my central purpose in this volume is to submit to searching criticism the armament of cavalry. that armament now consists of a rifle and a sword in all regiments, with the addition of a lance in the case of lancers. i shall argue that the steel weapons ought either to be discarded or denied all influence on tactics, and a pure type of mounted rifleman substituted for the existing hybrid type. i shall contrast the characteristics and achievements of this pure type with the characteristics and achievements of the hybrid type. i shall argue that a right decision in the case of cavalry carries with it indirect consequences of the most far-reaching importance in regard to the efficient training of all our other mounted troops, regular or volunteer, home or colonial—troops which belong almost entirely to the pure type, but on whose training the mere existence of a hybrid type, with a theory of tactics derived from the steel, reacts unfavourably.
i cannot do better than begin by quoting two passages from page 187 of the latest edition of “cavalry training” (1907). they constitute an epitome of the case i wish to combat, and i challenge almost every proposition, express or implied, contained in them. the first runs as follows:
“from the foregoing it will be seen that thorough efficiency in the use of the rifle and in dismounted tactics 2is an absolute necessity. at the same time the essence of the cavalry spirit lies in holding the balance correctly between fire-power and shock action, and while training troops for the former, they must not be allowed to lose confidence in the latter.”
beginning with the first sentence, i challenge two assumptions implied in it: first, that “thorough efficiency in the use of the rifle and in dismounted tactics” (by hypothesis an absolute necessity) is compatible with thorough efficiency in shock action, also, by hypothesis, a necessity; second, that thorough efficiency with the rifle is confined to what the compilers of the drill-book call “dismounted tactics.” passing to the second sentence of the same quotation, i challenge the definition of the “essence of the cavalry spirit” there laid down. this definition is borrowed word for word from a german book, originally written before the boer war and republished in 1902, when the war was ending, by an officer—the distinguished general bernhardi—who founded his conclusions not on experience but on report, and addressed those conclusions to the german cavalry, whose tactics, training, and organization by his own admission were, and seemingly are still, so dangerously antiquated in the direction of excessive reliance on the steel as to present no parallel to our own cavalry. i challenge the cavalry spirit so defined because it is a hybrid spirit, impossible to instil and impossible to translate into “balanced” action, even if the steel deserved, as it does not deserve, to be “balanced” against the rifle. i challenge the definition still further, because it is not even an honest definition. affecting to strike a just balance between the claims of the rifle and the steel, it does not represent the facts of existing cavalry theory and practice in this country. though borrowed from a german authority, it is even less to be relied on as representing the facts of german theory and practice, nor does it correspond to 3the general tenor of the very handbook—"cavalry training"—in which it appears. those facts and that tenor find their really honest and truthful expression in the second quotation, which runs as follows:
“it must be accepted as a principle that the rifle, effective as it is, cannot replace the effect produced by the speed of the horse, the magnetism of the charge, and the terror of cold steel.”
i challenge both the form and the essence of the statement: its form because the words imply that “the speed of the horse and the magnetism of the charge” are exclusively connected with the use of the cold steel; its essence because the principle laid down is fundamentally unsound.
i want to induce all thinking men, whether professional soldiers or not, who take an interest in our military progress, to submit this theory of the arme blanche once and for all to drastic investigation, in the light of history—especially of south african history and manchurian history—in the light of physical principles, and in the light of future imperial needs. above all, i want them to examine the case made for the theory by cavalry men themselves, and to judge if that case rests upon an intelligent interpretation of new and valuable experience, or, rather, upon a stubborn adherence to an old tradition whose teaching they have indeed been forced to modify, but have not had the good sense to abandon. the principles laid down by professional men for the use of their own arm must of course exact the greatest respect, but they are not sacrosanct, and if they are found to rest on demonstrably false premisses they deserve to be discarded.
