CAVALRY IN COMBAT
I. INSTRUCTION FROM HISTORY.
I HAVE gone at considerable length into the opinions of Sir John
French, as expressed in his Introduction to von Bernhardi's
work--partly because it is more important for us to know what our own
Cavalrymen think than what German Cavalrymen think, and partly because
it will be easier for the reader to estimate the value of the German
writer's views if he is already familiar with Sir John French's way of
thinking. We should expect, of course, to find identity between the
views of the two men, since Sir John French acclaims the German author
as the fountain of all wisdom; but on that point the reader would be
well advised to reserve judgment.
I shall now discuss "Cavalry in War and Peace," and first let me say
a few more words on a very important point--the circumstances of its
composition.
When General von Bernhardi wrote his first book, "Cavalry in Future
Wars," he did not take the current German Cavalry Regulations as his
text, because they were too archaic to deserve such treatment. He
condemned them in the mass, and, independently of them, penned his
own scheme for a renovated modern Cavalry. After about nine years of
complete neglect, during which the two great wars in South Africa
and Manchuria were fought, the German authorities decided that some
recognition of modern conditions must be made. They have recently
re-armed the Cavalry with a good carbine, and issued a new book of
Cavalry Regulations. These circumstances induced the General to write
his second book, "Cavalry in War and Peace," and to throw it into
the form of a direct criticism of the official Regulations, which
he constantly quotes in footnotes and uses in the text of his own
observations and constructive recommendations.
What is the result? The first point to notice is that he regards
the new official Regulations, "though better than the old ones," as
thoroughly and radically bad. His writings, he says, "have fallen on
barren soil." He condemns them almost invariably for precisely the
same reason as before, namely, that they virtually ignore the rifle
in practice, and continue the ancient and worn-out traditions of the
steel, with mere lip-service to the modern scientific weapon. But a
disappointment was in store for those who had hoped that the mental
process involved in criticizing concrete Regulations, as well as the
vast mass of instructive phenomena presented by the two wars which,
when he wrote first, were still "future wars" to him, would arouse the
General himself to a realization of the inconsistencies in his own
earlier work.
These hopes have been falsified. The fascination of the _arme blanche_
was proof against the test, and the result is one of the strangest
military works which was ever published. Bitter satire as it is on
the official system of training, any impartial reader must end by
sympathizing, not with the satirist, but with the officials satirized.
They at any rate try to be logical. Their concessions to fire are the
thinnest pretence; their belief in shock undisguised and sincere.
Whatever follies and errors this belief involves them in, they pursue
their course with unflinching consistency, sublimely careless of
science and modern war conditions.
Their critic, on the other hand, keenly alive to the absurdities
inculcated, has not the mental courage to insist on the only logical
alternatives. Faced with the necessity of proving their absurdity,
he refuses to use the only effective weapon available, gives away
his own case for fire by weak concession to shock, and succeeds in
producing a work which will convince no one in Germany, and the greater
part of which, as a practical guide to Cavalrymen, in this country
or any other, is worthless. A mist of ambiguity shrouds what should
be the simplest propositions. We move through a fog of ill-defined
terms and vague qualifications. We puzzle our brains with academical
distinctions, and if we come upon what seems to be some definite
recommendation, we are pretty sure to find it stultified in another
chapter, or even in the same chapter, by a reservation in the opposite
sense. The key to each particular muddle, to each ambiguity, to each
timid qualification, to each confusing doctrinaire classification, is
always the same--namely, that the writer, from sheer lack of knowledge
of what modern fire-tactics are, at the last moment shrinks from his
own theories about their value. What has happened is exactly what one
would expect to happen. In Germany the General admits his failure, and
in England he is hailed by Sir John French, who politely ignores his
blunders about fire-action, as the apostle of the steel, instead of
what he really is, the apostle, though the ineffectual apostle, of the
rifle.
Let us first be quite clear as to his opinion of the present German
Cavalry. "While all other Arms have adapted themselves to modern
conditions, Cavalry has stood still," he says on the first page of his
Introduction. They have "no sort of tradition" for a future war (p. 5).
Their training creates "no sound foundation for preparation for war."
