RECONNAISSANCE
I come lastly to the author's chapters on "Reconnaissance, Screening, and Raids." As I explained before, it is the critic's simplest course to leave them to the last, because, although they come first, they almost ignore the subject of weapons and combats, on the assumption, apparently, that the opposing Cavalries, at any rate in the first two of the functions in question, will, as a matter of course, fight with the lance and sword in the pure and proper fashion. But we have now considered and tested the worth of the author's views on combat and weapons, and can apply our criticisms to these chapters.
Combat and weapons are not wholly overlooked. At the very outset comes the maxim which I quoted further back, to the effect that "the essence of Cavalry lies in the offensive," and that for defence they are to "abandon their proper rôle and seize the rifle on foot." The reader can appreciate now the value of this maxim, when we are dealing, as the author in these chapters is dealing, with two opposing Cavalries who are assumed to be acting against one another independently of other Arms. To tell both these Cavalries that their essence lies in the offensive is, to say the least, a superfluous platitude. To say that it is only in defence that they are to "seize the rifle" is to say something wholly meaningless. Unless by seizing it they can force their antagonists also to relinquish shock as useless and to seize the rifle, they might as well not seize it at all. If they can force their antagonists to seize it—and the whole mass of modern experience shows that they can and do—then their antagonists, whether we call their rôle proper or improper, are acting in offence with the firearm, and the maxim is stultified—as, indeed, any maxim which applies medieval language to modern problems must be stultified. Experience shows that if you arm men with long-range, smokeless, accurate missile weapons, whatever their traditions of etiquette and sportsmanship in peace, they will in war use those weapons to the exclusion of lances, swords, battle-axes, scimitars, and the various other weapons which were highly formidable before the days of gunpowder, but which have steadily declined since the invention and the progressive improvement of arms of precision.
Besides this general maxim upon the functions of the rifle and the steel, there are a few incidental allusions which must be noticed. The reader will remember the rule as to the powerlessness of the squadron as a unit for fire-action. The rule is anticipated here in directions for reconnoitring squadrons (p. 44), which, even by night, are only to fight with the arme blanche, "because dismounted action is generally dangerous, and, on account of the weakness of the force, usually leads to failure"; and we wonder again how both of two opposing reconnoitring squadrons can "fail," and how such a situation is actually to be dealt with on such principles in "real war"—say in the hedge-bound country which covers two-thirds of England. We are also told (p. 57) that patrols, "on collision with the enemy's patrols," are to take action "in as offensive a spirit as possible, but after due reflection." "Should a charge promise any kind of success, the opponent must be attacked in the most determined way." Nothing is said about fire, but we are left with the impression that a fire-attack can be neither "offensive" nor "determined," and for the rest we have to be content with guidance like the following: "It does not promise success to attack the front of an advancing squadron under the apprehension that it is a single patrol."
One day's personal experience of modern war would teach the author the perilous futility of all these "speculative" conjectures. Has he forgotten altogether the power and purpose of the modern rifle—the rapidity, accuracy, and secrecy of its fire—when he speaks of patrols indulging in due reflection about their determined offensive charges? It is to be feared that at the hands of any but utterly incompetent troops his own contemplative patrols would receive short shrift. And the lesson of South Africa? It is hard to see why, in the matter of patrols at any rate, those three years of war should be regarded as abnormal. Yet it is the fact, as I must repeat, that no Cavalry patrol or scout from the beginning to the end of the war ever used the lance or sword; that in reconnaissance no Boer ever came near being hurt by those weapons; and, furthermore, that the Cavalry were consistently and thoroughly outmatched in reconnaissance, which was governed universally by the rifle. It was exactly the same in Manchuria. Instead of reminding his German confrère of these facts, Sir John French complains that the difficulty of the Cavalry in South Africa was that they had nothing to reconnoitre, while he implicitly approves and applauds the conception of the reflective charging patrol.
To clinch the matter, we need only remind ourselves that our own divisional mounted troops, whose sole weapon is the rifle, are entrusted not only with reconnaissance for their own division, but, in certain events, with exactly the same duties as the Independent and protective Cavalry. In these duties they will be pitted (in the event of a Continental war) against steel-armed Cavalry. If steel weapons were of any use, this would be criminal.
Such are the scanty clues as to combat which we obtain from the chapters on reconnaissance. It remains to ask, What is von Bernhardi's view upon the great question of the employment of the Army or Independent Cavalry (as distinguished from the divisional Cavalry) in the most important of all its functions in modern war—reconnaissance? I defy anyone to answer that question. So far as it is possible to construct any positive view from a series of obscure and contradictory propositions, it appears to be a view which is in direct conflict with that of Sir John French and of the Cavalry Manual which presumably he approves, while approving equally of General von Bernhardi. Anyone familiar with Cavalry literature will know of the old controversy between the theories of concentration and dispersion. Is the Army Cavalry at the opening of a campaign to concentrate and "drive from the field" the enemy's Army Cavalry, or is it from the outset to begin its work of exploring the various lines of approach of the various hostile columns over the whole front—an enormously extensive front—upon which great modern armies must develop their advance?