of all military questions this question of the arme blanche and the rifle is one around which general or outside criticism may most appropriately centre. it is not merely a cavalry question; it cannot be disposed of by reference to the british regular cavalry as it exists to-day. 4the training of all mounted troops, regular or volunteer, home or colonial, however armed and trained, depends on clear notions as to the relative value of the two classes of weapon. as an example of what i mean, i suggest that it is shallow and unscientific to present the yeomanry with the “cavalry training” handbook as a whole, and to inform them in a sort of postscript of three perfunctory pages that they should be “so trained as to be capable of performing all the duties allotted to cavalry, except those connected with shock action.” according to the interpretation of the words “duties connected with shock action,” the injunction might mean anything or nothing. no clear interpretation of the words could be derived from the handbook itself. the yeoman might turn for light to the mounted infantry regulations, and ask if, in its opening words, he was “an infantry soldier ...” governed “in his tactical employment by the principles of infantry training,” and, if not, in exactly what sense and for what reasons he was supposed to differ from the mounted infantryman; but he would ask in vain. in the end, he often concludes from the fact that he is “cavalry,” that he is in peril for lack of a sword, and appeals for the sword when he has barely mastered the rudiments of the rifle. the mounted infantryman, who has been first an infantry soldier, nourished on “infantry training,” may well wonder why that manual encouraged him not to fear cavalry, while directly he obtains a horse he is warned to fear the steel.
these are examples of confusion of thought at home. what of greater britain? a critical time has arrived in our imperial history. there is an universal sense of the necessity of closer union for imperial defence. an imperial general staff has been initiated which is to “standardize” organization and training. one of its functions ought to be to formulate some clear, rational principles for the employment of mounted troops. we know we 5can get large numbers of these troops. from first to last in the boer war we obtained upwards of 70,000 men outside great britain. we could obtain many in another great war, and make far more valuable use of them; if time and thought were to be given to their organization and training, with a special view to service in an imperial army. inspiration in the first instance will naturally come from the home country. what are we going to ask of these troops, who, be it remembered, are designed to form an integral part of an imperial army, ready, without the confusion, waste, and inefficiency due to an improvised system, to take their place in the field for the performance of definite, specific duties? we shall hardly, it is to be presumed, recommend shock action with the steel weapon to men who have not even the sentimental tradition of shock action, much less any practical belief in its efficacy. in what light, then, is shock action to be presented to them? what is to be their r?le? are they, like the yeomanry, to be informed that they are unfit to perform an undefined range of duties for which shock action alone is a qualification, or are they to be held competent to act as “cavalry,” while the yeomanry cannot claim that privilege? again, are they, like the mounted infantry, to regard themselves on the one hand as “infantry soldiers” mounted upon horses, and, on the other, as competent to perform regularly the duties of “divisional cavalry”? or are they to be called mounted riflemen, a name officially unknown in england? and, if so, in what precise and positive way do mounted riflemen differ from yeomanry, mounted infantry, and cavalry? these questions must be answered, and they must be answered to the satisfaction of practical men whose ideas of war have been moulded by the south african war, where shock action, as they know very well, fell into complete disuse, where all classes of mounted troops, 6home and colonial, performed according to their varying degrees of ability, the same functions, and where the rifle was the only weapon which counted.
this question of weapons for horsemen must be fairly and squarely faced. it is a national and imperial question, upon which every shade of opinion, volunteer or regular, should be consulted, and a verdict formed on the evidence, historical and technical. part only of the rich and varied experience gained upon this question in south africa was gained by cavalrymen. gunners, sappers, and infantrymen, to say nothing of volunteer officers of every description, led mounted troops with distinction. the most brilliant boer leading came from lawyers and farmers. the point is largely one for common sense, applied to known and recent facts, and everybody who takes any interest in military matters, whether he bears arms or not, can and ought to form an intelligent judgment on it.
but at present the situation is far from satisfactory, and, unless the controversy can be brought to a head in time, seems likely to grow more and more unsatisfactory. general public interest in the details of the south african war languished even before it was ended. after the war was over the tendency was to banish a tedious and unpleasant subject from memory. that, probably, is only a phase, yet a phase which may be dangerously overprolonged. the citizen army which fought in south africa side by side with the regular forces has disappeared. a great number of its individual members still bear arms as volunteers, but most of the organizations raised for war purposes have perished as such, and with them many of the sound, young traditions which were derived from war experience. a new generation is slowly coming into being, permeated, indeed, by growing enthusiasm for military service, but not particularly interested in the war, and taught on the highest authority to regard it as 7abnormal. in the regular forces a somewhat similar tendency has been inevitable; the causes which led to a general concentration of thought on mounted problems have disappeared. the war once over, the army naturally fell back into its normal organization. men temporarily called to become leaders of horse from branches outside the cavalry and regular mounted infantry returned to their former vocations and became reabsorbed in their old interests.
