THE RIFLE RULES TACTICS
("_Die Feuerwaffe beherrscht die Taktik_")
I.--GENERAL VON BERNHARDI ON SOUTH AFRICA.
"THE rifle (or literally, the firearm) rules tactics." The phrase was
originally my own, but the General has done me the honour of adopting
and sanctioning it, and I may fitly bring this criticism of his
writings to a conclusion by briefly noting the occasion and origin of
this remarkable admission. My book, "War and the _Arme Blanche_," was
published in March, 1910, a month before the publication in England of
his own second work, "Cavalry in War and Peace," whose consideration we
have just concluded. In the course of the summer of 1910 the General
published a series of articles in the _Militär Wochenblatt_ criticizing
my book, and those articles were translated and printed in the _Cavalry
Journal_ of October, 1910.
The critic covers limited ground. He makes no rejoinder or allusion of
any sort to my own chapter of detailed criticism upon his own earlier
work, "Cavalry in Future Wars." He scarcely notices my discussion of
the Manchurian War. He confines himself almost wholly to the South
African War, and makes it plain (1) that his knowledge of that war
is exceedingly deficient; (2) that his principal explanation for the
comparative failure of our Regular Cavalry in that war was that they
were timidly led; (3) that he had misunderstood the nature of the case
which I had endeavoured to construct against the _arme blanche_, and
that, so far as he did understand it, he agreed with my conclusions.
1. Internal evidence shows--what one would naturally infer from the
extraordinary conceptions of the technique of fire-action for mounted
troops developed in his book--that the General[7] has never studied
closely the combats of our war, except, perhaps, in such publications
as the German Official History, which leaves off at March, 1900,
practically ignores the mounted question, regards the Boers throughout
as Infantry (presumably because, though mounted, they did not carry
lances and swords), and, as a result of this method of exposition,
is of no value towards the present controversy. Unfamiliar with the
phenomena of our war, the General nevertheless taunts me, who argued
solely from the facts of war and went not an inch beyond the facts,
with being a "speculative theorist"--a taunt which comes strangely
from an author who declares in his current volume (p. 7) that "the
groundwork of training" for modern Cavalry can only be created from
"speculative and theoretical reflection." He proceeds further to
obliterate my humble personality by remarking that I am "naturally
devoid of all war experience," and that he would never have taken the
trouble to discuss the subject at all if Lord Roberts had not declared
his agreement with what I had written. The personal point, of course,
is wholly immaterial, and I welcome his perfectly correct choice of
an opponent. But his spontaneous allusion to war experience raises a
somewhat important point. Until reading the words, I had never dreamed
that my own war experience was a serious factor in the discussion. I
have never alluded to it or argued from it; but since the point is
raised, let me say to General von Bernhardi that, in common with some
hundreds of thousands of my countrymen here or in the Colonies, I have
had, in a very humble capacity, a certain kind of war experience, of
which he, as a reflective theorist, stands in bitter need. We have
_seen_ the modern rifle at work in what he calls "real war." We have
_seen_ what he has only reflected about and imagined--the revolution
wrought by it on the battle-field since the days of 1870. He has not;
and if he had, he would have avoided many of the painful solecisms
and blunders which disfigure his work, enlightened as that work is by
comparison with the retrograde school he attacks.
2. TIMID LEADING.--The Boers, says the General, were a "peasant
militia," who were "tied to their ox-waggons," "incapable of assuming
the offensive on a large scale," in "disappearing smaller numbers
against greatly superior numbers," "not often strong enough either
to charge the English Cavalry or to attack the English Infantry,"
"directed by halting leadership," and so on--altogether, according to
the General's standards, a most contemptible foe, hardly worthy of the
steel of a respectable professional Cavalry, and certainly not the
kind of foe to force such a Cavalry to abandon its traditional form of
combat. But there was the rub. Our Cavalry, it seems, was even more
contemptible. They "made no relentless pursuits, despite the lack of
operative mobility in the enemy"; "they did not attack even when they
had the opportunity"; and "one could scarcely find a European Cavalry
which was tied down to such an extent during the big operations as the
Boers, or one which, against such little resistance, did not try to
overcome it as the English." He cites the action of Dronfield,[8] where
Sir John French was in command, as a specific instance, and in as plain
language as it is possible to use without penning the word "cowardice,"
accuses the Cavalry present of that unpardonable crime. "Mr. Childers,"
he remarks with perfect truth, "relates the story without any spite to
show the little value of English Cavalry equipment and training. _I
think it shows much beside._"[9] (The italics are mine.)