It is "left far behind in the march of military progress." "It cannot
stand the test of serious war." It is trammelled by the "fetters of the
past," and lives on "antiquated assumptions" (p. 6). Its "mischievous
delusions" will result in "bitter disappointment" (p. 175). Many of the
new Regulations "betoken failure to adapt existing principles to modern
ideas" (p. 361); others "do not take the conditions of reality into
account"; or "cannot be regarded as practical"; or are "provisional";
and of one set of peculiarly ludicrous evolutions he uses the
delightful phrase that they are "included in the Regulations with a
view to their theoretical and not for their practical advantages"
(p. 333). He stigmatizes "the formal encounters," the "old-fashioned
knightly combats," the "_pro forma_ evolutions," the "survivals of the
Dark Ages," the "spectacular battle-pieces," the "red-tape methods,"
the "tactical orgies," the "childish exercises," and "set pieces" of
peace manoeuvres. The origin of the trouble, he says, is "indolent
conservatism" (p. 366). "Development in our branch of the Service has
come to a standstill" (_ibid._). The officers do not study history or
the progress of foreign Cavalries. And he reiterates again and again
his general conclusion that the Cavalry is unprepared for war.
Such is the material which forms his text. And we may ask at once,
is a book based on such an appalling state of affairs, and addressed
exclusively to a Cavalry described as being given over to ancient
shibboleths, mischievous delusions and antiquated assumptions--is such
a book likely to deserve the effusive and unqualified praise of our
own foremost Cavalry authority? Is it likely to be worthy of becoming
the Bible of a modern and progressive Cavalry, such as Sir John French
considers our own Cavalry, trained under his own guidance, to be? Is it
likely to be "exhaustive," "convincing," "complete"?
To suppose so is to insult the intelligence of our countrymen. We do
not teach the ABC in our Universities. Our natural science schools
do not assume that their pupils belong to the "Dark Ages," and waste
two-thirds of their energy in laborious refutations of such extinct
superstitions as witchcraft. The education of our sailors to modern
naval war is not conducted on the assumption that the Navy consists of
wooden sailing-vessels whose inadequacy to modern conditions must be
elaborately demonstrated. A gunnery course--and the reader will note
the analogy--does not consist mainly of arguments designed to prove
that the cutlass is no longer so important a weapon as the long-range
gun and the torpedo. Nor--in the military sphere--are our Infantry and
Artillery instructed with a view to weaning them from the cult of the
pike and the catapult.
So, too, we may be quite sure that there is something radically wrong
when our Cavalry, in their search for an authoritative exposition of
modern Cavalry tactics, are reduced to relying on a foreign writer
who writes for a Cavalry ignorant of the elements of modern Cavalry
tactics, and a good half of whose work is taken up with scoldings and
appeals which from our British point of view are grotesquely redundant.
All that is good in what von Bernhardi says about fire-action we know
from our own war experience. All his errors about fire-action we can
detect also from our own war experience.
We should expect Sir John French to comment on these facts, to warn his
readers that the book under review was written for a Cavalry unversed
in modern war and blind to its teaching. We should expect some note
of pride and satisfaction in the fact that his own national Cavalry
did not need these scathing and humiliating reminders that war is not
a "theoretical" and "childish" pastime, but a serious and dangerous
business; some hint to the effect that perhaps we, with our three
years' experience of the modern rifle, may have something useful to
tell General von Bernhardi about principles which he has framed in
the speculative seclusion of his study. Not a word, not a hint of any
such warning or criticism. The topic is too dangerous. Once admit that
South Africa counts--to say nothing of Manchuria--once begin to dot
the "i's" and cross the "t's" of the German's speculations, and the
_arme blanche_ is lost. Instead, we have the passionless reservation
from Sir John French that "he does not always approve" of those German
Regulations, so many of which von Bernhardi thinks prehistoric and
ludicrous, and at the end of his Introduction we have a fervent appeal
to the British Cavalry not to "expose our ignorance and conceit" by
overvaluing our own experience, but to "keep abreast with every change
in the tendencies of Cavalry abroad," and to "assimilate the best of
foreign customs" to our own. "Keep abreast!" What an expression to use
in such a connection! "Best foreign customs!" Where are these customs?
There appears to be only one answer--namely, that these customs are in
reality the very customs which von Bernhardi attacks with such savage
scorn, and yet by such ineffective and half-hearted methods that he
leaves them as strong as before. His qualifications and reservations
give Sir John French a loophole, so that what, read through English
eyes, should be a final condemnation of the steel becomes to him a
vindication of the steel.