a great current of vital and original thought was irrevocably diverted. the ideas, no doubt, have lived on and thrived sporadically. at this moment there is probably much opinion in the army at large which is unfavourable to the official cavalry view of the arme blanche, but the opposition is neither authoritative nor effectively articulate. in the natural course of things the regular cavalry—a force centuries old and vested with immemorial traditions, the premier mounted force of the empire—has reasserted its sway over theory and practice. shock action, consigned to complete oblivion in south africa and to equally complete oblivion in manchuria, still holds the first place in the training of the cavalry soldier. the reaction has been gradual but sure. in 1903, a year after our war, the lance, by official order, was relegated to the realm of “ceremony” and “recreation,” and the sword was expressly subordinated to the firearm, which became the soldier’s “principal weapon.” then the sword regained that place, and finally the lance returned to use as a combatant weapon in conjunction with the sword. it is true that the rifle has been substituted for the carbine, and that “thorough efficiency in the use of the rifle” is enjoined as an “absolute necessity”; but, as i have pointed out, the spirit of the regulations suggests primary reliance on the steel as the main source of enterprise and dash. i lay stress on the spirit, for in the endeavour to make the best 8of both worlds, and to picture a perfect hybrid type, capable of doing all that first-class mounted riflemen can do, and all that first-class shock soldiers can do, the letter of the instructions for the employment of cavalry in the field is often inexcusably evasive and ambiguous.
but if there were any doubt about the essential meaning, the published writings of cavalry authorities like general sir john french, when combating the advocates of the rifle, would dispel that doubt. at such times, the principle of balance is forgotten, and the ineradicable belief in the supreme efficacy of the steel is laid bare. does this belief rest on a sound basis? i want to show that it does not. it is a formidable task; how formidable, the mere mention of the name of general french will show. deservedly he commands widespread respect and confidence, not only as the most distinguished british cavalry officer now living, but as a soldier of high general ability. to a vast number of minds his verdict on any military point would be decisive. in south africa he was the incarnation of the soldierly virtues. his name is bound up with some of the best work done by the cavalry during that war, so that any critic of the arme blanche who founds his criticism on that war, finds himself continually confronted by the seemingly unanswerable argument that our ablest cavalry officer believes in the arme blanche, and our ablest cavalry officer, himself endowed with long war experience, must be right. i ask the reader to reserve his judgment. no one who has not studied in a critical spirit this question of weapons for horsemen can realize the incalculable influence of purely sentimental conservatism upon even the ablest cavalry soldiers. the whole history of the subject has been one of indifference to, or reaction from, war experience, with the result that every great war from the middle of the nineteenth century to the recent war in the far east, with the solitary exception 9of the american civil war, has produced a confession of comparative failure in the cavalries employed, even from the cavalry leaders themselves. general french himself would, i believe, be the first to admit that in south africa he owed little or nothing to the arme blanche, and everything to the rifle. his case is that that war was abnormal. the arme blanche, indeed, is a religion in itself, comparable only to the religion of sails and wood which, in the affections of the old school of sailors—able sailors—long outlived the introduction of ironclads. this kind of conservatism must be analyzed, and, if need be, discounted, before we can arrive at the truth.
the published opinions of sir john french may fairly be taken to represent the best, and in a sense the official, case for the steel weapon. in 1909 a new edition was issued in this country of von bernhardi’s “cavalry in future wars,” the work from which the compilers of “cavalry training” have taken their definition of the hybrid “cavalry spirit,” and much more beside. it is admirably translated by mr. goldman, who wrote “with french in south africa,” after accompanying general french in the field during an important part of the south african campaign, who founded the cavalry magazine, and who may be regarded as the principal lay advocate of the arme blanche. bernhardi’s book is preceded by an introduction from the pen of general french himself. this introduction takes the form of an enthusiastic and absolutely unqualified eulogy of everything contained in the german publication, whose author is described as having, “with remarkable perspicacity and telling conviction, dealt in an exhaustive manner with every subject demanding a cavalry soldier’s study and thought.”