I do not know if this kind of thing will finally compel Sir John
French to examine more thoroughly the foundations of his own belief
in the lance and sword, and to apply more searching criticism to the
works of the "acknowledged authority" whom he lauds to the skies as a
model and Mentor for British Cavalrymen. I should hope that, on their
behalf, he now resents as hotly as I resent the contemptuous patronage
of an officer holding and expressing the view that "any European
Cavalry"--and he afterwards expressly names the German Cavalry--would
have shown more aggressive spirit in South Africa than our own--more
aggressive spirit, be it understood, _with the lance and sword_; for
if that be not the meaning, the General's lengthy appreciation of the
worth and exploits of the rival forces in South Africa is, in its
context, as part of a hostile criticism of my work, either destructive
of his own argument or meaningless. Sir John French refuses to read
through British eyes the plain moral of the war for Cavalry. This is
his reward, and it is of no use to pretend that he does not deserve it.
Anyone who throws the dearly-bought experience of his own countrymen
to the winds, and runs to foreigners who have no relevant experience
for corroboration of an outworn creed, gratuitously courts the same
humiliation.
Perhaps I make too much of a point of pride. Let Sir John French at
any rate see the amusing side of the situation. He has set forth[10]
his own four reasons for the failure of the lance and sword in South
Africa: (1) The lightning speed of the Boers in running away from
combat--a habit which left our Cavalry nothing even to reconnoitre; (2)
the fact that our military object was nothing less than the complete
conquest and annexation of the enemy's country; (3) that, owing to the
release of prisoners who fought again against us, we had to contend
with double the number of men nominally allowed for; (4) the condition
of the horses.
The last factor the German author does not pretend to take seriously
as an explanation of the failure of the Cavalry; and with regard to
the first three his view, as far as it receives clear expression, is
diametrically the reverse of that of Sir John French. So far from
alleging that the Boers "dispersed for hundreds of miles when pressed,"
he dwells repeatedly on the immobility imposed by their ox-waggons,
says that they were "tied down" to an unparalleled extent, and censures
the Cavalry for what he regards as their unparalleled slackness in
attack against such a vulnerable and unenterprising enemy. So far
from agreeing that there was "nothing to reconnoitre," he points
out that the Cavalry "did not understand reconnaissance by Cavalry
patrols," a statement true enough in itself, but valueless without the
reason--namely, the mistaken armament and training of the Cavalry--a
reason which would, of course, have applied with infinitely greater
force to "any other European Cavalry," because no Cavalry but our own
would have had the invaluable assistance of Colonial mounted riflemen,
armed and trained correctly. So far from finding an excuse for the
failure of the lance and sword in the fact that our aim was conquest
and annexation, he appears in the last page of his article to argue
that, had these weapons been used more "relentlessly," the British
nation would not now be in what he evidently regards as the degrading
situation of having Boers on a footing of political equality with
British citizens! Finally, so far from pleading the abnormal accretions
to the Boer Army through the release of captured prisoners, he makes
a particular point of our vast numerical superiority and of the
"disappearing smaller numbers" of the enemy.
But the climax comes when he coolly tells Sir John French that the
German Cavalry, whose backwardness and "indolence" he condemns in the
very book which Sir John French sponsors, whom he regards as absolutely
"unprepared for war," whose "prehistoric" tactics, "old-fashioned
knightly combats," "antiquated Regulations," and "tactical orgies," he
is at this moment satirizing, would, twelve years ago, with still more
antiquated Regulations, with still less education, and with a far worse
armament, have taught the Boer peasants lessons with the steel which
our faint-spirited Cavalry could not teach them! All patriotic feelings
apart, and merely as a military experiment, one would like to have seen
the German Uhlans of 1899, with their popgun carbine and Frederician
traditions, and without a vestige of aid, inspiration or example from
Colonial or Mounted Infantry sources, tackling the Boers at Talana or
Zand River, at Colenso, Diamond Hill, or Magersfontein, at Ladysmith or
Sannah's Post, at Roodewal or Bakenlaagte. At the last two episodes the
General is quite certain that they would have done far more marvellous
feats with the steel by means of an old-fashioned knightly combat than
the Boers did with the rifle.