The link between the two writers is that both disregard the facts of
modern war. Since these facts are fatal to the steel theory, both
are compelled to disregard them. What wars, then, according to the
German expert, are the uneducated German Cavalry to study? He deals
with this point on page 5. He dismisses the wars of Frederick the
Great and Napoleon. He dismisses the Franco-German War of 1870-71,
as we might expect from his earlier work, where he pointed out how
meagre and feeble were the performances of the Cavalry compared with
those of other Arms. He dismisses the Russo-Turkish War for the same
reason, and, by implication, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. All these
wars, he says, "present a total absence of analogy." Then, entirely
disregarding the whole period in which science perfected the firearm,
he dismisses the wars in South Africa and Manchuria. And he comes back
to what? The American War of Secession of 1861-1865, which "appears
to be the most interesting and instructive campaign for the service
of modern Cavalry," but which is "almost unknown" in Germany. In any
other branch of study but that of Cavalry an analogous recommendation
would be received with a compassionate smile. The element of truth and
sense in it--and there is much truth and sense in it--is so obvious
and unquestioned as not to need expression for the benefit of any
well-informed student. The American horsemen discovered that the rifle
must be the principal weapon of Cavalry, and through that discovery
made themselves incomparably more formidable and efficient in every
phase and function of war than the European Cavalries, who ignored and
despised the American example in the succeeding European struggles. So
far the writer is on the sound ground of platitude.
But has nothing notable happened since 1865? A very important thing
has happened. The Civil War firearm is now a museum curiosity. Science
has devised a weapon of at least five times the power--smokeless,
quick-firing, and accurate up to ranges which were never dreamt of in
1865. Even the American weapon reduced shock to a wholly secondary
place, and gave fire unquestioned supremacy. The modern weapon has
eliminated shock altogether, and inspired new and far more formidable
tactics--just as mobile, just as dashing, just as fruitful of
"charges," but based on fire. Von Bernhardi cannot bring himself to
contemplate this result. He must have his lances and swords, and is
compelled therefore to go back to 1865, when the death-knell of those
weapons was already being sounded; and in doing so he writes his own
condemnation.
This is how his book opens: "The great changes which have taken place
in military science _since the year 1866_ have forced all arms to adopt
new methods of fighting. It was first and foremost _the improvement in
the firearm_ which wrought the transformation on the battle-field."
(My italics.) Since the year 1866! And yet the Cavalry are to go back
to a war prior to that year for their instruction, and are to neglect
the only wars in which the improved firearm has been tested! In point
of fact, General von Bernhardi shows no sign of having closely studied
even the American War of 1861-1865 with a view to finding out how the
Americans used their firearms in conjunction with their horses. On this
vital technical matter he writes throughout from a purely speculative
standpoint, without a single allusion to the American technical
methods, much less to the methods of our own and the Boer mounted
riflemen of 1899-1902.
We must add in fairness that the General seems to be conscious that a
war half a century old cannot be implicitly relied on for instruction,
and he concludes his historical remarks, therefore, by the depressing
conclusion that "there remains, then, nothing for us--with no practical
war experience to go on--but to create the groundwork of our methods of
training from theoretical and speculative reflection."
On this question of the most instructive war for Cavalry study Sir
John French preserves an eloquent silence. He dismisses South Africa
and Manchuria, but he does not echo the recommendation as to America.
Thereby hangs a tale. For years before the South African War, for
years before von Bernhardi was heard of in England, the ablest
military historian of our time, the late Colonel Henderson, had been
dinning the moral of America into the ears of our Cavalry authorities,
without producing the smallest effect. His prophecies were abundantly
justified--more than justified, for he wrote on the basis of the rifle
of 1865, and the rifle of 1899 totally eliminated the shock-tactics
which were still practicable in 1865. He died in 1902, before the Boer
War was over, but in one of the last essays written before his death
he told the Cavalry that shock was extinct. "Critics of the Cavalry
work in South Africa," he says, "do not seem to have realized that the
small bore and smokeless powder have destroyed the last vestiges of the
traditional rôle of Cavalry" ("Science of War," p. 376).
