations "betoken failure to adapt existing principles to modern ideas" (p. 361); others "do not take the conditions of reality into account"; or "cannot be regarded as practical"; or are "provisional"; and of one set of peculiarly ludicrous evolutions he uses the delightful phrase that they are "included in the Regulations with a view to their theoretical and not for their practical advantages" (p. 333). He stigmatizes "the formal encounters," the "old-fashioned knightly combats," the "pro forma evolutions," the "survivals of the Dark Ages," the "spectacular battle-pieces," the "red-tape methods," the "tactical orgies," the "childish exercises," and "set pieces" of peace man?uvres. The origin of the trouble, he says,[Pg 58] is "indolent conservatism" (p. 366). "Development in our branch of the Service has come to a standstill" (ibid.). The officers do not study history or the progress of foreign Cavalries. And he reiterates again and again his general conclusion that the Cavalry is unprepared for war.

Such is the material which forms his text. And we may ask at once, is a book based on such an appalling state of affairs, and addressed exclusively to a Cavalry described as being given over to ancient shibboleths, mischievous delusions and antiquated assumptions—is such a book likely to deserve the effusive and unqualified praise of our own foremost Cavalry authority? Is it likely to be worthy of becoming the Bible of a modern and progressive Cavalry, such as Sir John French considers our own Cavalry, trained under his own guidance, to be? Is it likely to be "exhaustive," "convincing," "complete"?

To suppose so is to insult the intelligence of our countrymen. We do not teach the ABC in our Universities. Our natural science schools do not assume that their pupils belong to the "Dark Ages," and waste two-thirds of their energy in laborious refutations of such extinct superstitions as witchcraft. The education of our sailors to modern naval war is not conducted[Pg 59] on the assumption that the Navy consists of wooden sailing-vessels whose inadequacy to modern conditions must be elaborately demonstrated. A gunnery course—and the reader will note the analogy—does not consist mainly of arguments designed to prove that the cutlass is no longer so important a weapon as the long-range gun and the torpedo. Nor—in the military sphere—are our Infantry and Artillery instructed with a view to weaning them from the cult of the pike and the catapult.

So, too, we may be quite sure that there is something radically wrong when our Cavalry, in their search for an authoritative exposition of modern Cavalry tactics, are reduced to relying on a foreign writer who writes for a Cavalry ignorant of the elements of modern Cavalry tactics, and a good half of whose work is taken up with scoldings and appeals which from our British point of view are grotesquely redundant. All that is good in what von Bernhardi says about fire-action we know from our own war experience. All his errors about fire-action we can detect also from our own war experience.

We should expect Sir John French to comment on these facts, to warn his readers that the book under review was written for a Cavalry unversed in modern war and blind to its teaching. We[Pg 60] should expect some note of pride and satisfaction in the fact that his own national Cavalry did not need these scathing and humiliating reminders that war is not a "theoretical" and "childish" pastime, but a serious and dangerous business; some hint to the effect that perhaps we, with our three years\' experience of the modern rifle, may have something useful to tell General von Bernhardi about principles which he has framed in the speculative seclusion of his study. Not a word, not a hint of any such warning or criticism. The topic is too dangerous. Once admit that South Africa counts—to say nothing of Manchuria—once begin to dot the "i\'s" and cross the "t\'s" of the German\'s speculations, and the arme blanche is lost. Instead, we have the passionless reservation from Sir John French that "he does not always approve" of those German Regulations, so many of which von Bernhardi thinks prehistoric and ludicrous, and at the end of his Introduction we have a fervent appeal to the British Cavalry not to "expose our ignorance and conceit" by overvaluing our own experience, but to "keep abreast with every change in the tendencies of Cavalry abroad," and to "assimilate the best of foreign customs" to our own. "Keep abreast!" What an expression to use in such a connection! "Best foreign cus[Pg 61]toms!" Where are these customs? There appears to be only one answer—namely, that these customs are in reality the very customs which von Bernhardi attacks with such savage scorn, and yet by such ineffective and half-hearted methods that he leaves them as strong as before. His qualifications and reservations give Sir John French a loophole, so that what, read through English eyes, should be a final condemnation of the steel becomes to him a vindication of the steel.