Serious students of land-war, anxious only to elucidate the purely
technical question as to whether horsemen in modern days can fight
effectively on horseback with steel weapons, look on in amazed
bewilderment, while high authorities on the affirmative side conspire
to render themselves and one another ridiculous by dragging in
political, psychological, strategical, and even lyrical factors which
have nothing whatever to do with the simple issue of combat. There,
as I have often said, is the reader's clue through the labyrinth of
contradictions. Neither Sir John French nor General von Bernhardi ever
really discusses at all the real point at issue. That is why they
succeed in agreeing upon it, while differing radically in their logical
processes. As the reader probably realizes now, nearly everything the
latter General writes is either susceptible of two constructions or
is subject to subsequent qualification. This critical essay on the
opinions of Lord Roberts and on my book, "War and the _Arme Blanche_,"
is only another illustration of the same mental habit. Though he is
explicit enough on what he regards as the feeble initiative of the
British Army in general and the British Cavalry in particular, he never
attempts to trace any direct causal connection between this topic and
the topic of the lance or sword. He dare not. Remote insinuation is
his only weapon. Yet, for the purposes of his article, that specific
link is the only thing worth talking about. So far as he does touch
the question of physical combat--as, for example, where he says that
the Boers "fought entirely with the rifle, and this the mounted
troops of England had to learn," "that the Boers were far superior in
the fire-fight," that the absence of "Cavalry duels" in South Africa
was caused (mark this deliciously naïve admission) by the fact of the
armament and the numerical weakness of the Boers--he is on my side.
And I need scarcely add that the reader will find it easy to demolish
the General's whole dream of the lost opportunities of the lance and
sword in South Africa or Manchuria, or of its golden chances in any
future war, by passages from the General's own work, criticized in
this volume, as when he implores his own Cavalry to remember that they
may have to meet mounted riflemen, or even heterodox Cavalry, who,
using their horses only as a means of mobility in the Boer fashion,
will, in defiance of the German text-books, advance dismounted, and
force the German troopers to do the same; or when he lays down that
the attack or defence of any "locality," entrenched or unentrenched,
and by whomsoever defended or attacked, must be accomplished through
fire-action. It is true that the theoretical limitations he sets to
fire-action, from sheer ignorance of what fire-action by mounted troops
is, reduce that form of combat also to a nullity; but on that point
anyone can test his views by facts. Although it is quite possible to
prove from his premisses, if their truth be postulated, that the South
African War never took place at all, without going to the trouble of
proving that it was "abnormal" in the matter of the futility of the
lance and sword, we know that it did take place, why lances and swords
were futile, and why fire was supreme.
3. So in reality does General von Bernhardi himself, and in the
title of this chapter is crystallized his explicit statement of the
truth. Faithful to his habitual system of alternate adhesion to two
incompatible theories, the General, after clearly enough condemning the
British Cavalry for their timidity with the steel, makes the following
remarkable _volte face_:
"In one particular, however, I will own he [_i.e._, Mr. Childers] is
correct: the firearm rules tactics. That is indisputable. Nobody can
with the _arme blanche_ compel an opponent on his side tactically
to use the _arme blanche_." (This last is a very dark saying, for
the Boers had no _arme blanche_; but it does not affect the general
sense.) "To the laws of the fire-fight everything must be subordinated
in war."
Well, that is precisely what Lord Roberts, the greatest soldier living,
and many humbler persons, including myself, have contended for. _Cadit
quæstio._ Why not have begun "Cavalry in War and Peace" with these
illuminating axioms? Why not have them placed in the forefront of our
own Cavalry Manual, in the approaching revision of that important work?