It can be readily understood, therefore, that to refer our Cavalry of
the present day to Colonel Henderson's brilliant and learned writings
upon the American Civil War, would be a course highly dangerous to the
interests of the lance and sword. Sir John French confines himself
to urging his subalterns to read such "acknowledged authorities" as
Sir Evelyn Wood and General von Bernhardi. But why is Sir Evelyn Wood
singled out? Eminent as he is, he has not the requisite modern war
experience. Why not Lord Roberts, who has, and who is the only living
British officer with a European reputation? General von Bernhardi
himself has not been on active service since 1870, when he served
as a Lieutenant in the war against France. Sir John French will not
advance the cause of the _arme blanche_ in that way. He cannot stifle
knowledge by an index. He need not agree with Lord Roberts, but to
ignore him when speaking of "acknowledged authorities," to accuse
him by implication of making "appeals from ignorance to vanity," is
unworthy of Sir John French. If he believes in his cause, let him urge
the Cavalry to hear both sides; it can do no harm. For my part, I would
most strongly urge every Cavalry soldier to read von Bernhardi and Sir
John French.
II.--GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF COMBAT.
To return to the book under discussion. Is it possible to gain
from it any clear and definite idea of the respective functions
and the relative importance of the rifle and the lance and sword
as weapons for Cavalry? Unfortunately, no. We have to deal with
hazy generalizations scattered over the whole volume, each with its
qualification somewhere else. It is true that warnings against the
use of the steel greatly preponderate; and although, by selecting
quotations from various chapters, each party to our controversy could
easily claim the General as an adherent to his cause, the advocates of
the rifle could certainly amass more favourable texts. The following
passage might almost be regarded as conclusive--"We must be resolute
in freeing ourselves from those old-fashioned knightly combats, which
have in reality become obsolete owing to the necessities of modern
war" (p. 111)--if its teaching were not weakened by such a maxim
as this: "The crowning-point of all drill and of the whole tactical
training is the charge itself, as on it depends the final result of
the battle" (p. 325). But let us get closer to his actual argument.
The reader should carefully study pp. 101 to 105, where, under the
heading "B.--The Action of Cavalry" and sub-heading "1.--General," the
author discusses in close detail the action of "Cavalry in the fight."
The reader may wonder why he should have to wait till the hundredth
page for this discussion. With the exception of some introductory
pages, whose general sense, on the question of weapons, is against
the lance and sword, the greater part of the first hundred pages are
devoted to "Reconnaissance, Screening, and Raids," functions none of
which, least of all the third, can be performed without fighting, or
at least the risk of fighting, while fighting cannot be performed
without weapons. The reason probably is that the author, in arranging
his scheme, instinctively tended, like all Cavalry writers, to regard
reconnaissance as a sphere where Cavalry can confidently rely on
meeting only Cavalry of exactly the same stamp as themselves, and where
combats will as a matter of course be decided in the old knightly
fashion by charges with steel.
Such a state of things has no resemblance to real war. Raids, for
example, are invariably levelled against fixed points and stationary
detachments. The author himself is acutely aware of this truth, as
we shall see hereafter; but the postponement of the topic of weapons
until the middle of the book is typical of the confused arrangement of
the whole, a confusion attributable to the ubiquity of the rifle in
all combats and the insuperable difficulty of supposing it to be an
inferior weapon to the steel.
It is impossible, therefore, to adhere strictly to the order in which
the author arranges his treatise. I shall begin with the general
chapter just referred to, and proceed, as far as possible, according to
his own order from that point onwards.
First of all, he finds it necessary to reject the plan of "dividing
tactical principles according to the idea of the pre-arranged battle
and the battle of encounter," a course which gives one an insight into
the lifeless pedantry he has had to combat in the branch of military
science he has made his own. Unfortunately, his own classification,
so far as it bears upon weapons, is little better. He distinguishes
the "great battle," in which "the fighting is always of a pre-arranged
nature," from "the fight of the independent Cavalry," where "it is
possible to distinguish between an encounter and an arranged affair."
This is vague enough, but what follows is vaguer. One infers that
there is to be little or no shock in the "great battle," where the
Cavalry "must conform to the law of other arms in great matters and
small." And then he goes on: "But the fight is deeply influenced even
in the former case [_i.e._, in the combats of the independent Cavalry]
by the co-operation of these other arms, and I believe that only in
exceptional cases will a purely Cavalry combat take place--at all
events, on a large scale. When squadrons, regiments, and perhaps even
brigades, _unassisted by other arms_, come into collision with one
another, the charge may often suffice for a decision. But where it
is an affair of large masses, it will never be possible to dispense
with the co-operation of firearms, and in most cases a combination of
Cavalry combat, of dismounted fighting, and Artillery action, will
ensue."
What lies behind this ambiguous language, which, remember, is the
outcome of pure "speculation"? What principle is he trying to express?