The link between the two writers is that both disregard the facts of modern war. Since these facts are fatal to the steel theory, both are compelled to disregard them. What wars, then, according to the German expert, are the uneducated German Cavalry to study? He deals with this point on page 5. He dismisses the wars of Frederick the Great and Napoleon. He dismisses the Franco-German War of 1870-71, as we might expect from his earlier work, where he pointed out how meagre and feeble were the performances of the Cavalry compared with those of other Arms. He dismisses the Russo-Turkish War for the same reason, and, by implication, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. All these wars, he says, "present a total absence of analogy." Then, entirely disregarding the whole period in which science perfected the firearm, he dismisses the wars in South[Pg 62] Africa and Manchuria. And he comes back to what? The American War of Secession of 1861-1865, which "appears to be the most interesting and instructive campaign for the service of modern Cavalry," but which is "almost unknown" in Germany. In any other branch of study but that of Cavalry an analogous recommendation would be received with a compassionate smile. The element of truth and sense in it—and there is much truth and sense in it—is so obvious and unquestioned as not to need expression for the benefit of any well-informed student. The American horsemen discovered that the rifle must be the principal weapon of Cavalry, and through that discovery made themselves incomparably more formidable and efficient in every phase and function of war than the European Cavalries, who ignored and despised the American example in the succeeding European struggles. So far the writer is on the sound ground of platitude.

But has nothing notable happened since 1865? A very important thing has happened. The Civil War firearm is now a museum curiosity. Science has devised a weapon of at least five times the power—smokeless, quick-firing, and accurate up to ranges which were never dreamt of in 1865. Even the American weapon reduced shock to a wholly secondary place, and gave fire unques[Pg 63]tioned supremacy. The modern weapon has eliminated shock altogether, and inspired new and far more formidable tactics—just as mobile, just as dashing, just as fruitful of "charges," but based on fire. Von Bernhardi cannot bring himself to contemplate this result. He must have his lances and swords, and is compelled therefore to go back to 1865, when the death-knell of those weapons was already being sounded; and in doing so he writes his own condemnation.

This is how his book opens: "The great changes which have taken place in military science since the year 1866 have forced all arms to adopt new methods of fighting. It was first and foremost the improvement in the firearm which wrought the transformation on the battle-field." (My italics.) Since the year 1866! And yet the Cavalry are to go back to a war prior to that year for their instruction, and are to neglect the only wars in which the improved firearm has been tested! In point of fact, General von Bernhardi shows no sign of having closely studied even the American War of 1861-1865 with a view to finding out how the Americans used their firearms in conjunction with their horses. On this vital technical matter he writes throughout from a purely speculative standpoint, without a single allusion to the American technical methods, much less to the[Pg 64] methods of our own and the Boer mounted riflemen of 1899-1902.

We must add in fairness that the General seems to be conscious that a war half a century old cannot be implicitly relied on for instruction, and he concludes his historical remarks, therefore, by the depressing conclusion that "there remains, then, nothing for us—with no practical war experience to go on—but to create the groundwork of our methods of training from theoretical and speculative reflection."

On this question of the most instructive war for Cavalry study Sir John French preserves an eloquent silence. He dismisses South Africa and Manchuria, but he does not echo the recommendation as to America. Thereby hangs a tale. For years before the South African War, for years before von Bernhardi was heard of in England, the ablest military historian of our time, the late Colonel Henderson, had been dinning the moral of America into the ears of our Cavalry authorities, without producing the smallest effect. His prophecies were abundantly justified—more than justified, for he wrote on the basis of the rifle of 1865, and the rifle of 1899 totally eliminated the shock-tactics which were still practicable in 1865. He died in 1902, before the Boer War was over, but in one of the last essays written before his[Pg 65] death he told the Cavalry that shock was extinct. "Critics of the Cavalry work in South Africa," he says, "do not seem to have realized that the small bore and smokeless powder have destroyed the last vestiges of the traditional r?le of Cavalry" ("Science of War," p. 376).

