But the climax comes when he coolly tells Sir John French that the German Cavalry, whose backwardness and "indolence" he condemns in the very book which Sir John French sponsors, whom he regards as absolutely "unprepared for war," whose "prehistoric" tactics, "old-fashioned knightly combats," "antiquated Regulations," and "tactical orgies," he is at this moment satirizing, would, twelve years ago, with still more antiquated Regulations, with still less education, and with a far worse armament, have taught the Boer peasants lessons with the steel which our faint-spirited Cavalry could not teach them! All patriotic feelings apart, and merely as a military experiment, one would like to have seen the German Uhlans of 1899, with their popgun carbine and Frederician traditions, and without a vestige of aid, inspiration or example from Colonial or Mounted Infantry sources, tackling the Boers at Talana or Zand River, at Colenso, Diamond Hill, or Magersfontein, at Ladysmith or Sannah's Post, at Roodewal or Bakenlaagte. At the last two episodes the General is quite certain that they would have done far more marvellous feats with the steel by means of an old-fashioned knightly combat than the Boers did with the rifle.
Serious students of land-war, anxious only to elucidate the purely technical question as to whether horsemen in modern days can fight effectively on horseback with steel weapons, look on in amazed bewilderment, while high authorities on the affirmative side conspire to render themselves and one another ridiculous by dragging in political, psychological, strategical, and even lyrical factors which have nothing whatever to do with the simple issue of combat. There, as I have often said, is the reader's clue through the labyrinth of contradictions. Neither Sir John French nor General von Bernhardi ever really discusses at all the real point at issue. That is why they succeed in agreeing upon it, while differing radically in their logical processes. As the reader probably realizes now, nearly everything the latter General writes is either susceptible of two constructions or is subject to subsequent qualification. This critical essay on the opinions of Lord Roberts and on my book, "War and the Arme Blanche," is only another illustration of the same mental habit. Though he is explicit enough on what he regards as the feeble initiative of the British Army in general and the British Cavalry in particular, he never attempts to trace any direct causal connection between this topic and the topic of the lance or sword. He dare not. Remote insinuation is his only weapon. Yet, for the purposes of his article, that specific link is the only thing worth talking about. So far as he does touch the question of physical combat—as, for example, where he says that the Boers "fought entirely with the rifle, and this the mounted troops of England had to learn," "that the Boers were far superior in the fire-fight," that the absence of "Cavalry duels" in South Africa was caused (mark this deliciously naïve admission) by the fact of the armament and the numerical weakness of the Boers—he is on my side. And I need scarcely add that the reader will find it easy to demolish the General's whole dream of the lost opportunities of the lance and sword in South Africa or Manchuria, or of its golden chances in any future war, by passages from the General's own work, criticized in this volume, as when he implores his own Cavalry to remember that they may have to meet mounted riflemen, or even heterodox Cavalry, who, using their horses only as a means of mobility in the Boer fashion, will, in defiance of the German text-books, advance dismounted, and force the German troopers to do the same; or when he lays down that the attack or defence of any "locality," entrenched or unentrenched, and by whomsoever defended or attacked, must be accomplished through fire-action. It is true that the theoretical limitations he sets to fire-action, from sheer ignorance of what fire-action by mounted troops is, reduce that form of combat also to a nullity; but on that point anyone can test his views by facts. Although it is quite possible to prove from his premisses, if their truth be postulated, that the South African War never took place at all, without going to the trouble of proving that it was "abnormal" in the matter of the futility of the lance and sword, we know that it did take place, why lances and swords were futile, and why fire was supreme.
3. So in reality does General von Bernhardi himself, and in the title of this chapter is crystallized his explicit statement of the truth. Faithful to his habitual system of alternate adhesion to two incompatible theories, the General, after clearly enough condemning the British Cavalry for their timidity with the steel, makes the following remarkable volte face:
"In one particular, however, I will own he [i.e., Mr. Childers] is correct: the firearm rules tactics. That is indisputable. Nobody can with the arme blanche compel an opponent on his side tactically to use the arme blanche." (This last is a very dark saying, for the Boers had no arme blanche; but it does not affect the general sense.) "To the laws of the fire-fight everything must be subordinated in war."
