V.—Yeomanry.
Here are volunteer mounted riflemen; a keen, vigorous force, composed of some of the best elements in the nation, but without prior training as Infantry, obtaining a very small amount of field exercise, with horses specially provided for such occasions. They belong to the same type as Mounted Infantry; but, through no fault of their own, are less efficient. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, they are called “Cavalry,” and receive, in an appendix to “Cavalry Training,” three special pages, which begin with the direction that “Yeomanry should be so trained as to be capable of performing all the duties allotted to Cavalry, except those connected with shock action.” Let us follow out the effect which these words are calculated to have upon the mind of an average member of the Yeomanry. At the first blush the sentence wears an air of simplicity. Having no lance or sword, the Yeoman clearly cannot practice shock. But what are the “duties connected with shock action” which he must not perform? If he were to begin by studying Bernhardi, he might very well come to the satisfactory conclusion that the only opportunity for shock was in the collision of huge Cavalry masses. But he need not read Bernhardi, because Bernhardi, he is informed, inspires “Cavalry Training.” In “Cavalry Training” he searches in vain for an exhaustive list of these duties. He finds emphasis on the big shock duel, with its “positive” result, but no qualification in respect of smaller duels. He hears about the “Cavalry fight,” which is clearly a shock fight, and also about Cavalry in “extended order,” charging Infantry, and wonders if this, too, is shock, and presumes on the whole that it is. Eventually he comes to the conclusion, and the very reasonable conclusion, that he is lost without a steel weapon, irretrievably lost if he meets Cavalry, and at the best, perhaps, weak in aggression against Infantry. If he refers to “Mounted Infantry Training,” it is only to find that even this arm, with its professional character and longer continuous training, is taught to fear the steel weapon. Reverting, therefore, to his original proposition, that the sword is absolutely essential, he appeals to be equipped with the sword.
But what, meanwhile, of that terrifically deadly weapon, the rifle? With his eighteen days’ field training, is he yet fit to meet on terms of fire professional mounted riflemen, to say nothing of swordsmen and Lancers? Is he, with his limited practice and his double function of horseman and rifleman, fit to oppose even volunteer Infantry? He has vague recollections of a war in which large numbers of volunteer troops under his own appellation met small numbers of skilled mounted riflemen, did remarkably well under the circumstances, but on the whole were completely outmatched. But the uncomfortable memory is soon stifled. That was an “abnormal” war. Cavalrymen say it was abnormal. He need not study that war, and in point of fact I am afraid it is true that the majority of our volunteer mounted officers do not study it. Why should they, when German theorists and German battles are presented to them on the highest authority as the best guides to education?
I am fully aware that many Yeomanry officers resent the demand for a steel weapon, and take the line of common sense in the whole matter. But the opinions I have represented must be reckoned with, for they will grow, as the war fades farther into the past and the reaction to steel in the Cavalry gathers strength. In the summer of 1909, there was a correspondence in the Times initiated by an anonymous “Squadron Leader” of Yeomanry, who represented that to send swordless Yeomanry into war was sheer murder; that in the face of Cavalry they were “unarmed sheep”; that he cared nothing about the Boer War (of which, indeed, he was evidently quite ignorant); that it was “peculiar”; that our Cavalry and foreign Cavalries believed in the arme blanche, and that for his part he pinned his faith on authorities like General von Pelet Narbonne, the German author of “Cavalry in Action.”
Of all the many pernicious effects of the survival of the arme blanche, this indirect encouragement to our volunteer horsemen to belittle the good weapon and hanker for the bad weapon is one of the worst. The responsibility rests absolutely on the arme blanche school of thought. There is no valid answer to the demand. They, least of all, can combat it. Nor would there be any valid answer if the Mounted Infantry raised the same demand. Every mounted man should have a sword, or none. In war you cannot sort out troops so that one class need only meet its own corresponding class. Germans, for example, have no steel-less Cavalry. By hypothesis, therefore, our Yeomanry cannot take the field at all against them. And how, on the same hypothesis, are our Mounted Infantry, acting as “divisional Cavalry,” to meet German divisional Cavalry?
Meanwhile, it is impossible to make any other recommendation to the Yeomanry than this. Regard yourselves as belonging to the highest type of mounted soldier—that is, to the mounted riflemen. Concentrate on the rifle and the horse. The more you do that and the more the hybrid professional horsemen waste their energies in compromise, or destroy their efficacy in concentrating on the steel, the fitter you will be to meet them in war.