It can be readily understood, therefore, that to refer our Cavalry of the present day to Colonel Henderson\'s brilliant and learned writings upon the American Civil War, would be a course highly dangerous to the interests of the lance and sword. Sir John French confines himself to urging his subalterns to read such "acknowledged authorities" as Sir Evelyn Wood and General von Bernhardi. But why is Sir Evelyn Wood singled out? Eminent as he is, he has not the requisite modern war experience. Why not Lord Roberts, who has, and who is the only living British officer with a European reputation? General von Bernhardi himself has not been on active service since 1870, when he served as a Lieutenant in the war against France. Sir John French will not advance the cause of the arme blanche in that way. He cannot stifle knowledge by an index. He need not agree with Lord Roberts, but to ignore him when speaking of "acknowledged authorities," to accuse him by implication of making "appeals from ignorance[Pg 66] to vanity," is unworthy of Sir John French. If he believes in his cause, let him urge the Cavalry to hear both sides; it can do no harm. For my part, I would most strongly urge every Cavalry soldier to read von Bernhardi and Sir John French.

II.—General Principles of Combat.

To return to the book under discussion. Is it possible to gain from it any clear and definite idea of the respective functions and the relative importance of the rifle and the lance and sword as weapons for Cavalry? Unfortunately, no. We have to deal with hazy generalizations scattered over the whole volume, each with its qualification somewhere else. It is true that warnings against the use of the steel greatly preponderate; and although, by selecting quotations from various chapters, each party to our controversy could easily claim the General as an adherent to his cause, the advocates of the rifle could certainly amass more favourable texts. The following passage might almost be regarded as conclusive—"We must be resolute in freeing ourselves from those old-fashioned knightly combats, which have in reality become obsolete owing to the necessities of modern war" (p. 111)—if its teaching were not weakened by such a[Pg 67] maxim as this: "The crowning-point of all drill and of the whole tactical training is the charge itself, as on it depends the final result of the battle" (p. 325). But let us get closer to his actual argument. The reader should carefully study pp. 101 to 105, where, under the heading "B.—The Action of Cavalry" and sub-heading "1.—General," the author discusses in close detail the action of "Cavalry in the fight." The reader may wonder why he should have to wait till the hundredth page for this discussion. With the exception of some introductory pages, whose general sense, on the question of weapons, is against the lance and sword, the greater part of the first hundred pages are devoted to "Reconnaissance, Screening, and Raids," functions none of which, least of all the third, can be performed without fighting, or at least the risk of fighting, while fighting cannot be performed without weapons. The reason probably is that the author, in arranging his scheme, instinctively tended, like all Cavalry writers, to regard reconnaissance as a sphere where Cavalry can confidently rely on meeting only Cavalry of exactly the same stamp as themselves, and where combats will as a matter of course be decided in the old knightly fashion by charges with steel.

Such a state of things has no resemblance to[Pg 68] real war. Raids, for example, are invariably levelled against fixed points and stationary detachments. The author himself is acutely aware of this truth, as we shall see hereafter; but the postponement of the topic of weapons until the middle of the book is typical of the confused arrangement of the whole, a confusion attributable to the ubiquity of the rifle in all combats and the insuperable difficulty of supposing it to be an inferior weapon to the steel.

It is impossible, therefore, to adhere strictly to the order in which the author arranges his treatise. I shall begin with the general chapter just referred to, and proceed, as far as possible, according to his own order from that point onwards.

First of all, he finds it necessary to reject the plan of "dividing tactical principles according to the idea of the pre-arranged battle and the battle of encounter," a course which gives one an insight into the lifeless pedantry he has had to combat in the branch of military science he has made his own. Unfortunately, his own classification, so far as it bears upon weapons, is little better. He distinguishes the "great battle," in which "the fighting is always of a pre-arranged nature," from "the fight of the independent Cavalry," where "it is possible to distinguish between an encounter and an arranged[Pg 69] affair." This is vague enough, but what follows is vaguer. One infers that there is to be little or no shock in the "great battle," where the Cavalry "must conform to the law of other arms in great matters and small." And then he goes on: "But the fight is deeply influenced even in the former case [i.e., in the combats of the independent Cavalry] by the co-operation of these other arms, and I believe that only in exceptional cases will a purely Cavalry combat take place—at all events, on a large scale. When squadrons, regiments, and perhaps even brigades, unassisted by other arms, come into collision with one another, the charge may often suffice for a decision. But where it is an affair of large masses, it will never be possible to dispense with the co-operation of firearms, and in most cases a combination of Cavalry combat, of dismounted fighting, and Artillery action, will ensue."

