Erskine Childers

“ Is a certain mode of fighting possible in modern days? Is it practicable for men to remain in their saddles and wield steel weapons against men armed with modern rifles? "No," answers Sir John French, "it is not practicable, if your aim is annexation and the complete submission of a gallant enemy." Poor consolation for the unhappy taxpayer who pays for the maintenance of exceedingly expensive mounted troops, and commits himself to a scheme of conquest and annexation in the faith that these troops are efficient instruments of his will! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was the rifle in both cases which made Cavalry mobile and formidable. It is melancholy to think that our true principles and sound traditions of mounted warfare are embodied in so small a force, organized on such an illogical system, provided with a training of altogether inadequate length, and hampered by nominal subservience to a steel-armed Cavalry whose theories of action have been proved in two long and bloody wars to be obsolete. ”

“ It is that idea which promotes these rules about not too narrow fronts, these grotesque mounted rallies in mass, and this pregnant silence about the real point of interest—what actually happens when a line of horsemen, stirrup to stirrup, or in extended order, wielding lances and swords, impinges on an extended line of dismounted riflemen. We know from war experience that such a charge, stirrup to stirrup, is as extinct as the dodo, and is advocated in set terms by no rational being. ”

“ How in the world is the entire Cavalry mass, posted outside one flank, to provide for the continuous reconnaissance, close and distant, of such a front, the occupation of advanced points, and for the maintenance of a reserve behind the front, while remaining a practically undivided force for united action? What is the enemy's Cavalry supposed to be doing? In theory, we are told, they will do the right thing, that is, post themselves by instinct outside one flank exactly opposite our own mass. ”

“ He recognizes that it is only by the indulgence and self-restraint of riflemen that swords and lances can be used, and he knows, as we all know, that it is physically impossible for modern Cavalry, in war or peace, to find any spot on the globe which is "outside effective rifle-range"—unless they take the unsoldierly course of throwing away their own rifles. In peace, of course, as von Bernhardi constantly reminds us, rifles may be, and frequently are, ignored, even if they are not left in barracks; but in "real war" there is no use for troops who can only fight outside effective rifle-range. ”

“ War is business, not romance, and if the same or better results can be produced by an intelligent and dashing use of the firearm, it is waste of breath to lament the decay of the lance and sword. It was the main purpose of the General's work to prove that these results could be so obtained, and whenever he warmed to his subject, and fell into temporary oblivion of the romantic weapons, he proved his point well enough, in theory. ”

“ Unless by seizing it they can force their antagonists also to relinquish shock as useless and to seize the rifle, they might as well not seize it at all. If they can force their antagonists to seize it—and the whole mass of modern experience shows that they can and do—then their antagonists, whether we call their rôle proper or improper, are acting in offence with the firearm, and the maxim is stultified—as, indeed, any maxim which applies medieval language to modern problems must be stultified. ”

“ Those weapons give Cavalry their "proper rôle." If under stress of fire they "abandon" this rôle, they become Infantry; but they are worse off than Infantry, because they are embarrassed by their led horses, which present difficulties from which Infantry are free. The horse becomes a danger and an encumbrance, just as Sir John French tacitly assumes it to become, when he says that mounted riflemen always flee defenceless before good Cavalry, while Infantry show "tenacity and stiffness." No wonder, then, that Cavalrymen grow indignant at the criticism of their steel weapons. ”

“ Imagine our Cavalry doing the work that the Boers had to do on so many score of occasions—to fight delaying rearguard actions against immensely superior numbers, with no reserves, and a heavy convoy to protect. We shall be fortunate if, through reliance on and skill in the use of the rifle, they display as much tenacity and stiffness as Botha's men at Pieter's Hill or Koch's men at Elandslaagte against forces four times their superior in strength, to say nothing of such incidents as Dronfield, where 150 Boers defied a whole division of Cavalry and several batteries ”

“ 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. ”

“ For all we know, future science, by making it a sheer impossibility to get so large an object as a horse through a fire-zone, may eventually render such an attack by horse [Pg 213] men, in whatever formation and with whatever weapon, altogether impracticable. What will there be to regret in that? Sailors do not mourn over the decay of the cutlass and the ram. So long as we win, it does not matter whether or not we charge on horseback, or how near we can ride to the objective before we begin the fire-fight. ”

