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Discovering Diverse Content Through
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four divisions against the left of the Japanese entrenched line, held
by the Second Army, forty miles south of Mukden. The Japanese
Cavalry brigade occupied a cluster of villages near the junction of
the Hun and Taitsu Rivers, and in the course of a bitterly contested
battle, lasting three days, had to take their share, sometimes with
Infantry support, in meeting attacks by greatly superior forces. In
this case the work they had to do was precisely the work of Infantry,
and our minds go back once more to the directions of our “Cavalry
Training”—that Cavalry may be called upon to “occupy localities for
defence,” but that their defences are on no account to be otherwise
than of the “simplest description,” so as not to weaken the offensive
instinct of an essentially offensive arm—in other words, so as not to
compromise the steel weapon. This is to organize defeat. If the
Japanese had thought so lightly of fire and the concomitants of fire,
they would never have had the offensive instinct which they showed
at Pen-hse-hu, Telissu, and Mukden.
Everywhere the same moral. In screening, raiding, and battle, fire
is master. No observer suggests on any definite occasion any definite
opportunity for the use of steel by the Cavalry engaged. Sir Ian
Hamilton, the senior of the large staff of British officers who watched
the Manchurian War, himself a successful leader in South Africa, has
given his opinion officially (“Reports,” vol. ii., p. 526) and in his
published diary. He does not miss or evade the point; he grapples
with it directly, and is constantly contrasting South African mounted
men and methods with Manchurian men and methods, and his
conclusion is unreservedly in favour of the rifle. His opinion began to
be confirmed at the first battle of the war, the Yalu, where neither
Cavalry had any effect on events. His Japanese friends, he tells us,
were very much surprised, and naturally, for they held German
theories. But “the warmest advocate of shock must allow, when he
follows the course of events on this occasion over the actual ground,
that there was no place or opportunity where the horse could
possibly have been of any value except to bring a rifleman rapidly up
to the right spot” (vol. i., p. 137). Throughout the Manchurian
campaign “the thought never” but once “occurred to him to long for
Cavalry to launch at the enemy during some crisis of the struggle.
Neither Infantry has the slightest idea of permitting itself to be
hustled by mounted men, and it has been apparent ... that the
Cavalry could not influence the fighting one way or another, except
by getting off their horses and using their rifles.”
Nevertheless, two of the officers who were present do succeed in
concluding that the war proves the supreme value of the steel
weapon; and if my readers wish to gauge the tyranny of a blind faith
over the minds of accomplished practical men, whose Reports on
any other point are lucid and convincing, let him read, in close
connection with Count Wrangel’s two contradictory explanations of
the absence of shock, the remarks on the Japanese Cavalry by
General Sir C. J. Burnett and Colonel W. H. Birkbeck (vol. ii., pp.
542–545). It would be a comedy, if such comedies did not have
tragic consequences. Colonel Birkbeck seeks an interview with
General Akiyama. That vigorous employer of aggressive fire-action
states that his Cavalry learnt to draw their “greatest confidence”
from the firearm. Wincing, however, under a reminder from Colonel
Birkbeck of the religious “cult of the sword” in Japan, he pleads
defensive necessities against the enormous numerical strength of
the Russians, who, however, were "incapable of forcing an issue at
close quarters"! If they had been Cavalry" truly trained as such,"
besides being enormously superior, then—but the General is too
clever to court the reductio ad absurdum—then “the case would
have been different.” General Burnett’s comment I quoted on page
347, and to complete the comedy, Colonel Birkbeck, in a separate
report (No. 10), has conjecturally attributed the inaction of the
25,000 Russian Cavalry at the battle of Mukden to their lack of
training for shock! In his interview with the more tactful Colonel
McClernand, of the United States army, Akiyama speaks the plain,
unvarnished truth.
Let the reader now take a bird’s-eye view of the historical chain of
authoritative comment on the performances of Cavalry.