Let us proceed: "We must not conceal from ourselves the fact that in a
future war it will be by no means always a matter of choice whether we
will fight mounted or dismounted. _Rather by himself seizing the rifle
will the opponent be able to compel us to adopt dismounted action._ On
our manoeuvre grounds the charge on horseback is always the order of
the day, as against Artillery or machine-guns. The umpires continually
allow such attacks to succeed, and the troops ride on as if nothing had
happened. Equally fearless of consequences, do they expose themselves
to rifle-fire; but there are no bullets. In real war it is different."
It is needless to point out that the words I have italicized destroy
the whole case for the steel. They are an admission of the true
principle that the rifle governs combat, whether the rifle is used
by men with horses or men without horses. It is characteristic of
the author that he cannot bring himself in this perilous context
in set words to include Cavalry among those who "seize the rifle";
but the words themselves imply it, for we do not speak of Infantry
"seizing the rifle." At a later point the author is a little bolder
in the development of his meaning. "Our probable opponents, too,
will certainly often advance dismounted. At all events, they are
endeavouring to strengthen Cavalry divisions by cyclist battalions and
Infantry, _and perhaps by Mounted Infantry_, and thereby already show
a remarkable inclination to conduct the fight, even of Cavalry, with
the firearm, and only to use their horses as a means of mobility, as
was the custom of the Boers in South Africa"--and he might, of course,
add, of the British mounted riflemen and of the British Cavalry. If
only the author, who has advanced thus far on the path of common
sense, would just for one experimental moment assume an open mind on
the question of the steel, assume that it may perhaps be not merely
partially, but wholly obsolete, and study the Boer War with real care
from that point of view! He evidently thinks there is something in
this idea of using horses as a means of mobility and the rifle as the
operative weapon. He expressly warns his Cavalry that their probable
enemy is showing ominous signs of adopting this system, and that their
adoption of it will force the German Cavalry to conform.
Now mark that magical word "mobility." It is the germ of a new idea,
a faint effort to escape from the dupery of phrases. Hitherto he has
always spoken of "dismounted action" as distinguished from "mounted" or
"Cavalry" combat. These phrases are always used by Cavalry theorists.
They take the place of argument, implying as they do that the use of
the rifle reduces horsemen to the condition of Infantry, robbing them
of mobility and all that glamour of dash and vigour which illuminates
the mounted arm. The truth lies in the contrary direction. Without
rifle power Cavalry lose all effective mobility. They can ride about
_in vacuo_, so to speak; but directly they enter the zone of rifle-fire
they are paralyzed, unless they can use their horses and their rifles
in effective combination. Then they can do what they please. Then,
if necessary, they can even charge mounted, though that function is
no more inseparably associated with their action than the charge at
the double is inseparably associated with the action of Infantry. But
is it not somewhat ludicrous to describe as "dismounted action," in
contradistinction to "mounted action," a charge which ends, as the Boer
charges ended, within point-blank or decisive range of the enemy and
culminates in a murderously decisive fire-attack?
The worst of it is that General von Bernhardi will not analyze his
own warnings and suggestions and see what they really lead him to. He
appears to see in these troublesome hordes of "cyclists" and "Mounted
Infantry" who menace the old order of things and are forcing Cavalry
to conform to fire by fire, only auxiliaries to the orthodox Cavalry.
But Cavalry themselves carry the very weapon which is promoting the
revolution; nor should any self-respecting, properly trained Cavalry
need to fortify itself from these external sources. At a later stage I
shall have to show, from our own Mounted Infantry Manual, how grotesque
are the results obtained by the theoretical co-operation of steel and
fire in two different types of troops.
And Sir John French? He has read these passages, and with one word
of manly pride in the war experience of his own countrymen, home and
colonial--experience bought at terrible cost, and not without bitter
humiliation, in three years of "real war"--he could set the speculative
German author right, illuminate the tortuous paths in which his
reason strays. So far from taking this course, he proves himself more
reactionary than his foreign colleague; for the reader will see at once
that the spirit of passages quoted above is quite different from the
spirit of Sir John French's Introduction. Von Bernhardi is alarmed by
the prospect of meeting mounted riflemen who, as he knows and expressly
admits, will impose upon his Cavalry fire-tactics of which they are
contemptuously ignorant. He is alarmed at the prospect of the hostile
Cavalry themselves "conducting the fight with the firearm." Sir John
French, as I have shown, believes, and says, that our mounted riflemen
and our Cavalry, if they act as such, will "become the prey of the
first foreign Cavalry they meet," running defenceless and helpless
from the field. This is an example of the way in which Cavalry science
proceeds, and it is a wonder that collaborators of the eminence of
General von Bernhardi and General Sir John French do not see the humour
of the thing, to use no stronger expression.