nor is the book only praised for its intrinsic merits. it is avowedly put forward as a conclusive answer to the english critics of shock man?uvre with the arme blanche—critics whom general french, in the earlier part of his 10introduction, takes special pains to answer with additional arguments of his own. mr. goldman, whose views may be presumed to have received the approval of general french, adds a preface, in which he pursues the same object. here, then, we have a volume which correctly represents in a compact and convenient form the best professional opinion on this question. i propose to refer to it incidentally, and at a later stage to submit it to closer analysis; but i urge my readers to read the book for themselves, only taking care to remember who bernhardi was, when he wrote, why he wrote, and for whom he wrote. i venture to think that they will pronounce the representation of his volume as the last word of wisdom for british cavalrymen, and as the supreme vindication of the arme blanche, an almost incredible phenomenon in a strange controversy. they will find it, indeed, profoundly suggestive and interesting, but unconsciously destructive of the very doctrines which its english sponsors believe it to uphold. a more genuine representation of continental thought may be found in a book entitled “cavalry in the russo-japanese war,” by the austrian authority, count wrangel, to which i shall also refer.
in submitting theory to the test of facts, i propose to concentrate attention on the modern evidence, and by “modern” i mean evidence since the introduction of the smokeless long-range magazine rifle. of the two great wars since that era, those in south africa and manchuria, i shall deal principally with the former. for englishmen, bent on discovering from their own national experience the best weapons and tactics for mounted men of their own race, as distinguished from foreign races, the south african facts are the only modern facts strictly relevant to the inquiry. aside from savage warfare, and disregarding the first boer war as too brief and inconclusive to afford reliable evidence, we have to go back in our search for earlier experience as far as the crimean war, 11when the firearm was a plaything as compared with the modern rifle. in the realm of foreign experience, there has been a great deal of controversy, much of it painfully sterile, on cavalry work in the austro-prussian war of 1866, the franco-german war of 1870, and the russo-turkish war of 1877–78. here, too, the firearm, though considerably improved, was primitive compared with the mauser or the lee-enfield rifles. nor, in spite of the illuminating examples furnished by the american civil war, had anything approaching the type we now know as mounted riflemen been initiated by the continental soldiers. there was no means of testing the value of this type, because it simply did not exist. cavalry training and man?uvres were still those of the napoleonic era. the firearm carried by the cavalry was inferior even to that carried by the infantry, and scarcely an attempt was made to inculcate any effectual use of it. hence the comparative impotence of the cavalries.
the american civil war of 1862–65, for englishmen especially, stands in a class by itself.[9] the men engaged in it were men of anglo-saxon race, untrammelled by prejudices and traditions, working out mounted problems by the light of common sense. the firearm, poor weapon as it was, judged by our modern standard, became the most valuable part of cavalry equipment, and the most fruitful source of dash and enterprise. sheridan’s cavalry were said by stuart, who was the best possible judge, to have fought better on foot than the federal infantry. the great cavalry raids in which the war abounded, and of which the european wars which followed were conspicuously barren, depended absolutely for their success, as all such enterprises always must depend, on aggressive fire-efficiency. fire from the saddle was constantly used by morgan, forrest, and other leaders. 12infantry on both sides learnt to despise the sword, though for inter-cavalry combats that weapon, owing to the imperfections of the firearm, remained a trusted auxiliary. our modern rifle would have certainly produced the pure type of mounted rifleman which south africa produced in both sets of belligerents. the example had no effect upon continental tactics, a blind imitation of which has always been the besetting sin of our own cavalry school. thirty-four years later, when the rifle had enormously increased in power, we pitted ourselves against the born shots and hunters of the veld with as little regard for the cavalry lessons of the american civil war as though it had never been fought.
