In "Formations for Movement" (pp. 232-238) he continues his unconscious reductio ad absurdum of shock. "Movements in such close formation right up to the moment of deployment" (and he describes those enjoined by the Regulations) "cannot go unpunished upon a modern battle-field." The Regulations "cannot be regarded as practical," and are "pretexts for hidebound drill enthusiasts." It is all very well, but these hidebound gentlemen are perfectly right in their own way. They are following his own models, Frederick the Great and Napoleon, in whose days such movements were perfectly possible. They believe in shock and minimize fire, and their Regulations, if unpractical, are at least logical.
So much for the "purely Cavalry fight." We come on page 128 to the mounted charge upon dismounted riflemen, whom, in the manner usual with Cavalry writers, he assumes to be Infantry, though it is obvious, of course, that they may be unconventional Cavalry, who, from a sense of fun or a sane instinct for fighting, have determined to play a practical joke on devotees of the pure faith. Here both he and the Regulations are up to a certain point in harmony with one another. As a concession to modern conditions, the charge is to be in extended order. Here the General has changed his views since writing "Cavalry in Future Wars." There the principles of Frederick the Great were supreme in all charges, with just a faint concession towards a "loosening of the files" in a charge against Infantry. Now "wide intervals" are to be employed. Sir John French ignores the change of view on an absolutely vital point of tactics, but allows us to infer that he, one of the very men who saw the imperative necessity for the new view, favours the old view; for he described von Bernhardi's first book as absolutely complete and faultless. To return, however, to the German author. It is amazing that, having reached this point, he should not trouble to investigate the phenomena of modern war with a view to finding out what actually happens in an extended change of this sort. He writes in the clouds, just as though there were not a mass of experience bearing on the point.
The experience, which a child can understand, amounts to this: If you extend, and, a fortiori, if your enemy is extended also, you lose all hope of "shock," that is, of physical impact; and with the loss of this impact you lose the fundamental condition precedent to the successful use of steel weapons on horseback—the condition which Frederick the Great's leaders had, but which ours have not. You also lose momentum, speed, because the modern rifle, by immensely widening the bullet-swept zone, necessitates a far longer gallop for the charging force. The German Regulations realize this, for they enjoin a slower pace, expressly on the ground that "impact" is not to be aimed at. Very well: no shock; comparatively low speed. What is going to happen? Your steel charge is useless. Individual troopers, bound by their code of honour to remain in the saddle, and pitted against individual riflemen on foot, are helpless, an object of derision to gods and men. Our own Infantry Manual openly treats them as helpless and negligible, and in a few curt lines gives directions, proved in war to be sound, for the event of such a charge, should it take place.
But, in fact, it does not take place. Our Cavalry in South Africa had literally thousands of chances of making such charges, supposing that they were feasible. But they were not; instinctively the leaders felt that they were not, and ceased to think of making them. At the time when, if ever, any given leader should have made up his mind to charge, he was, unfortunately, as a general rule, in that condition of painful "uncertainty as to the strength and intentions of the enemy," to which the German Regulations allude. He could not, in the German fashion, ride about in mass to reconnoitre, because the Boers, perversely refusing to believe in the tactics of Frederick the Great, did not co-operate in the game. He had, therefore, the choice between idleness and fire-action. He chose fire-action, and once engaged in fire-action, he found that he had to stick to it. It was physically impossible to "combine" fire-action and steel-action, even if there had been an opening for steel-action, which there was not. That is the whole story, and Sir John French, if he chose, could tell General von Bernhardi all about it.
I believe Sir John French himself never saw a Boer or British mounted riflemen's charge, but he ought to know the evidence on the point; it is extensive and precise.[3] It goes to show that it is sometimes possible, even against the modern rifle, to charge in widely extended order, even at a canter, and even into close quarters, on horseback; but it can be done only by fighting up to the charge in the normal way of fire-action, and by casting to the winds the ancient notion that it is beneath a trooper to dismount. Sooner or later he has got to dismount, so as to use effective aimed fire against the riflemen opposed to him. They will not mind his sword, whose range is a couple of yards, while their weapon is of any range you please, and squirts bullets like a hose.
Frederick the Great's Infantry firearm was another matter. Even in 1861-1865, as von Bernhardi would discover if he cared to look close enough into his own chosen war, steel-charges by Cavalry against Infantry eventually became extinct. The Confederate Infantry used to jeer at the futile efforts of the Federal Cavalry.
Needless to say, the German Regulations only touch the fringe of what is practicable. It is only the leading line, they lay down, and not necessarily the whole even of that, which is to adopt wide intervals. Von Bernhardi easily shows the folly of these half-measures, and of the "arbitrary assumption that a line of Cavalry 1,500 or 2,000 yards wide can cross a mile of country stirrup to stirrup at the regulation pace of the charge" (p. 128).
III.—The Dismounted Attack by Cavalry.
We pass to the dismounted attack by Cavalry, and the reader will realize now, if he has not before, that it is due to unfamiliarity with the technique and true possibilities of fire-action that the General clings to the discredited tactics of Frederick the Great in defiance of his professed enthusiasm for the rifle. For the dismounted attack by Cavalry, "the principles," he says, "are the same as for an attack by Infantry" (p. 133). But the led horses render the business "considerably more difficult." "There is also a certain difference according as the opponent is Cavalry or Infantry"; for in the former case he may charge your led horses. It is here and in the pages which follow that the reader can get the clearest insight into the mental attitude of Cavalrymen towards that arbiter of modern war, the rifle.