War and the Arme Blanche

by Erskine Childers

We must arrive at some other interpretation; and yet there seems to be no other that does not involve the writer in self-refutation. Read literally, the sentence compares “a force of Cavalry” (sent out under the circumstances described) to a squadron of war-vessels badly armed, badly trained, and ill-found, while the unequal naval fight with the “great fleet,” which results, is intended surely to be analogous to the “Cavalry fight.” Both are “means to an end”—in the one case to landing and invasion, in the other to the destruction of a hostile army. In the last sentence the simile becomes more precise, the “duel” between hostile fleets being expressly likened to the “Cavalry battle,” and very aptly likened, if we do not assume with General French that the Cavalry battle must inevitably be a shock battle. It is true that in the case of the South African War the simile is impaired by the fact that the “opposing Cavalry,” constituting as they did the entire hostile force, cannot be regarded as the counterpart of our Cavalry. But, disregarding that material point, where does the simile lead us? To the conclusion that our Cavalry were badly armed, badly trained, and ill-found. That is admittedly true of armament and training; for the rifle has been permanently substituted for the carbine, and “thorough efficiency” in its use officially enjoined ever since, while the steel weapon, during the war, failed. “Ill-found” might refer to horses. But the General, as the context shows, does not mean to take this dangerous line of argument. Who, then, were the troops referred to? No part of the army was “ill-found” by comparison with the Boers, who in most of the resources possessed by great and wealthy nations were miserably ill-found, and were reduced for the last year to destitution. “Badly armed,” except in the case of the Cavalry, is another misnomer. The Infantry were armed with the best modern rifle, and although the Artillery at first found their guns outranged, they soon received the aid of naval and other heavy guns, and always had an overwhelming numerical superiority over the Boers. “Badly trained” does, indeed, apply in a certain sense to the whole army, particularly to its practical organization for war. But it applies, too, to the Boers, and in the latter respect far more pertinently.

I have no desire idly to split straws. If the passage I have quoted formed part of a reasoned argument for the abnormality of our great war, I agree that it would be unfair to make too much of a case of obscure exposition. But it stands alone, and I am justified in criticizing the attitude of mind which permits so high a Cavalry authority as General French, in an essay part of which is explicitly directed against the advocates of mounted riflemen, to treat so vaguely and superficially the great national struggle which, for the time being, at any rate, did confirm their views. My justification is the greater in that such an attitude of mind is strictly typical of a great number of the adherents of the shock system. Pressed, they are altogether unable to put into precise language their reasons for disregarding the Boer War. In a later chapter, when dealing with the Manchurian War, I shall have to refer to General French’s equally inadequate treatment of the theme of another case of abnormality.

In the meantime I can do no better than take two propositions from the paragraph quoted above, about which there can be no doubt. (1) A “Cavalry battle” without shock is inconceivable to General French. There must be either shock or no battle, for surely no opponent of shock would go so far as to argue that, shock being a thing of the past, it was “inutility and waste” for opposing sets of mounted troops to fight with one another at all, in any way? We have here, in an unusually extreme form, that theory of the inevitable shock duel between opposing Cavalries to which I alluded in my second chapter. It occurs again on page xxii of the same Introduction.

“How, I ask, can the Cavalry perform its rôle in war until the enemy’s Cavalry is defeated and paralyzed? I challenge any Cavalry officer, British or foreign, to deny the principle that Cavalry, acting as such against its own arm, can never attain complete success unless it is proficient in shock tactics.”

Here is the case complete, but, alas! strangely qualified by the words I have italicized. Is there some arrière-pensée here? What if the hostile Cavalry, like the Boers, do not believe in shock? Surely, the case thus stated begs the whole question at issue. Observe that the underlying axiom is that the steel can always impose tactics on the firearm. Contrast this axiom with the facts of the Boer War, where the Boers were the “opposing Cavalry,” and were admittedly strong enough, though in what way we are not told, to throw into prominence the many defects of the great army sent to overcome them. And, by the way, we may remind the General that it did overcome them in the end, mainly through the improvisation of mounted riflemen (whom he ignores altogether), and through the assimilation of the Cavalry to that type.

(2) The other clear deduction from the paragraph is this, that the Boers were, on the whole, from whatever cause, a formidable enemy. They are compared to a powerful fleet, and we are represented, in whatever capacity, as suffering from certain weaknesses. That is the general colour of the argument, and I draw the reader’s attention to it, because the gist of Mr. Goldman’s argument is of a precisely opposite character; and this contradiction, in one form or another, runs through all the hazy generalizations that one hears expressed in public or private on the topic of abnormality.

To the best of my belief, Mr. Goldman is the only writer who has had the courage to set forth categorically, in the form of a reasoned argument designed expressly to prove the superiority of Cavalry over mounted riflemen, the various grounds for regarding the South African War as abnormal. He does this in his Appendix A. to “With French in South Africa” (1903), and again in his preface to Von Bernhardi’s “Cavalry in Future Wars.”

Before examining these grounds it is essential to know what Mr. Goldman means by a “mounted rifleman.” Here is his appreciation, on page 408 of the former book: “... the horseman armed only with a rifle. We may assume that he has received the special Cavalry training aforesaid, and that in every way he is qualified to perform the duties of Cavalry.” (I do not know what to make of this curious admission.) “But he is equipped solely to fight on foot. Hence, no sooner does it become necessary for him to assume the offensive than he is forced to dismount, and from that moment his rate of progress depends solely upon the pace he can walk.”

Truly, a poor creature! But we think of South Africa and rub our eyes. Was this the figure cut by mounted riflemen, Boer and British, in South Africa? It may be said without exaggeration that all the “offensive” mounted work was done by mounted riflemen or by Cavalry acting as such. And think of the charges—Bakenlaagte, for example. At what moment did Botha’s men begin to “assume the offensive”? According to Mr. Goldman, when they “dismounted.” And when was that? Within point-blank range of our guns, after a charge of a mile and a half.

To proceed with the quotation: “Moreover, he has given hostages to fortune. His led horses being an easy prey to a handful of mounted horsemen, he cannot leave them far behind, for, should he lose them, his usefulness for reconnoitring purposes is gone; the opposing Cavalry will merely push on and through the gap he has left in his screen.” We rub our eyes again. When did Boer led horses fall a prey to Cavalry, acting as “Cavalry”? Not in a single instance. As for the idea that the mounted rifleman is handicapped for “reconnoitring purposes”—after all the bitter losses and humiliations from which we suffered in South Africa through imperfect reconnaissance, one can only regard the suggestion with respectful amazement. Similarly with the suggestion about “pushing through gaps in screens.” This, as I have repeatedly pointed out, is what the Cavalry could not do. Their inability to do it was the predominant characteristic of all the fighting in which they were engaged—with one only apparent exception—the Klip Drift charge, where the screen was not a screen, but an isolated skirmishing line of 900 men and 2 guns, which was pierced without shock, and almost without bloodshed, by 5,000 horsemen, covered by the fire of 56 guns, and supported by a division of Infantry.