Well, that is precisely what Lord Roberts, the greatest soldier living, and many humbler persons, including myself, have contended for. Cadit quæstio. Why not have begun "Cavalry in War and Peace" with these illuminating axioms? Why not have them placed in the forefront of our own Cavalry Manual, in the approaching revision of that important work? Why give the dominating operative weapon only 10 or 15 per cent. of the time of the Cavalry soldier, and make it officially subordinate to steel weapons which can only be used by its indulgence? But I am going a little too fast. The General, as usual, has a qualification. What is it? "But as a necessary corollary from this, to say that there can be no fight with the arme blanche is a mischievous sophism." Again we agree—in the sense, that is, in which the author now elects to use the phrase "arme blanche." For he means the bayonet. "Every Infantryman carries a bayonet, because he requires it for the assault. Even Lord Roberts will not take this away," etc. No; and no one in the world, so far as I know, wants to take away the bayonet from the Infantryman. But, as I asked at page 121, what has the bayonet got to do with the lance and sword? The bayonet is fixed to the rifle, and used on foot as an element in fire-tactics. The lance and sword are used from horseback in tactics which are diametrically opposite to and absolutely incompatible with fire-tactics, and every word Lord Roberts or I have written has been directly aimed against this antiquated system of fighting on horseback with the lance and sword. If the Cavalryman, because, by universal consent, he has constantly to do work similar to that of Infantry, requires a bayonet, by all means give it to him. I discussed the question in my previous book, and ventured to regard it as an open one, for reasons which I need not repeat now. But I over and over again took pains to point out the fundamental distinction between the bayonet and the lance and sword.
On another point the General misrepresents me. Because I showed by illustration from war the marked physical and moral effects of rifle-fire from the saddle, he treats me as advancing the specific plan of substituting rifle-fire on horseback for the use of the lance and sword on horseback in what his translator calls the "collision of the mounted fight" (Handgemenge zu Pferde). This is a perversion of my meaning. The collisions he is thinking of are obsolete. Though I think that for all conceivable purposes a pistol would be better than a lance or sword, I adhered to the facts, and pointed out that saddle-fire in South Africa was used before contact, and that in order to consummate their destructive rifle-charges, the Boers dismounted, either at close quarters or within point-blank range.
II.—Views of the General Staff.
I wish to lay special stress on these two misrepresentations, because both have been also made by our own General Staff. In a review of my previous book, whose general fairness and courtesy I gladly recognize, the Monthly Notes of July, 1910, took exactly the same erroneous points, and, for the rest, adopted the strange course of ruling out all the remarkable South African charges with the rifle by quietly assuming that they would have been done better with the sword or lance.
He takes as an example the action of Bakenlaagte, and convinces himself that Cavalry "as ably led" would, by sticking persistently to their saddles, have done better with the steel than the Boers who inflicted such terrible punishment with their rifles upon Benson's brave and seasoned troops. This is an unintentional slur not only upon Benson's men but upon our Cavalry, who, on the reviewer's assumption, ought certainly to have inflicted similar punishment upon the Boers on scores of occasions where the tactical conditions were approximately the same as those at Bakenlaagte. The reviewer arbitrarily begins his imaginary parallel at the moment at which Botha's final charge started, and pictures the steel-trained troops already in full career like the fire-trained troops who actually made the charge. War is not so easy as all that. He ignores the characteristically clever fire-tactics which for hours before had been leading up to the requisite situation, and forgets that steel-trained troops would never have had the skill or insight to produce and utilize that situation. Moreover, their training Manual not only does not contemplate, but renders prohibitive any such instantaneous transition from fire to shock as would have been required. But the reviewer surpasses himself when, having triumphantly brought his steel-trained troops through the preparatory phase and the charging phase (with the incidental riding down and capture of several detached bodies of men), he pictures them confronted with the objective ultimately charged—namely, Benson's rearguard of guns and riflemen on Gun Hill. These men had had just time to rally, and were lined out on a long ridge in open order and in splendid fighting fettle. Their fire hitherto had been masked by the rearmost sections of their own men, who were galloping in with the Boers at their heels. What the Boers now did was to fling themselves from their ponies, by instinct, in the dead ground below the ridge, and to charge up it on foot, where after a brief and desperate encounter they exterminated Benson's heroic rearguard and captured the guns. This action the reviewer regards as clumsy and dilatory. His Lancers, disdaining to dismount, would have ridden up the hill—painfully vulnerable targets for the rifles on the ridge—and, arrived on the top, would either have gone riding about among the scattered defenders trying to impale with lances or reach with swords riflemen who would have laughed in their faces at this ineffectual method of fighting, or (and the reviewer favours this alternative) would have been content to impale a chance few en passant, and, without drawing rein, would have galloped on towards the main body and convoy, leaving "supporting squadrons," whom he coolly invents for the occasion (for the Boers had none), to "deal with" the rearguard in the knightly fashion aforesaid. Sweeping on, and again disdaining to dismount on reaching the next objective, our Lancers would have "spread havoc and consternation" among the convoy. Would they? You cannot stampede or disable inspanned oxen and mules or their drivers by brandishing swords and lances. And surely one does not "charge" ox-waggons with those weapons. What you want for these occasions is the bullet, whether for beasts, drivers, or escort. By bitter experience of our own on only too many occasions we know all about the right way of spreading havoc and consternation among convoys. Lances and swords never produced these effects in a single case in three years. And the escort and main body? Why, a few dozen steady men with rifles would turn the tables on, and, in their turn, spread havoc among a whole brigade of Lancers who insisted on remaining in their saddles.