Frederic Natusch Maude

“ Hence both sides will concentrate every available horse and man for this special purpose, and on the issue of the collisions this mutual concentration must entail will hang the fate of the battle, and ultimately of the nation. But the cavalry which will succeed in this task will be the one in which the spirit of duty burns brightest, and the oath of allegiance, renewed daily on the cross of the sword, is held in the highest esteem. ”

“ To realize the whole situation, the attitude of the leading thinkers amongst the statesmen and soldiers of Germany must be borne in mind. Socialism is to them a necessary lever to extort from capital fairer conditions for labour, capital must be fairly dealt with if the labourers’ reasonable demands are to be satisfied, and the army is the compensating lever which secures the necessary adjustments. ”

“ It cannot be too often reiterated that cavalry never has ridden over unshaken infantry of average quality by reason of its momentum alone, but that every successful cavalry charge has always owed its issue to a previously acquired moral superiority which has prevented the infantry from making adequate use of their means of defence. Nor will such charges entail greater losses than in the past, for, great though the increase of range of modern infantry weapons has been, the speed and endurance of cavalry has increased in a yet higher ratio ”

“ The superiority of the French chassepot to the needle guns may reasonably be set against the superior number of rifles on the German side, for though the Germans were generally, thanks to their numbers, able to bring a converging fire upon the French, the latter made nearly double the number of hits for about the same weight of ammunition fired, but the French had nothing to oppose to the superior German artillery, and in almost every instance it was the terrible shell fire which broke up the French counter attack. ”

“ The failure of compulsion if applied in the British Isles would be due to the fact that the principal factor of its success—the knowledge of what war must mean and the risk of immediate invasion—cannot be brought home to the people as long as the British navy retains its predominance. If the navy is adequate to prevent invasion, then compulsion is unnecessary; if it is inadequate, then the only way to make good its inadequacy is to bring home to the electors by a course of partial training the consequences which must ensue if they continue to neglect it. ”

“ The battle-field is the critical moment in each phase of every campaign—not the mere chance locality on which a combat takes place, but the decisive arena on which the strategic consequences of all pre-existing conditions of national cohesion, national organization and of civilization are focussed. ”

“ As soon as the fighting became general, all order in the skirmisher lines disappeared on both sides, and invariably, except where the Prussian artillery fire intervened, it was the appearance of closed bodies of troops in rear of the fighting line which determined the retreat of their opponents. Even in the confused fighting in the Niederwald, the mere sound of the Prussian drums or the French bugles induced the adversary to give way even though drums and bugles frequently appealed to nonexistent troops. ”

“ The strain of ancient battle was of an entirely different order to that of modern fighting. In the absence of projectiles of sufficient range and power to sweep a whole area, the fighting was entirely between the front ranks of the opposing forces. When a front rank fighter fell, his place was immediately taken by his comrade in the rear, who took up the individual combat, excited by his comrade’s fate but relatively fresh in mind and muscle. ”

“ There is perhaps no law on the statute-books of any nation which has exercised and is destined in the future to exercise a more far-reaching influence on the future of humanity than this little-known French act of 1798, introduced by General Jourdan to the Council of the Five Hundred, for it was the power thus conferred upon the French government which alone rendered the Napoleonic policy of conquest possible. “I can afford to expend thirty thousand men a month” ”

“ When in line a large body of cavalry can no longer vary its direction without sacrificing its appearance of order, and as above pointed out, it is this appearance of order which really decides the result of the charge before the actual collision. ”

“ As the years went by, the Prussian military machine was turning out year by year an ever-increasing number of men, who by reason of the physical and moral training they had undergone were head and shoulders above the class whence they had sprung. These men soon asserted their superiority in the labour market and drove their weaker comrades to the wall. ”

“ When therefore, of two lines, moving to meet one another at speed, one sees itself overlapped to either hand, the men in the line thus overlapped invariably and inevitably tend to open outwards, so as at least to meet their enemy on an equal frontage. Hence every cavalry commander tries to strike at the flank of his enemy, and the latter manœuvres to meet him, and if both have equal mobility, local collision must ensue on an equal and parallel front. ”

“ Now these are the two essential factors which modern methods of military training aim at developing, and these methods in turn evolved naturally from the conditions of service which compulsion introduced. The men who have undergone this training leave the ranks with bodies steeled to resist disease, and minds capable of prolonged concentrated effort. Hence they not only remain capable of work for a considerably longer period of time, but they also do better work throughout the whole time. ”

“ In the years succeeding the war the efficiency of the Prussian cavalry sank very rapidly, the initial cause being the death of Seydlitz at the early age of fifty-two. His personality had alone dominated the discontent, lethargy and hopelessness created by ruthless financial economies. When he was gone, as always in the absence of a great leader, men adapted their lives to the line of least resistance. ”

“ But the growing wealth-producing power of the nation, due to the higher average physique and power of concentration (the consequence of the military training) , began to attract the attention of capitalists, and an era of railway construction set in, distributing wealth and employment about the country. This for a time relieved the congestion of the labour market, and, long before the victories of 1866 and 1870 had definitely removed the last fears of invasion, industries were beginning to spring up around the great trading centres of Germany. ”

“ Whether scouting 70 m. to the front of their army, or fighting dismounted to delay the enemy at defiles or to storm fortified strongholds, or charging home on the battlefield, their will power, focused on, and in turn dependent on, the personality of their great leader, dominated all human instincts of fear, rapacity or selfishness. ”

“ Guns, cavalry, infantry, everything that could still stand were to take part in it. Weary as they all were, his indomitable will put fresh life into the whole army. With drums beating and colours flying, every unit within call went forward for the final effort. It was almost dark when the Prussians approached the French position between Rezonville and the woods to the northward, and the troops soon lost direction in the smoke and became involved in the direst confusion ”

“ Every commanding officer of cavalry thus finds himself successively called on to win a victory locally at any cost, and the question of economy of force does not concern him at all. Hence the same fundamental rules apply to all cavalry combats, of whatever magnitude, and condition the whole of cavalry tactics. Broadly speaking, if two cavalries of approximately equal mobility manœuvre against each other in open country, neither side can afford the loss of time that dismounting to fight on foot entails. ”

“ The whole experience of the past thus goes to show that no nation in peace has ever yet succeeded in maintaining a highly trained cavalry sufficiently numerous to meet all the demands of a great war. Hence at the outbreak of hostilities there has always been a demand for some kind of supplementary force which can relieve the regular squadrons of those duties of observation and exploration which wear down the horses most rapidly and thus render the squadrons ineffective for their culminating duty on the battle-field. ”