HIS BELIEF IN CAVALRY
The Lessons of the Boer War--Cavalry _v._ Mounted Infantry--A
Plea for the Lance--The Cavalry Spirit--Shock Tactics still
Useful.
It does not necessarily follow that because a man is a great cavalry
leader, he therefore has ideas on the subject of cavalry. To the
popular mind cavalry suggests clouds of dust and a clatter of hoofs,
the flashing of swords, followed by the crash and sound of an
engagement. The man who would conduct this imagined spectacle
satisfactorily would therefore be dependent rather on the timely
uprush of the spirit than on the mechanical certainty of the mind. He
would need to act by inspiration and impulse, rather than by cold
thought. Quite obviously some other and less resplendent being would
have to time the rise of his curtain in the theatre of war. He would
be the last man whom one would figure, like Kipling's successful
General, "worrying himself bald" over a map and compasses.
[Page Heading: THEORY AND PRACTICE]
But the popular version does less than justice to the modern cavalry
leader in general and to French in particular. We have seen him as a
subaltern poring over his books before his colleagues were out of bed.
We have seen him varying the monotony of War Office administration by
solving problems in tactics. Indubitably he is a student: incidentally
he is an innovator. This fact of mental duality raises him in a moment
out of the ruck of mere cavalry experts--of both sorts. On the one
hand he is not a competent machine working out other people's ideas in
the field of battle: on the other he is no blundering theorist whose
ideas crumple into ineffectual dust under the stress of actual
warfare. He can carry out with the ardour of the soldier the schemes
which he has formulated with the cold cunning of the strategist. It is
difficult indeed to say in which field of cavalry work he more greatly
excels--that of theory or practice. We shall see later that he
possesses qualities altogether apart from those of the theoriser or
the man of action. Suffice it now to glance at the astonishingly
complete theory of cavalry on which his marvellous execution is
founded.
One reaches the bedrock of French's curiously sane conception of war
when one asks him to define war. In dealing with those gentlemen who
tell us that the Boer War was fought under such abnormal conditions
that it is useless as a ground-work for conclusions as to future wars,
he uttered a memorable retort. "All wars are abnormal," he observed,
"because there is no such thing as normal war."[16] There we have one
of the axioms both of his theory and of his practice. There can be no
fixed conditions, and so there can be no final theories as to the
conduct of warfare. Theory is simply a means to an end. And the
successful general is he who most ably adapts the general body of
theory suitable for all cases to the particular campaign on which he
is engaged.
[Page Heading: A VEXED QUESTION]
Broadly, however, French has very clearly defined what he considers to
be the use and the abuse of cavalry. After the Boer War, as is well
known, opinion on the subject of the future of the mounted arm was
bitterly divided. There were those who saw in French's success a
justification for the cavalrymen of the old school, armed _cap à pie_.
There were others who, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, saw the end of
their day approaching. The author of _The Great Boer War_ says of the
charge before Kimberley: "It appears to have been one of the very few
occasions during the campaign when that obsolete and absurd weapon the
sword was anything but a dead weight to its bearer." And again: "The
war has been a cruel one for the cavalry.... It is difficult to say
that cavalry, as cavalry, have justified their existence. In the
opinion of many the tendency of the future will be to convert the
whole forces into mounted infantry.... A little training in taking
cover, leggings instead of boots, and a rifle instead of a carbine,
would give us a formidable force of 20,000 men who could do all that
our cavalry does, and a great deal more besides.... The lesson both of
the South African and of the American Civil War is that the light
horseman who is trained to fight on foot is the type of the
future."[17] This is the opinion of a very competent civilian who
deeply studied the South African campaign. But it is the opinion of a
civilian.
On the other hand many experts, most of them military men, insist that
the day of shock tactics is far from done. They instance the charge
before Kimberley as a case in point. Obviously all the elements of
disaster were there. Only a brilliant use of the traditional cavalry
attack saved the situation--and Kimberley. Situations of that sort
are bound to arise again. How is the mounted infantryman, lacking the
_elan_ and spirit of the cavalryman, to meet the situation?
[Page Heading: TOO MUCH CAUTION]
French takes an attitude somewhat midway between these two extremes.
He, of all men, has developed cavalry most successfully on what might
be called mounted infantry lines. That is to say, he has taught his
men to fight on foot, to take cover at every opportunity, and to
master the whole art of reconnaissance. But at the same time, he
objects to extremist[18] views as to the abolition of the cavalry
spirit. "One or two distinguished foreign soldiers who have publicly
commented upon that campaign have said that what is termed the
'Cavalry Spirit' is opposed to the idea of dismounted action. They
hold that the cavalry disdain to dismount, and they see in riding the
end instead of the means. They consider that events in the Far East
teach us that we must render our cavalry less devoted to 'manoeuvres'
and to 'tournaments,' in order to enable them to fit themselves to
take part in modern fighting; that the times have come when the
methods of warfare should be changed; and that the cavalry must
determine to defeat the enemy by dismounted action entirely.
"I cannot speak with any certainty as to what has happened in European
Armies, but as regards the British Cavalry, I am absolutely convinced
that the Cavalry Spirit is, and may be encouraged to the utmost,
without in the least degree prejudicing either training in dismounted
duties or the acquirement of such tactical knowledge on the part of
leaders as will enable them to discern when and where to resort to
dismounted methods.
"How, I ask, can the Cavalry perform its rôle in war until the enemy's
Cavalry is defeated and paralysed? I challenge any Cavalry officer,
British or foreign, to deny the principle that Cavalry, acting as such
against its own Arm, can never attain complete success unless it is
proficient in shock tactics.