Why give the dominating operative weapon only 10 or 15 per cent. of
the time of the Cavalry soldier, and make it officially subordinate to
steel weapons which can only be used by its indulgence? But I am going
a little too fast. The General, as usual, has a qualification. What is
it? "But as a necessary corollary from this, to say that there can be
no fight with the _arme blanche_ is a mischievous sophism." Again we
agree--in the sense, that is, in which the author now elects to use the
phrase "_arme blanche_." For he means the bayonet. "Every Infantryman
carries a bayonet, because he requires it for the assault. Even Lord
Roberts will not take this away," etc. No; and no one in the world, so
far as I know, wants to take away the bayonet from the Infantryman.
But, as I asked at page 121, what has the bayonet got to do with the
lance and sword? The bayonet is fixed to the rifle, and used on foot
as an element in fire-tactics. The lance and sword are used from
horseback in tactics which are diametrically opposite to and absolutely
incompatible with fire-tactics, and every word Lord Roberts or I have
written has been directly aimed against this antiquated system of
fighting on horseback with the lance and sword. If the Cavalryman,
because, by universal consent, he has constantly to do work similar to
that of Infantry, requires a bayonet, by all means give it to him. I
discussed the question in my previous book, and ventured to regard it
as an open one, for reasons which I need not repeat now. But I over and
over again took pains to point out the fundamental distinction between
the bayonet and the lance and sword.
On another point the General misrepresents me. Because I showed
by illustration from war the marked physical and moral effects of
rifle-fire from the saddle, he treats me as advancing the specific
plan of substituting rifle-fire on horseback for the use of the lance
and sword on horseback in what his translator calls the "collision of
the mounted fight" (Handgemenge zu Pferde). This is a perversion of my
meaning. The collisions he is thinking of are obsolete. Though I think
that for all conceivable purposes a pistol would be better than a lance
or sword, I adhered to the facts, and pointed out that saddle-fire in
South Africa was used _before_ contact, and that in order to consummate
their destructive rifle-charges, the Boers dismounted, either at close
quarters or within point-blank range.
II.--_Views of the General Staff._
I wish to lay special stress on these two misrepresentations, because
both have been also made by our own General Staff. In a review of my
previous book, whose general fairness and courtesy I gladly recognize,
the _Monthly Notes_ of July, 1910, took exactly the same erroneous
points, and, for the rest, adopted the strange course of ruling out all
the remarkable South African charges with the rifle by quietly assuming
that they would have been done better with the sword or lance.
He takes as an example the action of Bakenlaagte, and convinces himself
that Cavalry "as ably led" would, by sticking persistently to their
saddles, have done better with the steel than the Boers who inflicted
such terrible punishment with their rifles upon Benson's brave and
seasoned troops. This is an unintentional slur not only upon Benson's
men but upon our Cavalry, who, on the reviewer's assumption, ought
certainly to have inflicted similar punishment upon the Boers on
scores of occasions where the tactical conditions were approximately
the same as those at Bakenlaagte. The reviewer arbitrarily begins his
imaginary parallel at the moment at which Botha's final charge started,
and pictures the steel-trained troops already in full career like the
fire-trained troops who actually made the charge. War is not so easy
as all that. He ignores the characteristically clever fire-tactics
which for hours before had been leading up to the requisite situation,
and forgets that steel-trained troops would never have had the skill
or insight to produce and utilize that situation. Moreover, their
training Manual not only does not contemplate, but renders prohibitive
any such instantaneous transition from fire to shock as would have been
required. But the reviewer surpasses himself when, having triumphantly
brought his steel-trained troops through the preparatory phase and
the charging phase (with the incidental riding down and capture of
several detached bodies of men), he pictures them confronted with
the objective ultimately charged--namely, Benson's rearguard of guns
and riflemen on Gun Hill. These men had had just time to rally, and
were lined out on a long ridge in open order and in splendid fighting
fettle. Their fire hitherto had been masked by the rearmost sections
of their own men, who were galloping in with the Boers at their heels.
What the Boers now did was to fling themselves from their ponies, by
instinct, in the dead ground below the ridge, and to charge up it on
foot, where after a brief and desperate encounter they exterminated
Benson's heroic rearguard and captured the guns. This action the
reviewer regards as clumsy and dilatory. His Lancers, disdaining to
dismount, would have ridden up the hill--painfully vulnerable targets
for the rifles on the ridge--and, arrived on the top, would either have
gone riding about among the scattered defenders trying to impale with
lances or reach with swords riflemen who would have laughed in their
faces at this ineffectual method of fighting, or (and the reviewer
favours this alternative) would have been content to impale a chance
few _en passant_, and, without drawing rein, would have galloped on
towards the main body and convoy, leaving "supporting squadrons," whom
he coolly invents for the occasion (for the Boers had none), to "deal
with" the rearguard in the knightly fashion aforesaid. Sweeping on,
and again disdaining to dismount on reaching the next objective, our
Lancers would have "spread havoc and consternation" among the convoy.
