IV.—Mounted Infantry.
We touch here special questions of finance and administration which complicate the issue. But a clear mind on the question of armament and tactics will help immensely to simplify the problem. Let us begin by calling them for all purposes “Cavalry.” That ought to be a simple and unobjectionable change, because in combined operations they are, in fact, called Cavalry, and are allotted the duties of divisional Cavalry. The name changed, what follows? Logically, no doubt, that they should be merged in the Cavalry. Apart from the steel weapon, their characteristics are the same. Apart from the shock-charge, and assuming equal length of training, their functions and powers should be precisely the same. They are mounted riflemen, as the Cavalry should be. On the other hand, there is an advantage, no doubt, from the point of view of expense and simplicity, in the plan of abstraction from Infantry battalions for short periods of mounted service; but I suggest that the advantage is small by comparison with the evils of the system. (1) In war, when fresh contingents have to be raised (as they surely will have to be raised), the abstraction, as we know to our cost, weakens the efficacy of the Infantry battalions. (2) Though the soldier’s prior training (presumed to be thorough) as an Infantryman is of immense help to him in learning the work of a mounted rifleman, it is wholly impossible for him, in the short time available, to obtain all the trained aptitudes and instincts of a first-class mounted rifleman.
Is it not common sense that, if we go to the expense of providing professional soldiers with horses at all, we should go a little farther, and make them thorough professional horsemen, during their whole training? Should we not rather add to the Cavalry than abstract from the Infantry? I am sure it would pay us well.
But whether or no this step is taken, and whether or no the arme blanche is abolished, let us at all events revise their instruction in the light of war-experience, abandoning all this excessive stress on their character as Infantry, laying all the stress we will on their character as riflemen, and equal stress on their character as horsemen. Of course, as long as they remain, so to speak, improvised horsemen, their responsibilities must be appropriate to their efficiency, but they should not be taught to feel that they lose something by the lack of a steel weapon. By all means let them act as a “pivot of manœuvre” for regular Cavalry, where the two arms are acting together, if, as mounted riflemen, they are less efficient than Cavalry. But away with this absurd notion that their support on such occasions is intended to leave Cavalry leisure and opportunity for indulging in shock. Away, above all, with the demoralizing insinuation that if caught “in the open,” whatever that vague and elusive phrase may mean, they are, owing to the possession of horses, actually more vulnerable to attack by the steel than Infantry; that to meet this contingency, they must form square, an operation long obsolete in the case of the Infantry, except for savage warfare. This is just the way to make them lose all confidence not only in the very weapon which Infantry are taught to rely on so implicitly against the steel, but in the horse itself. I wonder if the existing Mounted Infantry believe in the suggestion after their previous training as Infantry. If any one of them, does, I can only say to him: “Read once more and learn by heart page 92 of ‘Infantry Training’ (‘Meeting an Attack by Cavalry’). Remember you now have a horse; exercise your common sense, and you will conclude that unless you are ‘surprised’ in a sense which would be a disgrace to soldiers of any class or type, mounted or dismounted, you have an immense advantage over Cavalry acting ‘as such.’”