CAVALRY IN COMBAT
I have gone at considerable length into the opinions of Sir John French, as expressed in his Introduction to von Bernhardi's work—partly because it is more important for us to know what our own Cavalrymen think than what German Cavalrymen think, and partly because it will be easier for the reader to estimate the value of the German writer's views if he is already familiar with Sir John French's way of thinking. We should expect, of course, to find identity between the views of the two men, since Sir John French acclaims the German author as the fountain of all wisdom; but on that point the reader would be well advised to reserve judgment.
I shall now discuss "Cavalry in War and Peace," and first let me say a few more words on a very important point—the circumstances of its composition.
When General von Bernhardi wrote his first book, "Cavalry in Future Wars," he did not take the current German Cavalry Regulations as his text, because they were too archaic to deserve such treatment. He condemned them in the mass, and, independently of them, penned his own scheme for a renovated modern Cavalry. After about nine years of complete neglect, during which the two great wars in South Africa and Manchuria were fought, the German authorities decided that some recognition of modern conditions must be made. They have recently re-armed the Cavalry with a good carbine, and issued a new book of Cavalry Regulations. These circumstances induced the General to write his second book, "Cavalry in War and Peace," and to throw it into the form of a direct criticism of the official Regulations, which he constantly quotes in footnotes and uses in the text of his own observations and constructive recommendations.
What is the result? The first point to notice is that he regards the new official Regulations, "though better than the old ones," as thoroughly and radically bad. His writings, he says, "have fallen on barren soil." He condemns them almost invariably for precisely the same reason as before, namely, that they virtually ignore the rifle in practice, and continue the ancient and worn-out traditions of the steel, with mere lip-service to the modern scientific weapon. But a disappointment was in store for those who had hoped that the mental process involved in criticizing concrete Regulations, as well as the vast mass of instructive phenomena presented by the two wars which, when he wrote first, were still "future wars" to him, would arouse the General himself to a realization of the inconsistencies in his own earlier work.
These hopes have been falsified. The fascination of the arme blanche was proof against the test, and the result is one of the strangest military works which was ever published. Bitter satire as it is on the official system of training, any impartial reader must end by sympathizing, not with the satirist, but with the officials satirized. They at any rate try to be logical. Their concessions to fire are the thinnest pretence; their belief in shock undisguised and sincere. Whatever follies and errors this belief involves them in, they pursue their course with unflinching consistency, sublimely careless of science and modern war conditions.
Their critic, on the other hand, keenly alive to the absurdities inculcated, has not the mental courage to insist on the only logical alternatives. Faced with the necessity of proving their absurdity, he refuses to use the only effective weapon available, gives away his own case for fire by weak concession to shock, and succeeds in producing a work which will convince no one in Germany, and the greater part of which, as a practical guide to Cavalrymen, in this country or any other, is worthless. A mist of ambiguity shrouds what should be the simplest propositions. We move through a fog of ill-defined terms and vague qualifications. We puzzle our brains with academical distinctions, and if we come upon what seems to be some definite recommendation, we are pretty sure to find it stultified in another chapter, or even in the same chapter, by a reservation in the opposite sense. The key to each particular muddle, to each ambiguity, to each timid qualification, to each confusing doctrinaire classification, is always the same—namely, that the writer, from sheer lack of knowledge of what modern fire-tactics are, at the last moment shrinks from his own theories about their value. What has happened is exactly what one would expect to happen. In Germany the General admits his failure, and in England he is hailed by Sir John French, who politely ignores his blunders about fire-action, as the apostle of the steel, instead of what he really is, the apostle, though the ineffectual apostle, of the rifle.
Let us first be quite clear as to his opinion of the present German Cavalry. "While all other Arms have adapted themselves to modern conditions, Cavalry has stood still," he says on the first page of his Introduction. They have "no sort of tradition" for a future war (p. 5). Their training creates "no sound foundation for preparation for war." It is "left far behind in the march of military progress." "It cannot stand the test of serious war." It is trammelled by the "fetters of the past," and lives on "antiquated assumptions" (p. 6). Its "mischievous delusions" will result in "bitter disappointment" (p. 175). Many of the new Regulations "betoken failure to adapt existing principles to modern ideas" (p. 361); others "do not take the conditions of reality into account"; or "cannot be regarded as practical"; or are "provisional"; and of one set of peculiarly ludicrous evolutions he uses the delightful phrase that they are "included in the Regulations with a view to their theoretical and not for their practical advantages" (p. 333). He stigmatizes "the formal encounters," the "old-fashioned knightly combats," the "pro forma evolutions," the "survivals of the Dark Ages," the "spectacular battle-pieces," the "red-tape methods," the "tactical orgies," the "childish exercises," and "set pieces" of peace manœuvres. The origin of the trouble, he says, is "indolent conservatism" (p. 366). "Development in our branch of the Service has come to a standstill" (ibid.). The officers do not study history or the progress of foreign Cavalries. And he reiterates again and again his general conclusion that the Cavalry is unprepared for war.