Would they? You cannot stampede or disable inspanned oxen and mules or
their drivers by brandishing swords and lances. And surely one does
not "charge" ox-waggons with those weapons. What you want for these
occasions is the bullet, whether for beasts, drivers, or escort. By
bitter experience of our own on only too many occasions we know all
about the right way of spreading havoc and consternation among convoys.
Lances and swords never produced these effects in a single case in
three years. And the escort and main body? Why, a few dozen steady men
with rifles would turn the tables on, and, in their turn, spread havoc
among a whole brigade of Lancers who insisted on remaining in their
saddles.
One falls, I must frankly admit, into profound discouragement when one
meets arguments of this sort coming from a quarter where arguments
lead to rules and regulations. It is quite true that this important
review, in its moderate tone and in its tacit avowal that there was
need of some reform in the present regulations, bore no resemblance to
the criticisms which proceeded from some individual Cavalry officers.
There were indications--reliable, I hope--that the old knee-to-knee
knightly shock-charge, now regarded officially as the "climax of
Cavalry training," was doomed, and that the open-order charge with
the steel, presumed to be analogous to the open-order charge with the
rifle, was the utmost now contemplated. But in truth, as I pointed out
in Chapters IV. and VI., there exists no such analogy, or the war would
have demonstrated it. If such steel-charges were possible, our Cavalry
had innumerable chances of carrying them out under far more favourable
conditions, owing to our permanent numerical superiority, than the
Boers ever obtained for their attacks, by the charge or otherwise.
The steel-charge, close or open, was the traditional function of our
Cavalry; it was the only form of combat that they really understood
when they landed in South Africa, and they were supremely efficient
in it. The point is that in practice they _could_ not charge with the
steel, except in the rare and well-nigh negligible cases which are on
record. They ceased altogether to try so to charge, because to fight
with the steel on horseback was physically impossible. Their steel
weapons were eventually returned to store on that account. And they
profited by the resulting change of spirit, and by the acquisition,
late as it came, of a respectable firearm. To say that the fire-charge
invented and practised by the Boers as early as March, 1900, when
lances and swords were still in the field, and imitated to some extent
by our own Colonials and Mounted Infantry, could, after all, have
been done as well and better with the lance and sword, is conjecture
run mad. Sir John French has never used the argument. He could not,
with any shadow of plausibility, combine it with his complaint about
the lightning flights of the Boers and the absence of anything to
reconnoitre. It is, I grant, the most impressive official testimonial
ever given to the _arme blanche_, but it is not business. One might
as well argue that the work done by Togo's torpedo-boats would have
been done better by the beaks of triremes. We _know and have seen_
what actually happened. We had nearly three years in which to arrive
by experiment at tactical truths. In the name of common sense let
us accept the results, especially when they are corroborated by the
results of the other great modern war, that in Manchuria.
III.--OTHER CAVALRY VIEWS.
Directly or indirectly, I think that in the course of this volume I
have replied to most of the criticisms which my previous book, "War
and the _Arme Blanche_," drew forth. But I should like to make a brief
reference to an interesting discussion of the subject conducted mainly
by Cavalry officers on October 19, 1910, at the Royal United Service
Institution. A reader of the report in the _Journal_ of November, 1910,
must feel that the proceedings would have gained in clarity and harmony
had von Bernhardi's belated maxim that the "firearm rules tactics" been
made the basis of the debate. Strange things were said on the side of
the _arme blanche_. One officer urged that Cavalry should not have a
rifle--that arbiter of tactics--at all, should use shock alone, and
should not be "frittered away as scouts." Another complained that, in
arguing mainly from the South African and Manchurian Wars, I "could
not have selected two worse examples." I am not to blame. It is not a
case of selection. These are the _only_ great civilized wars since the
"revolution" (to use von Bernhardi's phrase) wrought by modern firearms.