Here is Von Moltke reporting to the King of Prussia, after the
Austro-Prussian War of 1866:
 “Our Cavalry failed, perhaps not so much in actual capacity as in
self-confidence. All its initiative had been destroyed at manœuvres
... and it therefore shirked bold, independent action, and kept far in
the rear, and as much as possible out of sight,” etc. (“Taktisch-
Strategische-Aufsätze”).

General French, in his Introduction to Bernhardi (p. xxvii), actually

quotes this view as a warning to our Cavalry of the present day
against “ultra-caution” with the steel in the presence of Infantry fire;
quotes it, I repeat, in the beginning of a volume whose central thesis
is the futility of the steel in opposition to fire.
It may be added that an “Austrian officer of high rank,” who is
quoted in the French translation of the Austrian Official History of
that same war of 1866, attributed what he calls the “success” of the
Prussian Cavalry to their reliance on the support of Infantry—that is,
on fire. His compatriot Wrangel, forty years later, says the same of
the Japanese Cavalry.
Bernhardi reminds his countrymen that in the war of 1870 their
own Cavalry, and in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 the Russian
Cavalry, only obtained the poor success they did obtain because “not
even approximately equal Cavalry” opposed them, criticizes their
performances severely, and passionately advocates perfection in the
use of the rifle.
We come to the South African War, where the firearm inspires the
best achievements of Cavalry and the steel weapon is discarded, and
where we find even the most convinced upholders of the arme
blanche forced to construct an elaborate and often self-contradictory
scheme of explanation for the failure of the British Cavalry—qua
Cavalry—in that campaign.
The Japanese Cavalry only approaches other arms in so far as it
uses fire well. And we end with Kuropatkin, who has condemned the
Russian Cavalry in the war of 1877, and who, in the war of 1904–5,
almost in the identical words used by Von Moltke, deplores the lack
of confidence and dash in the Cavalry, and regards them as having
failed.
 Unanimity. Censure and excuses always. Of what other class of
soldiers is this invariable complaint made? And what is the common
element in all these censured Cavalries? Inefficiency in fire-action. Of
the wars prior to the invention of the deadly modern rifle, which is
the war where Cavalry are least censured and most praised? The
American Civil War, earlier than any of those I have named, where
the Cavalries learnt reliance on the firearm, though their example
passed unnoticed in Europe. After that invention, what type do we
find winning its way to success in South Africa? The mounted
rifleman. Which weapon succeeds in Manchuria? The firearm.
I have carried the reader of this volume through a very
Wonderland of paradox. Let him collect the threads of one more
paradox in our own domestic history.
In 1899, deaf to history and its most brilliant English exponent,
Colonel Henderson, our Cavalry went to war equipped and trained
like the present French Cavalry.
They and the nation suffered accordingly. After the war, Lord
Roberts embodied in a preface to the “Cavalry Training” Manual of
1904 the ripe experience, not only of the South African War, but of a
long life spent in military service. He inculcated reliance on the rifle
as the principal weapon for all purposes of the Cavalry soldier. Two
years later, although Manchuria had confirmed his words in every
particular, the injunction was forgotten, and our Cavalry were sitting
at the feet of a German writer who had nothing to tell them about
the rifle which they had not already learnt by costly war experience,
and who was addressing, not them, but a Cavalry ignorant of the
ABC of modern fire-tactics. But, as a matter of theory, not of
experience, he clung to shock, expounding it in terms irreconcilable
with fire. Our Manual of 1904 was superseded by the Manual of
1907, with the directions of Lord Roberts expunged and Bernhardi’s
self-contradictory counsels embodied. In the August number of the
Revue des deux Mondes of 1908 many people were astonished to
find set forth in full by General de Negrier, as a model to the
“dreaming” French Cavalry, Lord Roberts’s preface to our Manual of
1904. That Manual is cancelled. So that to find in its living,
authoritative form the verdict of our greatest living soldier, derived
from facts, not from theory, on a technical and tactical question of
vital importance, the student has to search the files of a French
review.
CHAPTER XV
REFORM
 I.—Study.
“Trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron string.”

I venture to address my first recommendation to professional

soldiers, volunteer soldiers, and civilians alike. Study your own great
war. Shut your ears to those who say it is abnormal. Study it with an
open mind, forming your own opinion, and remembering that this is
your experience.
With the facts and conditions of your own modern war thoroughly
in your head, re-study other wars, including the last great war in
Manchuria. Note the progress made during the last fifty years in the
precision, range, and smokelessness of the firearm, compared with
the unimprovable nature of the steel weapon. Ask yourself if the
professional Cavalries in these various wars were alive to the lesson
of this revolution, and whether their successors, judged by their own
writings, are alive now to the lesson. And do not, I beseech, when
you hear it said (with truth) that the “principles of war” never
change, be misled into imagining that the steel weapon for
horsemen is one of the “principles of war.”
Picture past wars, such as the Franco-German War, by the light of
the knowledge actually then in existence, but unused, as to the
possibilities of the rifle in the hands of mounted men. Reckon the
opportunities lost, and ask yourself if the successes gained by the
steel might not have been gained equally well even in those days by
first-class mounted riflemen.
Remember all the while in constructing out of precedents this
“case law” that there is a “common law” behind, a physical principle,
which is independent in the last resort of all psychological and
historical associations. Follow it out, as I have often suggested in
terms of vulnerability and mobility, constantly using the foot-riflemen
as an analogy. But realize that the bayonet, which is used as the
climax of a fire-fight on foot, is not the analogue of the sword or
lance, which are used from horse-back only, on a system impossible
to associate with fire. Superimpose the moral and psychological
factors—in one word, the spirit—bearing in mind that the best
weapon will promote the best spirit, and inspire the most fear in the
enemy. Lastly, take training, and reflect whether it be possible for a
hybrid type to attain perfection in two highly exacting and, under
modern conditions, profoundly antagonistic methods of fighting.
Weigh the terrible cost of not reaching perfection, the humiliation of
being impotent even against inferior Infantry, and doubly impotent
against superior mounted riflemen.
In studying the functions of mounted troops with the aid of the
Official “Training Books,” constantly distinguish weapons from
mobility, the combat phase from the pre-combat phase. Do not be
enticed into assuming that men armed with steel weapons can ride,
drill, scout or manœuvre better, by virtue of those weapons. On the
contrary, observe how steel weapons, not only by their mere weight
in metal and leather, but by their manifold corollaries, react
harmfully on mobility and intelligence, and in the case of the lance
on visibility as well. Remember that in war every ounce and every
inch tells, and that there is no other weapon on which to save
weight. Nobody as yet suggests dropping the rifle. That is admittedly
indispensable.
 II.—Nomenclature.
The grand distinction between the foot-soldier and the horse-
soldier is the horse. The link which unites them is the rifle. We need
some classification which emphasizes both the distinction and the
link. All our terms, as at present used, are misleading. Those ancient
and simple names, Cavalry and Infantry, are really all we want, but
their significance is blurred by the modern intrusion of Mounted
Infantry and its unofficial synonym, Mounted Riflemen, and
Yeomanry.
“Mounted Infantry” is a very bad name, because, though accurate
in a sense, it suppresses the common element, the rifle, and
emphasizes the horse, which is the distinguishing element, by a sort
of contradiction in terms, as though one were to say, horse-foot-
soldiers. And in the very act of emphasizing the horse it belittles
both that noble animal and its rider. It seems to say, “mount by all
means, but above all dismount”; “continually get off your
horse”—"ignore the horse," to adapt expressions now familiar to the
reader.
“Mounted Riflemen,” though far better than “Mounted Infantry,” is
also unsatisfactory (1) because it suggests a non-existent distinction
between foot riflemen and Infantry, (2) because it suggests a non-
existent class of mounted troops who are not riflemen.
Of course, the source of all this confusion is the retention of the
steel weapon for our existing regular Cavalry, and the hybrid type
which results.