“ But we come to a fortunate reservation. "Fire will rarely be opened upon the hostile Cavalry or Artillery until contact is imminent. The object aimed at is the defeat of the hostile Cavalry, and a premature opening of fire is liable to cause it to draw off and manœuvre, in order to bring off the Cavalry encounter outside effective rifle-range." Surely some humorist of the Mounted Infantry, coerced by the General Staff into finding a rôle for his Arm which should not trench upon the sacred preserves of the Cavalry, penned these exquisite lines by way of stealthy revenge! ”

“ We perceive instantly the falsity of the antithesis between the weapon and the horse. The mounted rifleman is a foot rifleman plus a horse, and the horse is not an embarrassing encumbrance, but a source of enhanced power. It is the intrusion of the steel weapons, not the intrusion of the horses, which introduces "difficulties." Witness von Bernhardi's own scathing exposure of the German Regulations for combat with the steel. ”

“ The moral is simple and inspiring—self-reliance, trust in our own experience, as confirmed by the subsequent experience of others. By all means let us borrow what is good from foreigners, and I should be the last to deny that, on topics unconnected with combat and weapons, there are many valuable hints to be obtained from General von Bernhardi's writings, and those of other foreign Cavalrymen. But let us not borrow what is bad, nor lose ourselves in the fog which smothers his Cavalry principles, when our own road to reform is plain. ”

“ If you extend, and, a fortiori, if your enemy is extended also, you lose all hope of "shock," that is, of physical impact; and with the loss of this impact you lose the fundamental condition precedent to the successful use of steel weapons on horseback—the condition which Frederick the Great's leaders had, but which ours have not. You also lose momentum, speed, because the modern rifle, by immensely widening the bullet-swept zone, necessitates a far longer gallop for the charging force. ”

“ It is the old delusion that Cavalry is a more offensive Arm than Infantry, and it leads him inexorably to the fatal conclusion that Cavalry cannot be trusted to undertake a "completely passive defence." ”

“ Impartial observers of the recent controversy upon the merits of the lance and sword as weapons for Cavalry must have been struck by one singular circumstance—namely, that there exists in our language no standard modern work upon the tactics and training of Cavalry in modern war, written by a Cavalryman, accepted by Cavalrymen, and embodying and illustrating the lessons of the two great modern wars waged since the invention of the long-range, smokeless magazine rifle. Without such a work, controversy is seriously hampered. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ They know in their hearts that their methods are in reality not despised but feared by Continental Cavalry, for the reasons frankly and honestly set forth by General von Bernhardi. Their leaders now are the sole official repositories of what is really our great national tradition for mounted troops in civilized war; for the steel tradition is a legend dating from Balaclava, a battle which is scarcely more relevant to modern needs than Crécy—and Crécy, by the way, was one of the greatest of all the historic triumphs of missile weapons over shock. ”

“ And what of the action of Cavalry against other Arms? We know Sir John French's opinion about mounted riflemen. They will gallop for their lives "defenceless" at the approach of "good" Cavalry. But Infantry, riflemen without horses, who cannot gallop, but can only run? Their case, it would seem, must be still more desperate. They are not only defenceless, but destitute even of the means of flight. And yet even Sir John French credits them, if not with an offensive spirit, at least with "tenacity and stiffness," derived, of course, from their rifles. ”

“ Why "commence" only? Is there no lesson from South Africa here? On what single occasion [Pg 144] were lances and swords of the smallest value in attacks on transport? Not on one. And on how many occasions did mounted riflemen, destitute of these weapons, capture transport and guns and rout reserves? We all know—Sir John French knows—what our troops suffered in this way. Why does he not warn his countrymen, instead of telling them that these German speculations are brilliant, logical, conclusive, complete? ”

“ It is bad enough to be converted into a hybrid between good Cavalry and bad Infantry, but it is worse still to undergo a metamorphosis into a pure type of bad Infantry, that is, into mounted riflemen. ”

“ To clear up the situation "energetic contact with the enemy by fire-action is necessary." "Only by a protracted action can the enemy be forced to disclose his strength and intentions," and "a protracted fight can only be carried out by fire-action." Perfectly sound, we agree; and then we remember, with a start, those terrible led horses, and the doctrines founded on them. "It is only when conscious of a great moral and tactical superiority, or when there is any prospect of surprising the enemy, that an attack should be dared without the necessary numerical preponderance." ”