lastly, we have the russo-japanese war of 1904–05. that, as i shall show, seals the doom of the arme blanche, and crowns the case for the mounted rifleman. but it is a foreign war, and not, therefore, so peculiarly applicable to ourselves as the boer war, whose lessons, nevertheless, it drives home. i propose to discuss it at a later stage, and will only remark now that even the most ardent advocates of the sword and lance have to admit that those weapons played no part in the war, while, on the other hand, neither cavalry, not even the japanese, approached the standard of fire-action attained in the course of our own war.
one more general word about the history of the subject prior to 1899. a vast amount has been written upon it. there is much common ground. nobody denies that the relative important of shock man?uvre with the steel weapon has steadily declined for a century. it is generally admitted that the examples of successful shock action in the european wars of the sixties and seventies were relatively very few, and the performances of the cavalries relatively poor to those of other arms. while persisting in the argument that, had certain conditions been fulfilled, cavalry work, including shock work, 13might have been more distinguished, advocates of the steel now generally admit that even then the neglect of fire-action was the main cause of ill-success. upon this point no one could speak more strongly than bernhardi. but if there is much common agreement, we must make our minds absolutely clear as to the nature of this agreement. a great part of the controversy has raged round a comparatively narrow point: whether masses of cavalry can any longer charge infantry, and, if so, what are the limitations to the success of such a charge. it is agreed that since 1870 limitations are many and severe; but the settlement of that point leaves the major issue untouched. the opportunities of the steel weapon may have diminished, but to the cavalry school this weapon remains the weapon par excellence for the cavalry, the indispensably decisive factor in inter-cavalry combats, which are to take the form of shock duels, and the main inspiration for all the wide and important range of duties belonging to the arm. no historian has studied more profoundly, nor written more brilliantly upon, the development of mounted tactics than the late colonel henderson. he was deeply versed in the civil war, and preached to deaf ears the great possibilities even of an imperfect firearm in the hands of cavalry. in a masterly analysis of the mounted actions of the european wars from 1866 to 1878,[10] he pointed out the comparative failure of shock, and the magnificent opportunities which would have been open to any body of mounted troops as skilled in fire-tactics as stuart’s confederates. he even goes so far as to say that “a few commandos of boers could have reduced to utter impotence the whole french cavalry.” yet, at the end of his inquiry, just when he seems to have proved to an impartial reader that the day of the steel weapon is over and the undivided reign of the rifle begun, he 14falters. there is a strange logical hiatus. then the old dogma proves too strong. after all, he concludes, the source of the “cavalry spirit” is, and must be, the steel. a precisely similar phenomenon, though springing from wholly different causes, and with more domestic justification, occurs in the case of bernhardi and of wrangel. henderson’s solution was that, if we are to have thoroughly expert mounted riflemen, they must be embodied in a separate force.
that compromise should have taken this particular form in henderson is a circumstance i have never been able to understand. it is utterly contrary to civil war experience, as he himself interprets it. that he should recommend one pure type, armed with either weapon, or two pure types, each armed with a different weapon; or one hybrid type, with theoretical perfection in both weapon, would be intelligible. that he should recommend a hybrid type, with the steel strongly dominant and the rifle admittedly inferior, plus a pure type of expert mounted riflemen, is strange indeed, after the conclusions he draws from history. but the arme blanche plays the strangest tricks with the acutest minds. bernhardi and our own cavalry school are shrewd enough to postulate theoretical perfection in the hybrid type, even if they make the sword the supreme source of dash. we do not know what henderson’s final opinions were. the essay in which he alludes to the boers was written before the end of the war. in him we can easily trace the cause of the logical hiatus. he had to take into account the use of the steel by american horsemen in inter-cavalry combats, but at a time when the imperfections of the firearm left a field to the steel which has since been shut off. whether the south african war, with its mounted rifle-charges, modified his views, we are ignorant. his first volume of the “official history” never saw the light, and he died in 1903. but we know 15this, that the last paper he ever wrote, the “british army”—though he does not touch specifically on the mounted problem at all—insists primarily on the revolution wrought in all modern tactics by the deadly efficacy of the smokeless, long-range magazine rifle, a revolution whose essence was the substitution of individual skill and intelligence for those formal, machine-like movements of massed bodies which are best exemplified in the case of shock action.
