2. To combine fire concentrically with the main attack.
3. To pursue on parallel lines—a function which it is laid down on p. 229 is to be performed mainly with the rifle.
4. To force the enemy away from his direct line of retreat; which is merely a corollary of No. 3.
So far, good; but the arme blanche, as we might expect, is not going to be suppressed in this summary fashion, and when we pass from pious generalization to the actual "crisis," which "offers the greatest opportunities for Cavalry action," we breathe once more the intoxicating atmosphere of the great shock-charge, not against Cavalry now (for they are ex hypothesi extinct), but against Infantry and Artillery. There is a mild caution about the "modern bullet," but it is evidently not intended to be taken very seriously. The relation between the "flank" phase and functions and the "crisis" phase and functions is passed over in silence. Von Bernhardi's difficulty about deployment and advance under modern fire is surmounted by the simple direction that for what is called the "approach" surprise is essential; yet in the next breath "fire-swept zones" are envisaged which are to be passed over in a "series of rushes from shelter to shelter in the least vulnerable formation"—a process exclusive of surprise; and on the absolutely vital point of the formation for the actual attack one can positively watch the compilers struggling to reconcile Cromwellian principles with modern facts, and embodying the result in studiously vague and misleading language. The front of the Cavalry is not to be "too narrow," but the imperative necessity insisted on by von Bernhardi of wide extension in the whole attacking force is implicitly denied by the direction that "squadrons in extended order may be used to divert the enemy's attention from the real attack." Then, there is to be the stereotyped rally, which is to be in "mass," and the resulting mass is apparently to escape from further fire by using "another route."
When will our soldiers base their rules on war facts? As I have said, the facts show that it is still possible, in certain conditions, for men on horses, big target as they are, to penetrate a modern fire-zone, and attack and defeat riflemen and Artillery; but it is impossible to do so if they insist on conforming their methods to the assumption that they are to do their killing work by remaining in the saddle and wielding steel weapons. That idea is fatal. It is that idea which promotes these rules about not too narrow fronts, these grotesque mounted rallies in mass, and this pregnant silence about the real point of interest—what actually happens when a line of horsemen, stirrup to stirrup, or in extended order, wielding lances and swords, impinges on an extended line of dismounted riflemen. We know from war experience that such a charge, stirrup to stirrup, is as extinct as the dodo, and is advocated in set terms by no rational being. It has not even been tried or contemplated since 1870. We know that the widely extended type has shared the fate of the other, because, with the loss of physical "shock," the steel weapons have lost their whole historical raison d'être. The only practicable mounted charge known to modern war is that of the mounted riflemen, who fight up to the charge, and use the only weapon which is effective against riflemen—namely, the rifle, fortified, if need be, by the bayonet. This charge is not an essential to victory. Heaven knows we lost guns and men and transport enough in South Africa without any mounted charging. The very object of a missile weapon is to overcome distance in a way that the lance and sword cannot overcome it. For all we know, even the mounted rifle charge may wholly disappear as science improves the firearm. But that improved firearm will itself rule combat, and banish into still remoter realms of memory the reign of the lance and sword.
I have excepted the case of the "utterly demoralized" enemy—utterly demoralized, of course, by fire. He is, naturally, fair game for any weapon, and experience proves that the firearm once more is incomparably the best weapon. Lances and swords are, relatively, slow, cumbrous, and ineffective. A magazine pistol used even from horseback is a better weapon than either.
Nothing is said by our authorities as to attack during the battle upon the enemy's reserves and transport, enterprises in which von Bernhardi, after dismissing as a rare exception the great shock-charge, concludes that Cavalry are to seek their decisive opportunities. We may assume that, like raids on communications, they are ruled out. But no alternative to the shock-charge at the crisis is suggested, for the parallel pursuit is, of course, a subsequent phase. There is only the ominous reservation that, if the ground is not favourable to the shock-charge, the "Cavalry commander must look for his chance elsewhere, or wait for a more favourable opportunity" (p. 227).
That is just what we have to fear. That was the old, narrow, ignorant outlook of the continental Cavalries, who were always waiting for favourable opportunities, and accounts for the idleness and lack of enterprise which von Moltke stigmatized in 1866, and for the paltry character of their performances as a whole, which von Bernhardi recognizes and condemns. It accounts for the miserable failure of the Cossacks in Manchuria, and explains the success of the Japanese Cavalry, once they realized the worthlessness of their German instruction and textbooks, and discovered for themselves the worth of the rifle as a stimulus to activity and mobility. Von Bernhardi says (p. 202): "The greatest imaginable error ... is to adopt a waiting attitude ... in order that the possibility of a great charge might not slip by unutilized." That error is precisely what we have to fear. Teach Cavalry that their lances and swords are their principal weapons, and that the rifle is a defensive weapon; tell them that the "climax of training" is the steel charge, "since upon it depends the final result of the battle"; found their "spirit" on the steel; make it in theory their "proper rôle"; give it a vocabulary of stirring epithets, like "glorious," "relentless," "remorseless," and all the rest, and they are only too likely, eager for battle as they are, to "wait for favourable opportunities" which will never occur, when they ought to be busy and active with their horses and rifles.
The sections on pursuit and retreat are modelled on similar sections in von Bernhardi's earlier book, "Cavalry in Future Wars," and escape therefore some of the contradictions of the later work. Since they lay predominant stress on fire, we can only hope that their obvious blindness to the true reasons for fire does little harm. Pursuits, whether by Infantry or Cavalry, be they frontal, parallel, or intercepting, will always be governed by fire. The thing that really distinguishes Cavalry from Infantry is that they have horses, which give them a vast scope for a class of intercepting tactics which Infantry cannot undertake so easily. But even Infantry will be better at any form of pursuit than a purely shock-trained Cavalry. Sir John French would have intercepted the Boers, not only at Paardeberg, but at Poplar Grove, Karee Siding, Dewetsdorp, and Zand River, if his Cavalry had understood the rifle as well as they understood the horse. Retreat is the counterpart of pursuit, and the same principles apply. Cavalry ought to be able to fight a rearguard action better than Infantry, because, thanks to their mobility, they can choose defensive points more freely, hold them longer, and fall back to others quicker. But if they are taught that it is beneath them to entrench and to defend a fire-position with stubborn tenacity, and that their proper rôle is to be performing Frederician fantasias with the lance and sword, then they are likely, "in real war," to be relegated to a sphere "outside effective rifle-range," and to find their place usurped by Infantry and mounted riflemen. There is very little to be known about rearguard actions which the Boers have not taught us, and yet they were, in Cavalry parlance, "defenceless"—in other words, steelless riflemen.