One watches with amusement the process by which the German author
endeavours to soften the shock of the revelations he has just made to
a Cavalry acutely sensitive about its ancient traditions. One of his
plans, here and in many other parts of the book, is to play with the
words "offence" and "defence," which, as I pointed out in commenting
on Sir John French's Introduction, have such a strangely perverse
influence on the Cavalry mind. "It lies deeply embedded in human
nature," he says (p. 105), "that he who feels himself the weaker will
act on the defensive"; and on the next page: "In general, it may be
relied upon that defence will be carried out according to tactical
defensive principles, and that with the firearm." Here is another
example (italicized by me): "Mounted, the Cavalry knows only the
charge, and has no defensive power, _a circumstance which strengthens
it in carrying out its offensive principles by relieving its leader
of the onus of choice_" (p. 113). Observe the idea suggested by
these passages--namely, that the rifle is only a defensive weapon.
Subtle indirect flattery of those who carry those terrible weapons
of "offence," the lance and sword! But, alas! what he calls the
"offensive spirit" must accept the terms imposed by the baser weapon.
"It requires an enormous amount of moral strength," he says, "to
maintain the _offensive spirit_, even after an unfavourable conflict,
and continually to invoke the ultimate decision anew." There is a
romantic atmosphere about this which might appeal to his hearers.
Spent with charges, brilliant, but perhaps not wholly successful, they
must resign themselves eventually to more sober, if less "knightly,"
methods. But this is not what he really means. He has just said that
even in combats of the independent Cavalry the shock-charge will occur
only "in exceptional cases." The probable opponents are to "_advance_
dismounted"--in other words, to _attack_ dismounted. This, he warns the
Cavalry, will necessitate fire-action on their part. Why talk, then,
about "relief from the onus of choice"? What is to happen when both
sides are at grips on terms of fire? Is there a mutual deadlock, both
remaining in "defence"? In that case there would be no battles and no
necessity to go to war at all. Surely the common sense of the matter
is that the rifle rules tactics, and that, _ceteris paribus_, the best
riflemen will attack and win.
At heart the General believes this--his whole book is a witness to
this fact--but how can he expect to get his beliefs accepted if he
continually stultifies those beliefs by soothing ambiguities about the
"offensive spirit"? Nor does he confine himself to ambiguity. Take a
passage like this from p. 19, at the very outset of his chapter on
"Reconnaissance, Screening, and Raids": "The very essence of Cavalry
lies in the offensive. Mounted, it is incapable of tactical defence,
_but in order to defend itself_, must surrender its real character as a
mounted arm, and seize the rifle on foot." (The italics are mine.)
Conceive the mental chaos which can produce an expression of an opinion
like this at the beginning of a work designed to reform the backward
German Cavalry. Here, stated in formal, precise terms, is the very
doctrine upon which that Cavalry works; which, as the author himself
a hundred times assures us, is the source of all its "antiquated
assumptions" and of its total unpreparedness for real war. The framers
of the Regulations have only to point to this passage, and then, with
perfect justice, to consign all the General's tirades first to mockery
and then to oblivion. Sir John French, again more reactionary than his
German confrère, seizes on this passage, to the exclusion of all which
contradict it, and triumphantly produces his own analogous formula. To
neglect the steel, he says, is to "invert the rôle of Cavalry, and turn
it into a defensive arm."
While Sir John French sticks to his point, and elaborates it even
to the implicit denial of an offensive spirit to Infantry, General
von Bernhardi is perfectly conscious of the absurdity of maintaining
that it is only "in order to defend itself" that Cavalry "seize the
rifle" on foot. We obtain, perhaps, the best insight into his method
of reasoning in A II. ("Attack and Defence"). On p. 112 he says that
Cavalry should "endeavour to preserve their mobility in the fight,
and that mounted shock-action, _therefore_, should be regarded as its
proper rôle in battle." This quotation is an excellent one for the
advocates of the steel, but it would reduce to impotence any Cavalry
which acted upon it. And we ask immediately, what is the sense of
calling shock the "proper rôle" of Cavalry, when, according to the
author himself, it is only to be used in exceptional cases, even in
fights of the independent Cavalry, and when riflemen, who advance
dismounted, can render it impracticable? Why not say at once that the
proper or normal rôle of Cavalry is fire-action, and the exceptional
or abnormal rôle shock-action?