What lies behind this ambiguous language, which, remember, is the outcome of pure "speculation"? What principle is he trying to express? Let us proceed: "We must not conceal from ourselves the fact that in a future war it will be by no means always a matter of choice whether we will fight mounted or dismounted. Rather by himself seizing the rifle will the opponent be able to compel us to adopt dismounted action. On[Pg 70] our man?uvre grounds the charge on horseback is always the order of the day, as against Artillery or machine-guns. The umpires continually allow such attacks to succeed, and the troops ride on as if nothing had happened. Equally fearless of consequences, do they expose themselves to rifle-fire; but there are no bullets. In real war it is different."

It is needless to point out that the words I have italicized destroy the whole case for the steel. They are an admission of the true principle that the rifle governs combat, whether the rifle is used by men with horses or men without horses. It is characteristic of the author that he cannot bring himself in this perilous context in set words to include Cavalry among those who "seize the rifle"; but the words themselves imply it, for we do not speak of Infantry "seizing the rifle." At a later point the author is a little bolder in the development of his meaning. "Our probable opponents, too, will certainly often advance dismounted. At all events, they are endeavouring to strengthen Cavalry divisions by cyclist battalions and Infantry, and perhaps by Mounted Infantry, and thereby already show a remarkable inclination to conduct the fight, even of Cavalry, with the firearm, and only to use their horses as a means of mobility, as was the custom of the Boers in[Pg 71] South Africa"—and he might, of course, add, of the British mounted riflemen and of the British Cavalry. If only the author, who has advanced thus far on the path of common sense, would just for one experimental moment assume an open mind on the question of the steel, assume that it may perhaps be not merely partially, but wholly obsolete, and study the Boer War with real care from that point of view! He evidently thinks there is something in this idea of using horses as a means of mobility and the rifle as the operative weapon. He expressly warns his Cavalry that their probable enemy is showing ominous signs of adopting this system, and that their adoption of it will force the German Cavalry to conform.

Now mark that magical word "mobility." It is the germ of a new idea, a faint effort to escape from the dupery of phrases. Hitherto he has always spoken of "dismounted action" as distinguished from "mounted" or "Cavalry" combat. These phrases are always used by Cavalry theorists. They take the place of argument, implying as they do that the use of the rifle reduces horsemen to the condition of Infantry, robbing them of mobility and all that glamour of dash and vigour which illuminates the mounted arm. The truth lies in the contrary direction.[Pg 72] Without rifle power Cavalry lose all effective mobility. They can ride about in vacuo, so to speak; but directly they enter the zone of rifle-fire they are paralyzed, unless they can use their horses and their rifles in effective combination. Then they can do what they please. Then, if necessary, they can even charge mounted, though that function is no more inseparably associated with their action than the charge at the double is inseparably associated with the action of Infantry. But is it not somewhat ludicrous to describe as "dismounted action," in contradistinction to "mounted action," a charge which ends, as the Boer charges ended, within point-blank or decisive range of the enemy and culminates in a murderously decisive fire-attack?

The worst of it is that General von Bernhardi will not analyze his own warnings and suggestions and see what they really lead him to. He appears to see in these troublesome hordes of "cyclists" and "Mounted Infantry" who menace the old order of things and are forcing Cavalry to conform to fire by fire, only auxiliaries to the orthodox Cavalry. But Cavalry themselves carry the very weapon which is promoting the revolution; nor should any self-respecting, properly trained Cavalry need to fortify itself[Pg 73] from these external sources. At a later stage I shall have to show, from our own Mounted Infantry Manual, how grotesque are the results obtained by the theoretical co-operation of steel and fire in two different types of troops.

And Sir John French? He has read these passages, and with one word of manly pride in the war experience of his own countrymen, home and colonial—experience bought at terrible cost, and not without bitter humiliation, in three years of "real war"—he could set the speculative German author right, illuminate the tortuous paths in which his reason strays. So far from taking this course, he proves himself more reactionary than his foreign colleague; for the reader will see at once that the spirit of passages quoted above is quite different from the spirit of Sir John French\'s Introduction. Von Bernhardi is alarmed by the prospect of meeting mounted riflemen who, as he knows and expressly admits, will impose upon his Cavalry fire-tactics of which they are contemptuously ignorant. He is alarmed at the prospect of the hostile Cavalry themselves "conducting the fight with the firearm." Sir John French, as I have shown, believes, and says, that our mounted riflemen and our Cavalry, if they act as such, will "become the prey of the first foreign[Pg 74] Cavalry they meet," running defenceless and helpless from the field. This is an example of the way in which Cavalry science proceeds, and it is a wonder that collaborators of the eminence of General von Bernhardi and General Sir John French do not see the humour of the thing, to use no stronger expression.