using the south african war as his primary source of illustration and guidance, i ask the reader to grapple seriously with the logic and history of this matter. i beg him not to be content, failing incontrovertible arguments, with the assurance of cavalry men that, in spite of the lessened opportunities for the arme blanche and the greater importance of the rifle, the former weapon must still be regarded as the governing factor in cavalry training. i ask him to take nothing for granted, but to examine every function of cavalry, tactical or strategical, defensive or offensive, whether against cavalry, infantry, or guns, and with a pitilessly critical eye to investigate the evidence bearing upon this vital question: which is the better weapon?
he will be discouraged and confused at the outset by the obscurities connected with nomenclature. names sanctioned by time always have a strong influence in human affairs. nowhere is this influence more disproportionately strong than in the case of mounted troops. the fine old word “cavalry” simply means horse-soldiers without regard to weapon; but by the tradition of centuries it has always been, and is still associated with the sword and lance, though, in fact, for a long time past all cavalries have been accustomed to carry some sort of firearm as well. then there are mounted infantry, a force, so to speak, improvised out of infantry, with a short additional training as horsemen; then the 16volunteer yeomanry, and the colonial mounted riflemen.
names apart, the reader must ask himself: what happens in action? does the rifle dictate tactics to the sword, or the sword to the rifle? what precise part does the question of weapons play in the ascription to cavalry and the denial to mounted infantry of all the difficult and important duties of the major reconnaissance, duties obviously requiring many faculties, mental and physical, which have no connection with the steel weapon? can a man ride quicker or better, be more observant, original, or intelligent because he carries a sword? finally, how is training to conform to weapons? in the realm of tactics does the official language correspond with the truth? why should the expression “dismounted tactics,” as opposed to “mounted tactics,” be always used in reference to the use of the rifle by cavalry? does not the common factor of mobility transcend the factor of weapons? cannot mounted riflemen “charge,” not, of course, according to that narrow interpretation of the word which restricts it to shock, but in ways equally, if not more, efficacious? and if, aside from the mobility derived from the horse, the dash shown in these and similar operations can demonstrably be shown to have been inspired by the rifle, is not the old cavalry maxim that dash is derived from the sword seriously shaken? it is all very well in printed instructions to inculcate perfection in both, but is it humanly possible to maintain unimpaired in the same body of soldiers, still defined as “cavalry,” the old standard of shock man?uvre, with all the rigorous training it demands, and all the specialized instincts and habits associated with it, while adding all the equally rigorous, and equally specialized education of body and mind, which is indispensable to the production of a good mounted rifleman? if not, which weapon is likely to go to the wall?
17seeking light on these and kindred matters, the student will find himself straying in a fog of loose definitions corresponding to loose thought. he will find the word “cavalry” used in several different senses for several different purposes; sometimes merely to mean armed horsemen, sometimes with special emphasis on the steel weapon, sometimes with particular reference to the rifle. he will find bernhardi calling the boers cavalry, and his commentator, mr. goldman, gravely rebuking him for not seeing that they were mounted infantry. he will find general french hotly combating the heresy that “cavalry duels” are a thing of the past, and confusing in his own mind duels decided by the arme blanche with those struggles for mastery between the rival mounted forces of two opposing armies which, everyone agrees, must be a preliminary factor of high importance in all campaigns; and we find him becoming eloquent on the great and growing r?le of cavalry in war, as though anybody had ever doubted that proposition, except in so far as it implied that cavalry drew their power mainly from the arme blanche.
