One falls, I must frankly admit, into profound discouragement when one meets arguments of this sort coming from a quarter where arguments lead to rules and regulations. It is quite true that this important review, in its moderate tone and in its tacit avowal that there was need of some reform in the present regulations, bore no resemblance to the criticisms which proceeded from some individual Cavalry officers. There were indications—reliable, I hope—that the old knee-to-knee knightly shock-charge, now regarded officially as the "climax of Cavalry training," was doomed, and that the open-order charge with the steel, presumed to be analogous to the open-order charge with the rifle, was the utmost now contemplated. But in truth, as I pointed out in Chapters IV. and VI., there exists no such analogy, or the war would have demonstrated it. If such steel-charges were possible, our Cavalry had innumerable chances of carrying them out under far more favourable conditions, owing to our permanent numerical superiority, than the Boers ever obtained for their attacks, by the charge or otherwise.
The steel-charge, close or open, was the traditional function of our Cavalry; it was the only form of combat that they really understood when they landed in South Africa, and they were supremely efficient in it. The point is that in practice they could not charge with the steel, except in the rare and well-nigh negligible cases which are on record. They ceased altogether to try so to charge, because to fight with the steel on horseback was physically impossible. Their steel weapons were eventually returned to store on that account. And they profited by the resulting change of spirit, and by the acquisition, late as it came, of a respectable firearm. To say that the fire-charge invented and practised by the Boers as early as March, 1900, when lances and swords were still in the field, and imitated to some extent by our own Colonials and Mounted Infantry, could, after all, have been done as well and better with the lance and sword, is conjecture run mad. Sir John French has never used the argument. He could not, with any shadow of plausibility, combine it with his complaint about the lightning flights of the Boers and the absence of anything to reconnoitre. It is, I grant, the most impressive official testimonial ever given to the arme blanche, but it is not business. One might as well argue that the work done by Togo's torpedo-boats would have been done better by the beaks of triremes. We know and have seen what actually happened. We had nearly three years in which to arrive by experiment at tactical truths. In the name of common sense let us accept the results, especially when they are corroborated by the results of the other great modern war, that in Manchuria.
Directly or indirectly, I think that in the course of this volume I have replied to most of the criticisms which my previous book, "War and the Arme Blanche," drew forth. But I should like to make a brief reference to an interesting discussion of the subject conducted mainly by Cavalry officers on October 19, 1910, at the Royal United Service Institution. A reader of the report in the Journal of November, 1910, must feel that the proceedings would have gained in clarity and harmony had von Bernhardi's belated maxim that the "firearm rules tactics" been made the basis of the debate. Strange things were said on the side of the arme blanche. One officer urged that Cavalry should not have a rifle—that arbiter of tactics—at all, should use shock alone, and should not be "frittered away as scouts." Another complained that, in arguing mainly from the South African and Manchurian Wars, I "could not have selected two worse examples." I am not to blame. It is not a case of selection. These are the only great civilized wars since the "revolution" (to use von Bernhardi's phrase) wrought by modern firearms.
The close-order shock-charge has never even been tried or contemplated in civilized war since 1870, and even then it was moribund. Yet the lecturer argued from Waterloo, and, unconscious of the slight upon his Arm, was at great pains to claim that even now Cavalry kept in reserve for the occasion could attack two-year conscripts who had already been reduced to "pulp" by several days of fire and fatigue. "If," he said, "they could stick their lances into quite a large proportion," the rest "would have the most marked reluctance to remain upon the ground." Perhaps. Von Bernhardi also claims that Infantry, who under stress of fire have reached the point of throwing away their arms, may be attacked successfully with the steel. Let us allow the claim, only remarking that experience shows a rifle to be a far more destructive weapon for such circumstances than a lance or sword. But, instead of idly awaiting these not very glorious opportunities for the steel, would it not be better for the Cavalry to be mobile and busy from the first in using the same formidable weapon which originally reduced the Infantry to pulp, using it in that limitless sphere of envelopment, interception, and surprise to which the possession of horses gives them access?
Another extraordinary feature of the discussion was the dissociation of moral effect from killing effect by some of the Cavalry officers present, who really seemed to think that riflemen in war are afraid of horses, irrespective of weapons, whereas in fact they welcome so substantial a target for their rifles, and fear only the rider's weapon in direct proportion to its deadliness. These officers were convinced that their Arm, trained to charge as it now is, exercises great moral effect, yet they agreed that the importance of killing the enemy with the steel is at present neglected, and that the art of so killing is not even taught. The lecturer argued that our Cavalry would be a "more terrifying weapon than it is at present" if every trooper could be brought to "understand that he has to stick his sword or lance into the body of his opponent." Another officer urged that "each horseman in a charge should be taught that he must kill at least one adversary"; and the Chairman strongly emphasized "the necessity of training the men to kill." "The reason," he said, "that a man had a sword or spear was to kill." The truth is that some arts perish from disuse. This art cannot be exercised in war, so wars come and go, and the very tradition of its exercise disappears, and in peace is replaced, as the Chairman said, by "piercing yells" and the "waving of swords."
A Horse Artillery officer threw a bombshell into the debate by complaining that his Arm was often forbidden at manœuvres to open fire on the hostile Cavalry masses (vide supra, pp. 127 and 131), in order to allow the collision to take place on "favourable ground," and asked for guidance. The Chairman replied that the Artillery could be trusted to be "loyal." But can they, in this particular matter? Let us hope not.
A small minority ably upheld the case against the arme blanche, and the discussion, as a whole, was of considerable value. General Sir R.S. Baden-Powell went to the root of the matter when he confessed that a "policy had never properly been laid down" for the Cavalry, and that they "wanted a policy to begin with before they commenced training." That is the literal truth, and I hope to have proved that no rational, clear, consistent policy ever will be laid down until the rifle is made in peace-theory what it already is in war-practice—the dominant, all-important weapon of Cavalry—and until the axiom that the rifle rules tactics is accepted and systematically acted upon. I claim that von Bernhardi's writings, and the manner of their acceptance in this country, prove conclusively that that is the condition precedent to a sound policy. He has no policy; we have no policy. We have not even a terminology suitable to modern conditions.
I believe it correct also to say that the principal cause of the persistence of the arme blanche theory in this country is its retention by foreign Cavalries who are without war experience, and who, on account of its retention, are backward in every department of their science.
In Sir John French's words, we try to assimilate the best foreign customs, and we choose for assimilation the very customs which we ourselves have proved in war to be not only valueless, but vicious.