German Influence on British Cavalry

by Erskine Childers

II.—General Principles of Combat.

To return to the book under discussion. Is it possible to gain from it any clear and definite idea of the respective functions and the relative importance of the rifle and the lance and sword as weapons for Cavalry? Unfortunately, no. We have to deal with hazy generalizations scattered over the whole volume, each with its qualification somewhere else. It is true that warnings against the use of the steel greatly preponderate; and although, by selecting quotations from various chapters, each party to our controversy could easily claim the General as an adherent to his cause, the advocates of the rifle could certainly amass more favourable texts. The following passage might almost be regarded as conclusive—"We must be resolute in freeing ourselves from those old-fashioned knightly combats, which have in reality become obsolete owing to the necessities of modern war" (p. 111)—if its teaching were not weakened by such a maxim as this: "The crowning-point of all drill and of the whole tactical training is the charge itself, as on it depends the final result of the battle" (p. 325). But let us get closer to his actual argument. The reader should carefully study pp. 101 to 105, where, under the heading "B.—The Action of Cavalry" and sub-heading "1.—General," the author discusses in close detail the action of "Cavalry in the fight." The reader may wonder why he should have to wait till the hundredth page for this discussion. With the exception of some introductory pages, whose general sense, on the question of weapons, is against the lance and sword, the greater part of the first hundred pages are devoted to "Reconnaissance, Screening, and Raids," functions none of which, least of all the third, can be performed without fighting, or at least the risk of fighting, while fighting cannot be performed without weapons. The reason probably is that the author, in arranging his scheme, instinctively tended, like all Cavalry writers, to regard reconnaissance as a sphere where Cavalry can confidently rely on meeting only Cavalry of exactly the same stamp as themselves, and where combats will as a matter of course be decided in the old knightly fashion by charges with steel.

Such a state of things has no resemblance to real war. Raids, for example, are invariably levelled against fixed points and stationary detachments. The author himself is acutely aware of this truth, as we shall see hereafter; but the postponement of the topic of weapons until the middle of the book is typical of the confused arrangement of the whole, a confusion attributable to the ubiquity of the rifle in all combats and the insuperable difficulty of supposing it to be an inferior weapon to the steel.

It is impossible, therefore, to adhere strictly to the order in which the author arranges his treatise. I shall begin with the general chapter just referred to, and proceed, as far as possible, according to his own order from that point onwards.

First of all, he finds it necessary to reject the plan of "dividing tactical principles according to the idea of the pre-arranged battle and the battle of encounter," a course which gives one an insight into the lifeless pedantry he has had to combat in the branch of military science he has made his own. Unfortunately, his own classification, so far as it bears upon weapons, is little better. He distinguishes the "great battle," in which "the fighting is always of a pre-arranged nature," from "the fight of the independent Cavalry," where "it is possible to distinguish between an encounter and an arranged affair." This is vague enough, but what follows is vaguer. One infers that there is to be little or no shock in the "great battle," where the Cavalry "must conform to the law of other arms in great matters and small." And then he goes on: "But the fight is deeply influenced even in the former case [i.e., in the combats of the independent Cavalry] by the co-operation of these other arms, and I believe that only in exceptional cases will a purely Cavalry combat take place—at all events, on a large scale. When squadrons, regiments, and perhaps even brigades, unassisted by other arms, come into collision with one another, the charge may often suffice for a decision. But where it is an affair of large masses, it will never be possible to dispense with the co-operation of firearms, and in most cases a combination of Cavalry combat, of dismounted fighting, and Artillery action, will ensue."

What lies behind this ambiguous language, which, remember, is the outcome of pure "speculation"? What principle is he trying to express? Let us proceed: "We must not conceal from ourselves the fact that in a future war it will be by no means always a matter of choice whether we will fight mounted or dismounted. Rather by himself seizing the rifle will the opponent be able to compel us to adopt dismounted action. On our manœuvre grounds the charge on horseback is always the order of the day, as against Artillery or machine-guns. The umpires continually allow such attacks to succeed, and the troops ride on as if nothing had happened. Equally fearless of consequences, do they expose themselves to rifle-fire; but there are no bullets. In real war it is different."

