Scaling Barricades
If the infantry is the mainstay of the German army, the cavalry is indispensable for reconnoitering, for making raids and for pursuit. Each cavalryman, as has been said, carries a lance, a sword and a carbine. Much time is spent in training the men to the use of the lance, which is of hollow steel. Men of straw, for instance, are placed on the ground and the lancer, riding by, has to inflict a wound in exactly the place designated. Or a straw head is placed on a stake and must be knocked off in passing. The carbines, which are stuck in the saddle, are of a perfected modern type and are but little inferior to the muskets of the infantry.
Lancer Practising with Straw Man
Cavalry regiments, with which speed of progress is the first consideration, carry their own bridge-wagons, so that they can either repair bridges that have been destroyed, or construct entirely new ones. It has been found that rafts made of fodder-bags stuffed with straw and held together by lances, boards, logs, etc., can carry comparatively heavy weights. Six such bags as I have described can, at a pinch, carry six men. Barrels and chests are still more useful if they happen to be at hand. Needless to say, the cavalry bridge-wagons also carry explosives for destroying the enemy’s bridges and other defenses.
Cavalry Patrol
It has been thought in some quarters that aeroplanes and other contrivances for scouting and communication would supersede cavalry, but the German army administration evidently does not think so, as it has more than 150,000 horses in use even in time of peace. In time of war all private horses are subject to requisition, as are also automobiles, motor-trucks, motor-wheels and aeroplanes. The better riders in a regiment train the horses for the rest, and there is a constant mustering out of the inferior ones in favor of others that are stronger or younger or more docile. There are military riding schools at Hanover, Dresden and Munich, where officers are taught not only to ride well and to instruct others but also to break in young horses.
Prussia has her own stud-farms in which the royal family, since the days of Frederick William I, has taken the greatest interest. There is a regular Prussian type, small and tough. The theory has lately been advanced that Asiatic horses are more free from disease and that they proved more enduring in the recent Turkish-Bulgarian War, while the Prussian horse, through faults in the manner of raising, has degenerated during the long period of unbroken peace. This, however, is simply an academic question and nothing short of war itself can demonstrate that under all conditions another type of horse will be preferable.