I myself should strongly advocate the total abolition of all the
modern jargon, and a return to the primitive simplicity of Cavalry
and Infantry. Those names will live; nothing can extirpate them, and
if they stood alone their very isolation would force into prominence
the really fundamental points of similarity and dissimilarity in the
troops they represent. Of course, there will always be different
qualities of Cavalry, as of Infantry, corresponding to length and
continuity of training, and the most difficult and exacting functions
will naturally be allotted to the best-trained troops. But do not let us
make the sword or lance the criterion of excellence. Let us select
any other criterion but that, paying at least so much of a compliment
to modern war experience. Do not let us tell the relievers of
Mafeking or De Wet that they cannot engage in a strategical raid;
the Australians that they cannot pursue; De la Rey, the New
Zealanders, and the riflemen of the Rand that they cannot charge.
Do not let us impress upon our Mounted Infantry, with their South
African traditions, that because they have no sword or lance, they
cannot play the big, fast game they played in South Africa. By all
means, if it is convenient, give them the limited functions of
divisional Cavalry, but do not put it on the ground of defective
armament. Give them a chance to realize their own worth, and do
not commit the crowning folly—crime it might well be called—of
singling them out from all the army for what is in effect a lecture on
the “terror of cold steel.”
 III.—Armament of Cavalry.
I now come to the central object of my volume. My own belief is
that reform here must be radical. If it were possible, as the United
States Cavalry find it possible, to place the sword in a thoroughly
subordinate position, and keep it there, accepting whole-heartedly
all the logical consequences of its subordination, there would be little
objection to its retention. Nobody can deny that it can be useful on
very rare occasions, though I hope to have proved that the rifle, in
expert hands, can do better, even on those rare occasions.
But experience proves that in this country it is utterly impossible
to keep the sword or lance subordinate. Their fascination seems to
be irresistible. They laugh at facts and feed men on seductive
fictions. We know what the course of reaction has been. For a brief
space after the South African War it was in fact made officially
subordinate. Then the sword regained its old domination. Now the
lance, from the cold shades of “ceremony,” has become a combative
weapon, also dominant, and in the case of Lancer regiments,
sharing its supremacy with the sword, so that we have now what I
venture to call the preposterous spectacle of horsemen armed with
no less than three weapons, one of which, when at rest, adds
several feet vertically to visibility. Of the respective value of the lance
and sword in combat, where combat takes place, I say nothing, but
on every other ground the lance is utterly indefensible. At the
combined army manœuvres of 1909, for example, Lancers were
operating in hedge-bound country, like that which covers so large a
part of England, and where lances constantly make just the
difference between concealment and exposure. They are
incompatible with effective fire-action.
But that after all is a secondary matter. What makes compromise
impossible is the fact that the steel weapon carries with it logically
the whole theory of shock. Add the firearm and you are faced with
dilemmas from which there is no escape. You cannot even take the
elementary step of attaching it to the man, instead of to the saddle,
without prejudice to the idea of shock. You cannot, as “Cavalry
Training” tacitly admits, carry sufficient ammunition. Drop shock, and
logic would tear aside the veil, and leave the steel weapon
discredited. It could not live on “extended formations,” eight-yard
intervals and thin makeshifts of that sort. There plainly it would be
trenching on the legitimate sphere of the rifle, and throwing its own
inferiority into prominence. The steel involves shock, and shock
involves a whole structure of drill, training and equipment, which are
not only antithetical to fire-action, but prejudicial to general mobility.
Splendid troops, with keen commanders and careful training, like our
regular Cavalry, manage to attain a fairly high standard in both fire-
action and shock-action; no one can doubt that who witnessed the
manœuvres of 1909. But reconnaissance was admittedly imperfect,
and the conditions were peace conditions. Time spent in training for
the steel is time robbed from other training. None know better than
General French and other Cavalry officers with war experience how
tremendously exacting is the standard of excellence required of the
mounted rifleman, and how vital the importance of saving weight.