The fallacy, of course, lies in the word I have italicized,
"therefore," implying that mounted action and shock-action are
synonymous, and that there is no mounted action without shock-action.
It is natural enough that the author should turn his back on South
Africa and Manchuria when he has to maintain such a proposition as
this; but how does he reconcile it even with the facts of the American
Civil War, which he holds up as the most valuable guide to modern
Cavalry? Stuart, Sheridan, Wilson, and the other great leaders, would
have laughed at it, and they used wretchedly imperfect firearms. They
rode just as far and to just as good purpose whether they used the
firearm or the steel, and they fought to win, with whatever weapon was
the best weapon at the moment.
The General himself expresses the right idea when he says in another
passage "that it is not a question whether Cavalrymen should fight
mounted or dismounted, but whether they are prepared and determined to
take their share in the decision of an encounter, and to employ the
whole of their strength _and mobility_ to that end." That is plain
common sense; but how is he to get it acted upon by a Cavalry to whom
the very idea is strange if he calls shock the "proper rôle" of
Cavalry, and contrasts the "offensive spirit" inherent in it with the
defensive use of the rifle?
Yet he redeems the rifle handsomely enough in numbers of other
passages. "It must be kept in view," he says on p. 113, "that it is the
_offensive_ on foot that the Cavalry will require," and he condemns
the Regulation which inculcates the opposite principle and deals with
the fire-fight only as a method of action from which Cavalry "need not
shrink." He shakes his head gravely over the ominous suggestion in the
same Regulation that cyclists and Infantry in waggons are to be added
to the Army Cavalry, in order, by fire, to "overcome local resistance."
In a flash of insight he perceives the possibility of those heretical
Mounted Infantry masquerading as the hostile Cavalry, and necessitating
cyclists and Infantry in waggons to dislodge them before the "knightly
combats" can be brought about. "It is a matter of significance,"
he solemnly observes, "that Infantry in waggons may be detailed to
accompany the strategic Army Cavalry." There will soon be a demand,
he prophesies, "for Infantry from the Army Cavalry when there is any
question of a serious attack on foot, and herewith the free action of
the Cavalry will be limited once and for all." Is there no lesson from
South Africa here?
The fact is that the kind of thing he fears happened from the first,
and continued to happen until the Cavalry abandoned steel weapons
and became mounted riflemen. During the first year of the war there
was no independent Cavalry force operating strategically without
the assistance of mounted riflemen. There could not have been,
because the fire-power of the Cavalry was insufficient, and there
is and can be no independence in modern war without a high degree
of fire-power. Cavalry leaders usually asked also for the tactical
assistance of mounted riflemen. The theory, surviving even now in the
current manuals, was that those troops were to form a "pivot" for the
shock-action of Cavalry. The theory, of course, was exploded from the
first, and sometimes the mounted riflemen became the most effective and
mobile portion of the composite force. Mounted riflemen were a truly
independent Arm. They never asked for the assistance of Cavalry on the
ground that Cavalry carried steel weapons. The rifle was all they cared
about, and they had good rifles of their own, while the Cavalry had bad
carbines. The only big independent Cavalry enterprise during the first
year of the war--the divisional march across the Eastern Transvaal in
October, 1900--was a fiasco. The Cavalry formed but an escort to their
own transport, and developed no offensive power.
Von Bernhardi, just now thoroughly in his fire-mood, strongly condemns
the theory of dependence on other Arms, which will "tie the Cavalry"
to the very troops from which they expect support. "The army Cavalry,
then, can only preserve its independence if it can rely upon its own
strength even in an attack on foot." He goes on to criticize Regulation
No. 456, which lays down that "Cavalry must endeavour to bring
dismounted attacks to a conclusion with the utmost rapidity, so that
they may regain their mobility at the earliest possible moment." The
regulation, which has its counterpart in the British Manual, indeed,
is laughable to anyone who has seen modern war. Troopers who spend 90
per cent. of their time on exercises with the steel will necessarily
attack badly, clumsily, and slowly on foot, and it is a cruel jest to
tell them to attack quickly and brilliantly. In a fire-contest the best
riflemen will attack the quickest and do the best.