The close-order shock-charge has never even been tried or contemplated
in civilized war since 1870, and even then it was moribund. Yet the
lecturer argued from Waterloo, and, unconscious of the slight upon his
Arm, was at great pains to claim that even now Cavalry kept in reserve
for the occasion could attack two-year conscripts who had already been
reduced to "pulp" by several days of fire and fatigue. "_If_," he
said, "they could stick their lances into quite a large proportion,"
the rest "would have the most marked reluctance to remain upon the
ground." Perhaps. Von Bernhardi also claims that Infantry, who under
stress of fire have reached the point of throwing away their arms, may
be attacked successfully with the steel. Let us allow the claim, only
remarking that experience shows a rifle to be a far more destructive
weapon for such circumstances than a lance or sword. But, instead of
idly awaiting these not very glorious opportunities for the steel,
would it not be better for the Cavalry to be mobile and busy from the
first in using the same formidable weapon which originally reduced the
Infantry to pulp, using it in that limitless sphere of envelopment,
interception, and surprise to which the possession of horses gives them
access?
Another extraordinary feature of the discussion was the dissociation
of moral effect from killing effect by some of the Cavalry officers
present, who really seemed to think that riflemen in war are afraid
of horses, irrespective of weapons, whereas in fact they welcome so
substantial a target for their rifles, and fear only the rider's weapon
_in direct proportion to its deadliness_. These officers were convinced
that their Arm, trained to charge as it now is, exercises great moral
effect, yet they agreed that the importance of killing the enemy with
the steel is at present neglected, and that the art of so killing is
not even taught. The lecturer argued that our Cavalry would be a "more
terrifying weapon than it is at present" if every trooper could be
brought to "understand that he has to stick his sword or lance into the
body of his opponent." Another officer urged that "each horseman in a
charge should be taught that he must kill at least one adversary"; and
the Chairman strongly emphasized "the necessity of training the men to
kill." "The reason," he said, "that a man had a sword or spear was to
kill." The truth is that some arts perish from disuse. This art cannot
be exercised in war, so wars come and go, and the very tradition of its
exercise disappears, and in peace is replaced, as the Chairman said, by
"piercing yells" and the "waving of swords."
A Horse Artillery officer threw a bombshell into the debate by
complaining that his Arm was often forbidden at manoeuvres to open fire
on the hostile Cavalry masses (_vide supra_, pp. 127 and 131), in order
to allow the collision to take place on "favourable ground," and asked
for guidance. The Chairman replied that the Artillery could be trusted
to be "loyal." But can they, in this particular matter? Let us hope not.
A small minority ably upheld the case against the _arme blanche_, and
the discussion, as a whole, was of considerable value. General Sir R.S.
Baden-Powell went to the root of the matter when he confessed that a
"policy had never properly been laid down" for the Cavalry, and that
they "wanted a policy to begin with before they commenced training."
That is the literal truth, and I hope to have proved that no rational,
clear, consistent policy ever will be laid down until the rifle is
made in peace-theory what it already is in war-practice--the dominant,
all-important weapon of Cavalry--and until the axiom that the rifle
rules tactics is accepted and systematically acted upon. I claim that
von Bernhardi's writings, and the manner of their acceptance in this
country, prove conclusively that that is the condition precedent to a
sound policy. He has no policy; we have no policy. We have not even a
terminology suitable to modern conditions.
I believe it correct also to say that the principal cause of the
persistence of the _arme blanche_ theory in this country is its
retention by foreign Cavalries who are without war experience, and who,
on account of its retention, are backward in every department of their
science.
In Sir John French's words, we try to assimilate the best foreign
customs, and we choose for assimilation the very customs which we
ourselves have proved in war to be not only valueless, but vicious.
I have not thought it worth while to deal with other Continental
Cavalries. In the matter of the lance and sword, the Austrian and
French Cavalries may be regarded as more backward than the German. Both
would regard von Bernhardi as a fanatical heretic. Count Wrangel, for
the Austrians, states that it is impossible to train Cavalry to the
use of two weapons so different as the sword and the rifle, and, in
deciding for the former, frankly admits that, after the experience of
Manchuria, Cavalry have no business within the zone of fire. The views
and practice of the French Cavalry may be learnt from the scathing
exposure to which they have been submitted by General de Négrier. Our
Cavalry, excessive as its reliance on the steel is, stands, of course,
in the matter of fire-action, ahead of all Continental rivals.