"Cavalry soldiers must, of course, learn to be expert rifle shots, but
the attainment of this desirable object will be brought no nearer by
ignoring the horse, the sword or the lance. On the contrary, the
_elan_ and dash which perfection in Cavalry manoeuvres imparts to
large bodies of horsemen will be of inestimable value in their
employment as mounted rifle-men when the field is laid open to their
enterprise in this rôle by the defeat of the hostile Cavalry. That the
Cavalry on both sides in the recent war did not distinguish
themselves or their Arm, is an undoubted fact, but the reason is quite
apparent. On the Japanese side they were indifferently mounted, the
riding was not good, and they were very inferior in numbers, and hence
were only enabled to fulfil generally the rôle of Divisional Cavalry,
which they appear to have done very well. The cause of failure on the
Russian side is to be found in the fact that for years they have been
trained on _exactly the same principles_ which these writers now
advocate. They were devoid of real Cavalry training, they thought of
nothing but getting off their horses and shooting; hence they
lamentably failed in enterprises which demanded, before all, a display
of the highest form of Cavalry spirit."
On the other hand Sir John French protests against the tendency to
_ultra-caution_ in handling cavalry at manoeuvres. The cavalry charge
is always a risk. The risk taken by the Field-Marshal, for instance,
when he ordered the famous charge which won him the way to Kimberley,
would certainly have been regarded as fatal at official manoeuvres. It
is absurd, he insists, that the umpires should call on cavalry to
surrender the moment that they come face to face with an infantry
fire. Such a moment may be the cavalry's great opportunity.
[Page Heading: VIEWS ON CAVALRY]
Many of the modern armies, he holds, are suffering from cavalry
without confidence. And there is abundant evidence to justify the
charge. Bernhardi has pointed out that the phenomenal successes of the
German cavalry in the war of 1870-1 were due not to its own
extraordinary valour, but to the absence of opposition on the part of
the French. Von Moltke made a similar criticism (which Sir John French
approves) on the Prussian cavalry after the war of 1866. "Our cavalry
failed," he wrote, "perhaps not so much in actual capacity as in
_self-confidence_. All its initiative had been destroyed at
manoeuvres, where criticism and blame had been almost synonymous, and
it therefore shirked independent bold action, and kept far in the
rear, and as much as possible out of sight."
French, in fact, is convinced that the "cavalry battle" is by no means
a thing of the past. Until the enemy's cavalry is overthrown, the work
of the mounted infantryman cannot begin. So long as opposing countries
train efficient cavalry, the clash of the rival horsemen is the
inevitable preliminary of any campaign.
At the same time his views on the specialisation of training are far
from extreme. The cavalry spirit must be encouraged: but it must not
be permitted to overshadow that wider _camaraderie_ which is the Army
spirit. "It is not only possible but necessary," he says, "to preach
the Army spirit, or, in other words, the close comradeship of all arms
in battle, and at the same time to develop the highest qualities and
the special attributes of each branch. The particular spirit which we
seek to encourage is different for each arm. Were we to seek to endow
cavalry with the tenacity and stiffness of infantry, or to take from
the mounted arm the mobility and the cult of the offensive which are
the breath of its life, we should ruin not only the cavalry, but the
Army besides. Those who scoff at the spirit, whether of cavalry, of
artillery, or of infantry, are people who have had no practical
experience of the actual training of troops in peace, or of the
personal leadership in war. Such men are blind guides indeed."[19]
For cavalry, then, Sir John French sees a brilliant future. "The
opinion which I hold and have often expressed is that the _true rôle
of cavalry on the battlefield is to reconnoitre, to deceive and to
support_. If the enemy's cavalry has been overthrown, the rôle of
reconnaissance will have been rendered easier. In the rôles of
deception and support, such an immense and fruitful field of
usefulness and enterprise is laid open to a cavalry division which has
thought out and practised these rôles in its peace training, and is
accustomed to act in large bodies dismounted, that I cannot bring
myself to believe that any equivalent for such manifest advantages can
be found even in the most successful raid against the enemy's
communications by mounted troops."[20]
[Page Heading: A HISTORIC PHRASE]
How brilliantly Sir John French trained his men to accomplish these
multiple activities, recent history has shown. We may note in passing,
however, that mechanics have now divested the cavalry of one of their
chief functions. The aeroplane is now the eye of the army and the
strategical rôle of the cavalry is no more. The mounted arm will
almost certainly now be confined to screening operations and to shock
tactics, after the opposing armies have come into touch with one
another. History, therefore, has obviously justified Sir John French
in his championship of the cavalry spirit. Without it his horsemen
would have been no match for the German cavalry. Thanks to their
training, they "went through the Uhlans like brown paper" in General
Sir Philip Chetwode's historic phrase.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Sir John French's Preface to _Cavalry_ by General von Bernhardi.
By permission of Messrs. Hugh Rees, Ltd., and Messrs. Hodder &
Stoughton.
[17] _The Great Boer War_, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. By permission of
Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co.
[18] Sir John French's Preface to _Cavalry in Future Wars_, by General
von Bernhardi. By permission of Mr. John Murray.
[19] From Sir John French's Introduction to _Cavalry_, by General F.
von Bernhardi, by permission of Mr. Hugh Rees and Messrs. Hodder &
Stoughton.
[20] From Sir John French's Introduction to _Cavalry_, by General F.
von Bernhardi, by permission of Mr. Hugh Rees and Messrs. Hodder &
Stoughton.