But the General wastes his breath in scolding the Regulations. They are
more logical than he is, because they do not seriously contemplate this
derogatory work of fire. He says, indeed, that unnaturally accelerated
attacks on foot by men who do not know how to attack on foot only
succeed in peace, and will "lead inevitably to defeat in war," and that
to set a time limit to a fire-attack is absurd; but by interspersing
qualifying phrases about loss of mobility and loss of time he himself
nullifies his own warnings. "The result of an attack on foot," he
says (p. 116), "must, of course, justify the lives expended and the
time occupied, _which must both be regarded as lost in estimating
the further operative value of the force_." Men who read that will
say: "Why waste time at all, then?" It is in flagrant contradiction,
of course, with his previously expressed principle that hostile
fire imposes fire-action on Cavalry; that there is no choice; that,
whether they like it or not, they _must_ engage in this rôle, which,
nevertheless, is not their "proper rôle." The clue to the confusion, as
always, is his view, founded on mere word-play, that mounted action is
unthinkable without shock with steel weapons.
At the end of this section on "Attack and Defence" he continues to play
into the hands of the framers of the Regulations which he denounces.
Here is an immortal phrase: "The same holds good of the defence.
_Cavalry will only undertake this when absolutely obliged._" This is
the kind of maxim which one finds scattered broadcast through Cavalry
literature--as if there could be any offence without defence, between
or against whatever classes of soldiers. Fancy telling Infantry or
Artillery in so many words that they should only undertake defence when
absolutely obliged! And yet they are just as much offensive Arms as
Cavalry, and by the light of historical facts during the last century a
great deal more so.
I need not go into the reason again. The General is in his steel-mood,
and is unconsciously limiting offence to the steel weapons. The next
instant he is in his fire-mood, pointing out that, however much Cavalry
in defence may yearn once more for "free movement" (he means shock),
they must be prepared on occasion to defend themselves--_i.e._,
with fire--to the last man. And he very aptly illustrates from the
Manchurian War (which at an earlier point he had said to be without
interest for Cavalry), pointing to the stubborn defence of Sandepu by a
Japanese Cavalry Brigade. We cannot help wishing that Sir John French
would quote and confirm an opinion like this, flatly contradicted
though it is a little later,[2] and use his influence to erase from
our own Cavalry Manual (p. 215) that disastrous injunction that the
defences of a position which Cavalry have to hold should be "limited to
those of the simplest kind."
If the words "attack" and "defence" have a fatal fascination for both
the German and the British authors, General von Bernhardi is equally
influenced by another verbal formula, and that is "the combination
of Cavalry combat" (or, what is the same thing to him, mounted
combat--that is, shock-combat) "with dismounted fighting." "The rôle
of Cavalry in the fight will then apparently consist," he says on
page 106, "of a combination of the various methods of fighting."
It is a tempting formula, tempting by its very vagueness, and
calculated on that account to appeal, perhaps, to the less hopelessly
conservative German Cavalry officers; but it remains throughout his
book literally a formula. How the thing is to be done in practice,
how shock is to be "combined" with fire, he never attempts, even from
a speculative point of view, to explain. It may sound perhaps easy
enough. In the war of 1861-1865, which he professes to take as his
model, it undoubtedly was possible, if by no means easy. But times
have changed. The modern rifle, whose profound influence on combat he
admits, has made impossible the old formations. In his own phrase,
it has revolutionized war. It enforces a degree of extension which
renders impracticable those sudden transformations to close mass which
alone can lead to shock, while the zone of danger it creates is so
far-reaching that these mass formations on horseback cannot subsist.
The conditions which used to permit leaders to resolve on shock have
vanished. The fire-zone used to be so limited that bodies of Cavalry
could hang on its outer limit, and seize the rare opportunities which
might arise for a short gallop ending in shock. Now we have to deal
with artillery and rifles of immense range and deadliness. And if
by a miracle you do get into close quarters in your mass formation,
you find--crowning disillusionment!--nothing solid on which to exert
shock. You used to find it a century ago, because men used to fight in
close order, but science has altered that. However, that point does
not immediately arise from the question of "combination." The narrow
issue there is how to effect the transition from fire to shock, and
there is not a word in this volume to elucidate the point. There is
not a word in our own Cavalry Manual. The thing has never been done in
modern war. The combination of shock and fire tactics is an academical
speculation. What we know is that shock has failed, and that the
open-order rifle-charge, which has superseded the shock-charge, is
evolved naturally from the fire-fight. You must, in the words of Lord
Roberts, fight up to the charge, if charge there be; but you can win,
as Infantry can win, without any mounted charge at all.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: See _infra_, pp. 122-123.]