War teaches us that only by exclusive and unremitting attention to
the use of the horse and rifle in combination is it possible to make
good mounted riflemen.
They can never know enough, never practise enough. And, when
the last word is said, there remain those “out-of-door habits and
sporting instincts” which are so difficult to imitate artificially, and for
whose absence it is so difficult to compensate by drill and discipline.
But surely no better material exists in any European country than
in this for the production of good mounted riflemen. We have the
men, and we have the experience. We are leagues ahead of
Germany, where steps are only now being taken to provide the
Cavalry with a carbine equal in power to the Infantry rifle; leagues
ahead of Austria and France; leagues ahead of Russia, unless since
1905 she has revolutionized her training. And yet we are blind to our
good fortune; not only blind but enviously imitative of the errors of
foreigners, who in turn are ignorant of our elements of strength.
Colonel Repington, our ablest military publicist, and one of the best
friends the Cavalry or the army at large ever had, warns the Cavalry
that their shock-action needs improvement, by comparison with
Continental standards, while Bernhardi and de Negrier passionately
exhort their countrymen, to wake up to the efficacy of the rifle. But
Bernhardi cannot bring himself to give up the steel, so, as the most
reputable exponent of compromise we can find, we copy into our
drill-book those of his maxims on fire which can safely be quoted
without fatally injuring the case for the steel. It is enough to make
angels weep! Observe once more that we are courting failure in
neglecting our own aptitudes. Our Cavalry school believes in the
inevitable shock duel, and prophesies “negative” results for fire in
the encounters of rival Cavalries. Continental schools believe the
same, so that both Cavalries in a European war, oblivious, as of old,
of their real battle duties, will seek the shock duel if level ground can
be found for it. If our single division is beaten in a brute contest of
weight we shall be reaping the fruits of compromise. But the more
likely contingency is that the same old cruel and pointless censure
will be meted out to both Cavalries, for “mutual paralysis” and
“idleness” on the battle-field.
All this proves, I submit, that compromise is impossible. Sword
and lance should be abolished, and the training book rewritten in the
light of that abolition. With nothing but the rifle to depend on, a
new, pure, equality magnificent, and far more fruitful spirit would at
once permeate the whole force. There can be no such thing as a
hybrid spirit, and the Cavalry know it; hence the re-enthronement of
the steel spirit. But inculcate unreservedly the true aggressive fire-
spirit, or rather the horse-and fire spirit, and you will get it in a form
which would astonish the old European Cavalries.
From “Cavalry Training,” even as it now stands, extract and
marshal lucidly all the functions which Cavalry are now supposed to
perform with the rifle, whether in offence or defence.[85] Realize the
tremendous responsibilities involved, and remember that in any even
of these functions to pit half-trained riflemen against first-class
riflemen, whether Infantry or mounted, is to court failure, and
possibly humiliating and disastrous failure—for the sake of what? Of
obtaining not even perfection, but mediocrity in a class of tactics
whose value rests on no proofs from any war since the invention of
the smokeless modern rifle.
Dismiss these distracting and meaningless distinctions between
the “Cavalry fight” and other fights, between “mounted action” and
“dismounted action,” which are now treated as though they had no
connection with one another, and as though in the swift and various
vicissitudes of war it were possible to sort troops into classes or to
foresee from moment to moment which tactics to employ. Realize
that under present arrangements there is, and can be, no provision
whatever for that rapid transition from one to the other which battle
conditions demand if Cavalry are to play the fast, confident game
they should play. A man with a horse is a man with a horse. Make
him feel it at all times. Do not tell him that a wound inflicted from
the saddle counts in some mysterious way more than one inflicted
on foot. Explain that mounted action and dismounted action may
alternate with lightning rapidity, and merge in one another in a
thousand ways. In teaching the charge with the rifle do not make
the subaltern refer to two distinct chapters, one dealing with the ride
into decisive range, another with his action when he dismounts—
perhaps only a few yards from the objective—for the fire-climax. And
for very shame avoid such puerilities as the direction that before
embarking on dismounted action additional ammunition is to be
served out.