One watches with amusement the process by which the German author endeavours to soften the shock of the revelations he has just made to a Cavalry acutely sensitive about its ancient traditions. One of his plans, here and in many other parts of the book, is to play with the words "offence" and "defence," which, as I pointed out in commenting on Sir John French\'s Introduction, have such a strangely perverse influence on the Cavalry mind. "It lies deeply embedded in human nature," he says (p. 105), "that he who feels himself the weaker will act on the defensive"; and on the next page: "In general, it may be relied upon that defence will be carried out according to tactical defensive principles, and that with the firearm." Here is another example (italicized by me): "Mounted, the Cavalry knows only the charge, and has no defensive power, a circumstance which strengthens it in carrying out its offensive principles by relieving its leader of the onus of choice" (p. 113). Observe[Pg 75] the idea suggested by these passages—namely, that the rifle is only a defensive weapon. Subtle indirect flattery of those who carry those terrible weapons of "offence," the lance and sword! But, alas! what he calls the "offensive spirit" must accept the terms imposed by the baser weapon. "It requires an enormous amount of moral strength," he says, "to maintain the offensive spirit, even after an unfavourable conflict, and continually to invoke the ultimate decision anew." There is a romantic atmosphere about this which might appeal to his hearers. Spent with charges, brilliant, but perhaps not wholly successful, they must resign themselves eventually to more sober, if less "knightly," methods. But this is not what he really means. He has just said that even in combats of the independent Cavalry the shock-charge will occur only "in exceptional cases." The probable opponents are to "advance dismounted"—in other words, to attack dismounted. This, he warns the Cavalry, will necessitate fire-action on their part. Why talk, then, about "relief from the onus of choice"? What is to happen when both sides are at grips on terms of fire? Is there a mutual deadlock, both remaining in "defence"? In that case there would be no battles and no necessity to go to war at all. Surely the common sense of[Pg 76] the matter is that the rifle rules tactics, and that, ceteris paribus, the best riflemen will attack and win.

At heart the General believes this—his whole book is a witness to this fact—but how can he expect to get his beliefs accepted if he continually stultifies those beliefs by soothing ambiguities about the "offensive spirit"? Nor does he confine himself to ambiguity. Take a passage like this from p. 19, at the very outset of his chapter on "Reconnaissance, Screening, and Raids": "The very essence of Cavalry lies in the offensive. Mounted, it is incapable of tactical defence, but in order to defend itself, must surrender its real character as a mounted arm, and seize the rifle on foot." (The italics are mine.)

Conceive the mental chaos which can produce an expression of an opinion like this at the beginning of a work designed to reform the backward German Cavalry. Here, stated in formal, precise terms, is the very doctrine upon which that Cavalry works; which, as the author himself a hundred times assures us, is the source of all its "antiquated assumptions" and of its total unpreparedness for real war. The framers of the Regulations have only to point to this passage, and then, with perfect justice, to consign all the General\'s tirades first to mockery and then to oblivion. Sir John French,[Pg 77] again more reactionary than his German confrère, seizes on this passage, to the exclusion of all which contradict it, and triumphantly produces his own analogous formula. To neglect the steel, he says, is to "invert the r?le of Cavalry, and turn it into a defensive arm."

While Sir John French sticks to his point, and elaborates it even to the implicit denial of an offensive spirit to Infantry, General von Bernhardi is perfectly conscious of the absurdity of maintaining that it is only "in order to defend itself" that Cavalry "seize the rifle" on foot. We obtain, perhaps, the best insight into his method of reasoning in A II. ("Attack and Defence"). On p. 112 he says that Cavalry should "endeavour to preserve their mobility in the fight, and that mounted shock-action, therefore, should be regarded as its proper r?le in battle." This quotation is an excellent one for the advocates of the steel, but it would reduce to impotence any Cavalry which acted upon it. And we ask immediately, what is the sense of calling shock the "proper r?le" of Cavalry, when, according to the author himself, it is only to be used in exceptional cases, even in fights of the independent Cavalry, and when riflemen, who advance dismounted, can render it impracticable? Why not say at once that the proper or normal[Pg 78] r?le of Cavalry is fire-action, and the exceptional or abnormal r?le shock-action?