It is needless to point out that the words I have italicized destroy the whole case for the steel. They are an admission of the true principle that the rifle governs combat, whether the rifle is used by men with horses or men without horses. It is characteristic of the author that he cannot bring himself in this perilous context in set words to include Cavalry among those who "seize the rifle"; but the words themselves imply it, for we do not speak of Infantry "seizing the rifle." At a later point the author is a little bolder in the development of his meaning. "Our probable opponents, too, will certainly often advance dismounted. At all events, they are endeavouring to strengthen Cavalry divisions by cyclist battalions and Infantry, and perhaps by Mounted Infantry, and thereby already show a remarkable inclination to conduct the fight, even of Cavalry, with the firearm, and only to use their horses as a means of mobility, as was the custom of the Boers in South Africa"—and he might, of course, add, of the British mounted riflemen and of the British Cavalry. If only the author, who has advanced thus far on the path of common sense, would just for one experimental moment assume an open mind on the question of the steel, assume that it may perhaps be not merely partially, but wholly obsolete, and study the Boer War with real care from that point of view! He evidently thinks there is something in this idea of using horses as a means of mobility and the rifle as the operative weapon. He expressly warns his Cavalry that their probable enemy is showing ominous signs of adopting this system, and that their adoption of it will force the German Cavalry to conform.

Now mark that magical word "mobility." It is the germ of a new idea, a faint effort to escape from the dupery of phrases. Hitherto he has always spoken of "dismounted action" as distinguished from "mounted" or "Cavalry" combat. These phrases are always used by Cavalry theorists. They take the place of argument, implying as they do that the use of the rifle reduces horsemen to the condition of Infantry, robbing them of mobility and all that glamour of dash and vigour which illuminates the mounted arm. The truth lies in the contrary direction. Without rifle power Cavalry lose all effective mobility. They can ride about in vacuo, so to speak; but directly they enter the zone of rifle-fire they are paralyzed, unless they can use their horses and their rifles in effective combination. Then they can do what they please. Then, if necessary, they can even charge mounted, though that function is no more inseparably associated with their action than the charge at the double is inseparably associated with the action of Infantry. But is it not somewhat ludicrous to describe as "dismounted action," in contradistinction to "mounted action," a charge which ends, as the Boer charges ended, within point-blank or decisive range of the enemy and culminates in a murderously decisive fire-attack?

The worst of it is that General von Bernhardi will not analyze his own warnings and suggestions and see what they really lead him to. He appears to see in these troublesome hordes of "cyclists" and "Mounted Infantry" who menace the old order of things and are forcing Cavalry to conform to fire by fire, only auxiliaries to the orthodox Cavalry. But Cavalry themselves carry the very weapon which is promoting the revolution; nor should any self-respecting, properly trained Cavalry need to fortify itself from these external sources. At a later stage I shall have to show, from our own Mounted Infantry Manual, how grotesque are the results obtained by the theoretical co-operation of steel and fire in two different types of troops.

And Sir John French? He has read these passages, and with one word of manly pride in the war experience of his own countrymen, home and colonial—experience bought at terrible cost, and not without bitter humiliation, in three years of "real war"—he could set the speculative German author right, illuminate the tortuous paths in which his reason strays. So far from taking this course, he proves himself more reactionary than his foreign colleague; for the reader will see at once that the spirit of passages quoted above is quite different from the spirit of Sir John French's Introduction. Von Bernhardi is alarmed by the prospect of meeting mounted riflemen who, as he knows and expressly admits, will impose upon his Cavalry fire-tactics of which they are contemptuously ignorant. He is alarmed at the prospect of the hostile Cavalry themselves "conducting the fight with the firearm." Sir John French, as I have shown, believes, and says, that our mounted riflemen and our Cavalry, if they act as such, will "become the prey of the first foreign Cavalry they meet," running defenceless and helpless from the field. This is an example of the way in which Cavalry science proceeds, and it is a wonder that collaborators of the eminence of General von Bernhardi and General Sir John French do not see the humour of the thing, to use no stronger expression.