Make the mere mention of “Cavalry ground” an offence punishable
by fine. Tell Cavalry that all ground which a horse can approach at
all is ground for them, and all equally honourable and fruitful
ground. Tell them to welcome inequalities as the indispensable
condition of surprise, not to hanker after open plains, where surprise
is impossible. Get rid, too, of the equally demoralizing notion that in
order to fulfil their supreme function in action their horses must
perpetually be in a condition to gallop fast.
Saddle-fire for mounted troops is optional, according to capacity.
But it should certainly be adopted by professional Cavalry, and
practised regularly. I need not discuss the difficulty of learning
saddle-fire. The mere fact that it is officially enjoined for picked
Mounted Infantry in a three months’ training proves its feasibility, to
say nothing of its combat-value. Obviously it cannot be regarded as
an absolutely essential concomitant of mounted action. A vast
amount was accomplished without it in South Africa, and our own
men, even in their best work, never used it. Nor was it used by
either side in Manchuria, because neither side came near the South
African standard of mounted rifle-tactics. But that it may be, if used
at the right moment, skilfully, and for certain definite ends, of very
great value, we know both from our own experience and from
American history. It has genuine moral effect, and may have
material effects of an importance out of all proportion to the actual
loss of life inflicted, whether in horse or men. A few random bullets
may stampede a crowd of led horses, or throw into disorder a
regiment massed for shock. In the pursuit of mounted men by
mounted men, in the running mêlée, so to speak, experience shows
that skilled shots and riders can bring down men with aimed fire. A
revolver might be better for this purpose, but the multiplication of
weapons is on all accounts to be avoided. The rider must feel in
every moment of his field-life that he and his rifle are one for all
purposes.
It goes without saying, therefore, that the rifle should be slung, as
even the Russians and Japanese slung it, and, as Bernhardi
recommends, on the back.
But for the arme blanche there would be plenty of time to learn
not only saddle-fire, but much beside in the inexhaustible lore of the
mounted rifleman. For example, a good first-hand knowledge of
entrenchment is absolutely essential, as anyone can see who looks
in “Cavalry Training” for the fire-functions allotted to Cavalry; and at
least one sharp lesson in South Africa drives home the same moral.
To allocate a small detachment of Royal Engineers is to trifle with
the subject. Entrenching tools, in the use of which the troopers
themselves have been practised, should accompany every regiment
or brigade. Remember the Cavalry at Hei-kou-tai and Pen-hse-hu. If
you give men firearms at all, you must teach them thoroughly the
defensive as well as the offensive use of firearms, for the two things
are one. Men who cannot defend cannot attack.
 A truce, then, to the rhetoric about Cavalry being essentially an
arm of offence. Ça va sans dire. Every combatant arm is an arm of
offence. Infantry would regard such an exhortation as a poor
compliment. Of course we know and make full allowance for the
reason of the exhortation—namely, that the arme blanche is by its
very nature only a weapon of offence, and that in Cavalry theory the
arme blanche is the supreme source of dash. Get rid of this theory,
and you get rid of all excuse for the exhortation.
The arme blanche gone, the path of progress in every department
opens out broad and clear. We want light, lithe, wiry men, and
horses to match—horses at any rate in which nothing of any
moment is sacrificed to size, and of which hardihood is the
predominant characteristic. Small horses were far the hardiest in
South Africa and Manchuria. High speed is altogether secondary;
looks are nothing.
The vexed question of the weight of general equipment (apart
from the extra weight of steel weapons) I regard as outside the
scope of this volume. The margin gained by abolishing steel
weapons should be used for extra ammunition. In South Africa our
men carried 130 rounds, the Japanese in Manchuria 150 rounds.