the south african war, no less than the manchurian war, throws a flood of light on all these difficulties. it seems strange that it should be necessary to recommend a thorough sifting and weighing of the south african evidence. yet it is necessary, for it is the fashion now to dismiss that war as abnormal, and throughout this volume i shall have to devote considerable space to arguing why, for the purposes of this controversy, it should not be regarded as abnormal. in the meantime, i appeal for the maintenance of some reasonable sense of proportion in this matter. the war lasted more than two and a half years. it cost upwards of 200,000,000 pounds sterling. it exacted supreme efforts, military and economic. the total number of male belligerents opposed to us from first to last, foreigners and rebels included, 18scarcely exceeded 87,000. the total number of soldiers put into the field to meet them from first to last exceeded 400,000. for us, as i have already reminded the reader, it was the first great war against a race of european descent since the crimea. for us, and for everyone else, it was the first test on the grand scale of the smokeless magazine rifle, not only in the hands of infantry, but in the hands of mounted troops, and in the hands of mounted troops operating against cavalry of the old type. artillery apart, our foes one and all were mounted riflemen of the pure type. by degrees all our own mounted troops, of whatever category, became merged in the same type. and the war gradually became a mounted war. mounted efficiency became the touchstone of success. unprepared in multitudes of ways for the great struggle, it was in this respect from first to last that our chief deficiency lay. on the other hand, it was by their skill in the use of the horse and rifle combined that the boers were enabled to defy us for so long.
merely to state these elementary and indisputable facts is to prove that the war cannot lightly be regarded as abnormal. common self-respect, to say nothing of historical judgment, should forbid such a manner of thinking. we need to recognize both our faults and our merits as disclosed at that great turning-point in our imperial history. pushed, as it is pushed, to extremes, this idea of abnormality becomes a narcotic, lulling us into lethargy and reaction. this was our war, won only by a vast expenditure of our blood and treasure. it has its memories of bitter humiliation as of glorious achievement, and those memories are ours. the experience is mainly valuable to us in that it is ours. in moments of exaltation we congratulate ourselves, probably with sound justification, on having, in spite of many blunders, achieved what a continental army could not have achieved. and yet, when it comes to reading the plainest 19technical lesson of the war, we find the leading exponents of cavalry doctrine brushing aside our own priceless experience, appealing to germany for light and guidance, and introducing german formulas—meaningless to germans themselves—into british instructional handbooks.
one of the worst features of this insistence on abnormality is the tendency it breeds in cavalry writers to read the mounted operations of the war from the cavalry point of view only. had things been otherwise, had there been the normal opportunities for shock man?uvre, how much more brilliant would have been the part played by the cavalry! that is the line of argument, prompted, as no one can fail to observe, not only by an abstract faith in the arme blanche, but by a very natural anxiety to place in the best light the achievements of the cavalry in south africa. confined within proper limits, that motive is unexceptionable, but the moment it begins to have the effect of converting a technical question into a sentimental question it becomes vicious. that is what has happened. no one can doubt the fact who reads mr. goldman, general french’s military biographer, and notes the laboured efforts to extract from the most unpromising material conclusions favourable to the arme blanche, and the deplorable loss of perspective which such an effort entails. may i say here, if mr. goldman will permit me, that, although controversy will compel me to criticize his work unsparingly, i gladly and sincerely recognize its value as a historical narrative. we differ, not about facts, but about the reading of facts. i think his very natural admiration and affection for the cavalry have led him into the error of believing that their reputation, as a branch of the service, is bound up with the reputation of the steel weapon. believing the contrary myself, i cannot help chafing sometimes under what seems a sort of coercion into assuming the r?le of a detractor of the cavalry, while my sole desire is to attack their 20armament. i fancy that all critics of the arme blanche have to face the same disagreeable ordeal. i can only do my best throughout to make my attitude clear. the topic ought to present no difficulties. as a nation, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves if we cannot discuss a great theme like this dispassionately on its merits. the cavalry, like every other body of mounted troops in the king’s dominions, is an imperial possession. we are all proud of them, and if we criticize their methods, it is with the single object of making sure that the energies of this splendid body of men are directed into the most fruitful channel. in all wars we know we can count on their setting a high example of the great soldierly qualities, but we also want to make sure of their taking their right place at the outset, and maintaining that place throughout, as the leading exponents of progressive thought applied to mounted problems, and in that capacity to serve as models to all their imperial comrades, and to the world at large.
on its merits, then, and on broad lines, i propose to discuss this question, avoiding so far as possible everything tending to cloud the vision with prejudice or bias. when i illustrate from recent facts it is not with the barren and invidious purpose of apportioning blame or praise, but with the single aim of elucidating the truth.