The fallacy, of course, lies in the word I have italicized, "therefore," implying that mounted action and shock-action are synonymous, and that there is no mounted action without shock-action. It is natural enough that the author should turn his back on South Africa and Manchuria when he has to maintain such a proposition as this; but how does he reconcile it even with the facts of the American Civil War, which he holds up as the most valuable guide to modern Cavalry? Stuart, Sheridan, Wilson, and the other great leaders, would have laughed at it, and they used wretchedly imperfect firearms. They rode just as far and to just as good purpose whether they used the firearm or the steel, and they fought to win, with whatever weapon was the best weapon at the moment.

The General himself expresses the right idea when he says in another passage "that it is not a question whether Cavalrymen should fight mounted or dismounted, but whether they are prepared and determined to take their share in the decision of an encounter, and to employ the whole of their strength and mobility to that end." That is plain common sense; but how is he to get it acted upon by a Cavalry to whom the very idea is strange if he calls shock the "proper r?le" of[Pg 79] Cavalry, and contrasts the "offensive spirit" inherent in it with the defensive use of the rifle?

Yet he redeems the rifle handsomely enough in numbers of other passages. "It must be kept in view," he says on p. 113, "that it is the offensive on foot that the Cavalry will require," and he condemns the Regulation which inculcates the opposite principle and deals with the fire-fight only as a method of action from which Cavalry "need not shrink." He shakes his head gravely over the ominous suggestion in the same Regulation that cyclists and Infantry in waggons are to be added to the Army Cavalry, in order, by fire, to "overcome local resistance." In a flash of insight he perceives the possibility of those heretical Mounted Infantry masquerading as the hostile Cavalry, and necessitating cyclists and Infantry in waggons to dislodge them before the "knightly combats" can be brought about. "It is a matter of significance," he solemnly observes, "that Infantry in waggons may be detailed to accompany the strategic Army Cavalry." There will soon be a demand, he prophesies, "for Infantry from the Army Cavalry when there is any question of a serious attack on foot, and herewith the free action of the Cavalry will be limited once and for all." Is there no lesson from South Africa here?

[Pg 80]

The fact is that the kind of thing he fears happened from the first, and continued to happen until the Cavalry abandoned steel weapons and became mounted riflemen. During the first year of the war there was no independent Cavalry force operating strategically without the assistance of mounted riflemen. There could not have been, because the fire-power of the Cavalry was insufficient, and there is and can be no independence in modern war without a high degree of fire-power. Cavalry leaders usually asked also for the tactical assistance of mounted riflemen. The theory, surviving even now in the current manuals, was that those troops were to form a "pivot" for the shock-action of Cavalry. The theory, of course, was exploded from the first, and sometimes the mounted riflemen became the most effective and mobile portion of the composite force. Mounted riflemen were a truly independent Arm. They never asked for the assistance of Cavalry on the ground that Cavalry carried steel weapons. The rifle was all they cared about, and they had good rifles of their own, while the Cavalry had bad carbines. The only big independent Cavalry enterprise during the first year of the war—the divisional march across the Eastern Transvaal in October, 1900—was a fiasco. The Cavalry[Pg 81] formed but an escort to their own transport, and developed no offensive power.

Von Bernhardi, just now thoroughly in his fire-mood, strongly condemns the theory of dependence on other Arms, which will "tie the Cavalry" to the very troops from which they expect support. "The army Cavalry, then, can only preserve its independence if it can rely upon its own strength even in an attack on foot." He goes on to criticize Regulation No. 456, which lays down that "Cavalry must endeavour to bring dismounted attacks to a conclusion with the utmost rapidity, so that they may regain their mobility at the earliest possible moment." The regulation, which has its counterpart in the British Manual, indeed, is laughable to anyone who has seen modern war. Troopers who spend 90 per cent. of their time on exercises with the steel will necessarily attack badly, clumsily, and slowly on foot, and it is a cruel jest to tell them to attack quickly and brilliantly. In a fire-contest the best riflemen will attack the quickest and do the best.