Should the troopers carry a bayonet? That is an interesting
question, because it forces us to contrast the relative powers and
duties of the foot-rifleman and the horse-rifleman. It is an open
question, not vital, because the weight of a bayonet is small, and it
does not impose a separate system of tactics. It may be said on the
one hand that mobility and surprise are the grand advantages
possessed by mounted riflemen over foot-riflemen, and should
compensate for the bayonet, which, in point of fact, scarcely justified
itself in South Africa. The Boers lost little by the lack of it, even in
storming entrenchments at night, while their charges in the open
were based directly on the idea, first of a swift stunning ride in, then
on destructive magazine fire. That is the true idea, and we should
not forget it. The bayonet suggests the slow, if less vulnerable,
approach of men on foot. Even in the case of Infantry, critics of both
the great modern wars associate over-close formations and unskilful
skirmishing with an exaggerated idea of the importance of the cold
steel. I except Port Arthur conditions, where horsemen were not
wanted.
On the other hand, all British riflemen find confidence in the
bayonet, and, as Lord Roberts truly says, it may be exceedingly
useful in a dismounted night attack. War since 1865 proves that
Cavalry must have the power to press home an assault against
entrenched Infantry. As Mishchenko discovered, they cannot make
the simplest raid without it. In strict logic, therefore, the trooper
needs the bayonet if the Infantryman needs it. Only let us be sure
that the utility of the bayonet is fully great enough to warrant the
possible risk of making the trooper forget that normally his horse
gives him a great tactical advantage over Infantry, and a range of
opportunities unknown to them. Whatever we decide, let us not act
in mimicry of “potential foes.” If the new German carbine has a
bayonet, as I believe it has, let us not make the bayonet a fourth
weapon in imitation, but a second weapon to fortify the rifle.
On manœuvre not strictly connected with any special weapon I
only wish to repeat the clear lesson of South Africa and the wise
counsel of Bernhardi, that the less Cavalry, when in free and
independent movement, are taught to rely on the support of Horse
Artillery the better.
I need scarcely say that we should erase the last vestiges of the
idea that Cavalry should count on the support of mounted riflemen.
If we abolish the arme blanche that distorted and unwholesome idea
dies a natural death.
The conditions of service constitute a most important point. For
officers the force should be as cheap as any other part of the army,
the career ouverte à tous les talents. Every stimulus should be given
for the accession of the best men, both mentally and physically, and
selection should be rigid. Cavalry is a very important arm, demands
the most varied powers, and should command the highest talent. It
is a relatively small force, it has highly specialized functions, and of
all arms it is the least easy to replace in the thick of a war. It must
be a comparatively expensive force to maintain, but the expense
should fall on the State which it serves. That perhaps is a counsel of
perfection for the State in its relation to officers of all arms, but if it
softens anywhere, it should soften in the case of the Cavalry.
And the source of the present excessive standard of expense?
Analyze the whole matter carefully, and you will find at the back of it
that enemy to progress, the arme blanche. Abolish that, and, with a
little friendly help from the State, the evil will cure itself.
 IV.—Mounted Infantry.
We touch here special questions of finance and administration
which complicate the issue. But a clear mind on the question of
armament and tactics will help immensely to simplify the problem.
Let us begin by calling them for all purposes “Cavalry.” That ought to
be a simple and unobjectionable change, because in combined
operations they are, in fact, called Cavalry, and are allotted the
duties of divisional Cavalry. The name changed, what follows?
Logically, no doubt, that they should be merged in the Cavalry. Apart
from the steel weapon, their characteristics are the same. Apart
from the shock-charge, and assuming equal length of training, their
functions and powers should be precisely the same. They are
mounted riflemen, as the Cavalry should be. On the other hand,
there is an advantage, no doubt, from the point of view of expense
and simplicity, in the plan of abstraction from Infantry battalions for
short periods of mounted service; but I suggest that the advantage
is small by comparison with the evils of the system. (1) In war, when
fresh contingents have to be raised (as they surely will have to be
raised), the abstraction, as we know to our cost, weakens the
efficacy of the Infantry battalions. (2) Though the soldier’s prior
training (presumed to be thorough) as an Infantryman is of immense
help to him in learning the work of a mounted rifleman, it is wholly
impossible for him, in the short time available, to obtain all the
trained aptitudes and instincts of a first-class mounted rifleman.