Relying too much on foreign practice in peace, we also exaggerate
foreign exploits in bygone wars where conditions were radically
different. I scarcely think it too much to say, after a close study of
the criticisms of my book, that, if one could only succeed in proving
to present-day Cavalrymen that von Bredow's charge at Vionville was
not a valid precedent for modern war, more than half the battle for
rational armament and tactics would be won. Quite half my critics threw
that famous charge in my teeth, and some accused me of not even knowing
about it, since I had not mentioned it. Why should I have mentioned it?
I was not aware at the time I wrote that it was seriously accepted as
relevant to present conditions. Von Bernhardi, whom I was taking as a
representative of the most enlightened Cavalry views on the subject of
the steel-charge, does not mention it in either of his works, and in
his first work went to some trouble to show how the German and French
Cavalry at Mars-la-Tour frittered away time and opportunity by hanging
about in masses which "mutually paralyzed" one another, instead of
using golden chances for fire-action. He expressly says that the war of
1870 "presents a total absence of analogy," and, as I showed above (p.
140), his own limitations for the steel-charge in modern war absolutely
preclude the possibility of any such charge being repeated. Those
limitations have for long been accepted by Cavalry in this country
also--in theory. But the immortal fascination of that charge! Next
door to von Bernhardi's article on my book in the _Cavalry Journal_
of October, 1910, is an interesting descriptive account of it, with
maps. And the author ends thus: "The days of Cavalry are not over. For
they 'can ride rapidly into the danger that Infantry can only walk
into.'" These two little sentences typify perfectly, I believe, the
state of mind of those who cling to the _arme blanche_ out of sentiment
and without scientific justification. Nobody supposes that the days
of Cavalry are over. Far from being weakened, Cavalry, if properly
equipped and trained, have potentialities immensely greater than
the Cavalry of 1870, because they now possess--in our country at any
rate--the weapon which, united with the horse, qualifies them to tackle
any other Arm on their own terms. And as the writer of this article
truly says, they can ride into the danger that Infantry can only walk
into. South Africa proves that, to a certain point. But, alas! that is
not the moral that the writer means to draw. He forgets that the rifle
of 1870 is, as I remarked before, a museum curiosity, and that, feeble
as it was, it nearly cut to pieces Bredow's regiments on their return
from the charge. He draws the wrong moral--that Cavalry can still make
charges by remaining indefinitely in their saddles and wielding steel
weapons from their saddles. In that sense the days of Cavalry are
indeed over. Nobody should regret it. What is there to regret?
But let me repeat one last caution. It is a harmful result of this
otherwise healthy controversy that we tend to argue too much in terms
of the "charge," meaning the mounted charge, culminating in a fight at
close quarters, or even in a mêlée. 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
horsemen, 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. And, come
what will, the horse, by the correct use of ground and surprise, will
always be a priceless engine of strategical and tactical mobility.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 7: Note, for example, his reiteration of the phrase, whose
falsity anyone can demonstrate, that the Boers showed "no offensive
power," with the implied inference, never explicitly worked out, but
left in the realm of vague insinuation, that this failure was in some
way connected with their lack of lances and swords, weapons which they
would not have taken at a gift, and could not have used if they had had
them.]
[Footnote 8: See "War and the _Arme Blanche_," pp. 113-115.]
[Footnote 9: Conscious, apparently, of the gross personal discourtesy
to Sir John French, he adds that "since General French was there, lack
of energy cannot be imputed to the attack." This not only stultifies
what precedes, but is untrue. The attack was painfully unenergetic;
nobody has denied it. The point is that the lack of energy was due
to the fact that the Cavalry were not armed and trained for such
an occasion. Of their three weapons, two, the lance and the sword,
were useless, and the third was a trumpery little carbine, which in
peace theory had been regarded as an almost negligible part of their
equipment. What they needed was the fire-spirit, a serious firearm, and
training in mobile fire-tactics.]
[Footnote 10: See _supra_, pp. 17-27.]