But the General wastes his breath in scolding the Regulations. They are more logical than he is, because they do not seriously contemplate this derogatory work of fire. He says, indeed, that unnaturally accelerated attacks on foot by men who do not know how to attack on foot only[Pg 82] succeed in peace, and will "lead inevitably to defeat in war," and that to set a time limit to a fire-attack is absurd; but by interspersing qualifying phrases about loss of mobility and loss of time he himself nullifies his own warnings. "The result of an attack on foot," he says (p. 116), "must, of course, justify the lives expended and the time occupied, which must both be regarded as lost in estimating the further operative value of the force." Men who read that will say: "Why waste time at all, then?" It is in flagrant contradiction, of course, with his previously expressed principle that hostile fire imposes fire-action on Cavalry; that there is no choice; that, whether they like it or not, they must engage in this r?le, which, nevertheless, is not their "proper r?le." The clue to the confusion, as always, is his view, founded on mere word-play, that mounted action is unthinkable without shock with steel weapons.

At the end of this section on "Attack and Defence" he continues to play into the hands of the framers of the Regulations which he denounces. Here is an immortal phrase: "The same holds good of the defence. Cavalry will only undertake this when absolutely obliged." This is the kind of maxim which one finds scattered broadcast through Cavalry literature—as if there could be any offence without defence, between or against[Pg 83] whatever classes of soldiers. Fancy telling Infantry or Artillery in so many words that they should only undertake defence when absolutely obliged! And yet they are just as much offensive Arms as Cavalry, and by the light of historical facts during the last century a great deal more so.

I need not go into the reason again. The General is in his steel-mood, and is unconsciously limiting offence to the steel weapons. The next instant he is in his fire-mood, pointing out that, however much Cavalry in defence may yearn once more for "free movement" (he means shock), they must be prepared on occasion to defend themselves—i.e., with fire—to the last man. And he very aptly illustrates from the Manchurian War (which at an earlier point he had said to be without interest for Cavalry), pointing to the stubborn defence of Sandepu by a Japanese Cavalry Brigade. We cannot help wishing that Sir John French would quote and confirm an opinion like this, flatly contradicted though it is a little later,[2] and use his influence to erase from our own Cavalry Manual (p. 215) that disastrous injunction that the defences of a position which Cavalry have to hold should be "limited to those of the simplest kind."

If the words "attack" and "defence" have a[Pg 84] fatal fascination for both the German and the British authors, General von Bernhardi is equally influenced by another verbal formula, and that is "the combination of Cavalry combat" (or, what is the same thing to him, mounted combat—that is, shock-combat) "with dismounted fighting." "The r?le of Cavalry in the fight will then apparently consist," he says on page 106, "of a combination of the various methods of fighting." It is a tempting formula, tempting by its very vagueness, and calculated on that account to appeal, perhaps, to the less hopelessly conservative German Cavalry officers; but it remains throughout his book literally a formula. How the thing is to be done in practice, how shock is to be "combined" with fire, he never attempts, even from a speculative point of view, to explain. It may sound perhaps easy enough. In the war of 1861-1865, which he professes to take as his model, it undoubtedly was possible, if by no means easy. But times have changed. The modern rifle, whose profound influence on combat he admits, has made impossible the old formations. In his own phrase, it has revolutionized war. It enforces a degree of extension which renders impracticable those sudden transformations to close mass which alone can lead to shock, while the zone of danger it creates is so far-reaching that these mass forma[Pg 85]tions on horseback cannot subsist. The conditions which used to permit leaders to resolve on shock have vanished. The fire-zone used to be so limited that bodies of Cavalry could hang on its outer limit, and seize the rare opportunities which might arise for a short gallop ending in shock. Now we have to deal with artillery and rifles of immense range and deadliness. And if by a miracle you do get into close quarters in your mass formation, you find—crowning disillusionment!—nothing solid on which to exert shock. You used to find it a century ago, because men used to fight in close order, but science has altered that. However, that point does not immediately arise from the question of "combination." The narrow issue there is how to effect the transition from fire to shock, and there is not a word in this volume to elucidate the point. There is not a word in our own Cavalry Manual. The thing has never been done in modern war. The combination of shock and fire tactics is an academical speculation. What we know is that shock has failed, and that the open-order rifle-charge, which has superseded the shock-charge, is evolved naturally from the fire-fight. You must, in the words of Lord Roberts, fight up to the charge, if charge there be; but you can win, as Infantry can win, without any mounted charge at all.