Is it not common sense that, if we go to the expense of providing
professional soldiers with horses at all, we should go a little farther,
and make them thorough professional horsemen, during their whole
training? Should we not rather add to the Cavalry than abstract from
the Infantry? I am sure it would pay us well.
But whether or no this step is taken, and whether or no the arme
blanche is abolished, let us at all events revise their instruction in the
light of war-experience, abandoning all this excessive stress on their
character as Infantry, laying all the stress we will on their character
as riflemen, and equal stress on their character as horsemen. Of
course, as long as they remain, so to speak, improvised horsemen,
their responsibilities must be appropriate to their efficiency, but they
should not be taught to feel that they lose something by the lack of
a steel weapon. By all means let them act as a “pivot of manœuvre”
for regular Cavalry, where the two arms are acting together, if, as
mounted riflemen, they are less efficient than Cavalry. But away with
this absurd notion that their support on such occasions is intended
to leave Cavalry leisure and opportunity for indulging in shock. Away,
above all, with the demoralizing insinuation that if caught “in the
open,” whatever that vague and elusive phrase may mean, they are,
owing to the possession of horses, actually more vulnerable to
attack by the steel than Infantry; that to meet this contingency, they
must form square, an operation long obsolete in the case of the
Infantry, except for savage warfare. This is just the way to make
them lose all confidence not only in the very weapon which Infantry
are taught to rely on so implicitly against the steel, but in the horse
itself. I wonder if the existing Mounted Infantry believe in the
suggestion after their previous training as Infantry. If any one of
them, does, I can only say to him: “Read once more and learn by
heart page 92 of ‘Infantry Training’ (‘Meeting an Attack by Cavalry’).
Remember you now have a horse; exercise your common sense, and
you will conclude that unless you are ‘surprised’ in a sense which
would be a disgrace to soldiers of any class or type, mounted or
dismounted, you have an immense advantage over Cavalry acting ‘as
such.’”
 V.—Yeomanry.
Here are volunteer mounted riflemen; a keen, vigorous force,
composed of some of the best elements in the nation, but without
prior training as Infantry, obtaining a very small amount of field
exercise, with horses specially provided for such occasions. They
belong to the same type as Mounted Infantry; but, through no fault
of their own, are less efficient. Yet, for some inexplicable reason,
they are called “Cavalry,” and receive, in an appendix to “Cavalry
Training,” three special pages, which begin with the direction that
“Yeomanry should be so trained as to be capable of performing all
the duties allotted to Cavalry, except those connected with shock
action.” Let us follow out the effect which these words are calculated
to have upon the mind of an average member of the Yeomanry. At
the first blush the sentence wears an air of simplicity. Having no
lance or sword, the Yeoman clearly cannot practice shock. But what
are the “duties connected with shock action” which he must not
perform? If he were to begin by studying Bernhardi, he might very
well come to the satisfactory conclusion that the only opportunity for
shock was in the collision of huge Cavalry masses. But he need not
read Bernhardi, because Bernhardi, he is informed, inspires “Cavalry
Training.” In “Cavalry Training” he searches in vain for an exhaustive
list of these duties. He finds emphasis on the big shock duel, with its
“positive” result, but no qualification in respect of smaller duels. He
hears about the “Cavalry fight,” which is clearly a shock fight, and
also about Cavalry in “extended order,” charging Infantry, and
wonders if this, too, is shock, and presumes on the whole that it is.
Eventually he comes to the conclusion, and the very reasonable
conclusion, that he is lost without a steel weapon, irretrievably lost if
he meets Cavalry, and at the best, perhaps, weak in aggression
against Infantry. If he refers to “Mounted Infantry Training,” it is only
to find that even this arm, with its professional character and longer
continuous training, is taught to fear the steel weapon. Reverting,
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