Let me first recall the attitude of the German General Staff towards the mounted problems raised by our war. The whole of the issue we are discussing is “taboo” to them. Indeed, the whole mounted question is “taboo” to them. In the rare comments on mounted action—comments confined mainly to the Kimberley operations, and referred to in my own Chapters VI. and VII.—the German Official Historian never so much as by a line even indirectly contrasts the relative powers of mounted riflemen and Cavalry. During the period covered by the History, he speaks of the Boers nearly always as though they were Infantry, and alludes in general terms to their “purely defensive powers,” in spite of incidents—rare, no doubt, in the early stages, but strongly suggestive of the future—like Talana Hill, Nicholson’s Nek, Wagon Hill, Spion Kop, Waterval, Kitchener’s Kopje, Sannah’s Post, all of which occurred within the period described. And just at the time of Sannah’s Post and De Wet’s raids, when the Boers were beginning a consistent development of aggressive mobility, not in the “regular” battles, where in numbers they were hopelessly outmatched, but in independent adventure; just, moreover, when aggressive mounted effort on our side was beginning to be more urgently necessary than ever before, the detailed narrative ends. After March, 1900, “the battles furnish in their details little instruction of tactical value,”[[74]] and the whole campaign from Bloemfontein to Komati Poort receives only a brief summary. The guerilla war—a wholly mounted war—obtains half a page.
Then comes a “tactical retrospect,” in which it becomes perfectly clear that for the writer the whole interest of the war centres in the development of fire-tactics for riflemen. Whether they have horses in the background or not seems to be immaterial, and for practical purposes he assumes that they have not. This assumption destroys the value of more than half his criticism. The whole point was that the Boer riflemen were mounted riflemen, able, by the rifle, to defend a position in small force against superior force, and, by the horse, to leave that position when it became too hot. Obviously these men, though they could be, and were, attacked vehemently by Infantry, could never, unless they courted suicide, be defeated and destroyed by Infantry, who walk and do not ride. Obviously, too, you cannot expect even the best Infantry under the best leaders eternally to sustain at the highest level the ardour of the fire-fight on foot unless they know that riflemen equal in mobility to the enemy—that is, mounted riflemen—are co-operating with equal ardour and efficiency for that defeat and destruction of the mounted enemy which mounted men can alone ensure. This sense of skilled and effective co-operation is exactly what our Infantry did not have, from causes I need not enter into again. The German critic is blind to the defect, because he is blind to the whole mounted problem. Regarding the Boers as Infantry, he regards our Infantry and the Generals who controlled them as solely responsible for the incompleteness of our victories, and goes to the monstrous length of attributing this incomplete achievement partly to the “inferior quality of a mercenary army.”
The writer of the retrospect knew that the Boers had horses, for in one passage he alludes to their “mobility,” and he knew that we had a large body of Cavalry and mounted riflemen, for in another solitary passage he casually alludes to their ineffective turning movements. But the “Infantry fight,” which in all war “decides the battle,” is the main theme throughout, and remarkably interesting the critic’s observations are. So far as they go, they apply just as closely to mounted riflemen as to Infantry, though the critic himself is wholly unconscious of the analogy and of the implied condemnation he over and over again makes on the theory underlying the steel armament of Cavalry.
If he had proceeded with a study of the war, and had thoroughly digested the fact that the Boers not only had horses, but could attack, what would have been his conclusions? If only he had thoroughly realized that our Infantry had not horses, he would, I am sure, have modified some of his strictures on the use of that arm, on the excessive “dread of losses,” and so on. Some inkling of the truth that mobility often transcends vulnerability, and that mounted riflemen can in the long run be thoroughly defeated only by mounted riflemen, would have dawned upon him. But who knows? So strange and persistent is his reticence about the arme blanche, so outspoken his surprise and delight when—for example, at Paardeberg—he finds Cavalry using the carbine with success, that one would almost imagine he had received the mot d’ordre for silence on the whole topic. However, let this be clear, at any rate: (1) That there is no explicit comfort for the arme blanche in any page of these two volumes; (2) that there is no suggestion of any peculiarity or abnormality in the Boer War which renders its lessons inapplicable to future wars. Mr. Goldman’s case for peculiarity crumbles in the light of this searching analysis of fire-tactics. Substitute “mounted riflemen” for “riflemen” in cases where the facts obviously demand the change, and the whole structure of “strategical mishandling” and slack Boer resistance falls to pieces. The idea that the Boers needed only the arme blanche to make them formidable is refuted a hundred times by implication.
And now let us turn to Bernhardi. Here, by a welcome contrast, we have an enthusiast for the mounted arm. Not a disproportionately ardent enthusiast by any means. Armament apart, not a word he says in support of the profound importance of Cavalry in future wars is exaggerated. On the contrary, he underrates their rôle, as I shall show. The Boers, in the one allusion to them, are not “Infantry” for him, but “Cavalry,” and he has evidently been deeply impressed by the bearing of our war upon Cavalry problems—how deeply impressed it is impossible to say. His first edition was published in 1899, just before the war began; the second, which Mr. Goldman has translated, in 1902, when it was barely over. His strong views on the great importance of fire-action were evidently inspired by the American Civil War and by the poor performances of the shock-trained European Cavalries, including those of the Prussian Cavalry, in the wars of 1866, 1870, and 1877. In his second edition he never illustrates specifically from our war, probably from lack of sufficiently full information. But his allusion to the remarkable character of the Boer charges is in harmony with the whole spirit which pervades his chapters on fire-action.
Any Englishman who is aware of the fact that our own “Cavalry Training” is based, sometimes to the extent of textual quotation, on Bernhardi’s work, and, on the recommendation of General French, resorting to that work not merely as the most complete and brilliant exposition of modern Cavalry theory, but as a refutation of the opponents of shock, must be struck at the very outset by two singular circumstances:
1. The dominant feature of the book is insistence on fire.
2. So far from representing German practice, Bernhardi writes avowedly as the revolutionary reformer of a dangerously antiquated system, upheld by authorities whom long years of peace and the memories of a war far too easily won have drugged into unintelligent lethargy. In 1899, when, without a suspicion of our own defects, we were complacently beginning a war which threw Cavalry defects into the strongest possible light, Bernhardi was fiercely combating these very defects in the face of a strongly hostile professional and public opinion. In the preface to his edition of 1902, when our war was ending, he complains that “of the demands which I put forward concerning the organization and equipment of the [German] Cavalry, none have as yet been put into execution,” though he concedes that the “necessity of reforms” has “made progress.” Organization is of no immediate concern to us. By equipment we find later that he refers (among other less important points) to the rearmament of the Cavalry with a firearm “ballistically equal in all respects to the rifle of the Infantry”—that is, to a reform adopted by us during the war, and retained ever since. Some of his recommendations for the education of Cavalry officers in the rudiments of fire-tactics would make our youngest Yeomanry subaltern blush. On the importance of fire for Cavalry there is nothing in the book which has not been commonplace to all intelligent critics of the American Civil War of 1862–65.
Now I want to give the reader a warning and a suggestion. The warning is not to assume that Bernhardi is representative of “other nations.” The German Cavalry is now only just about to be equipped with a good firearm. Count Wrangel is preaching to the Austrian Cavalry a doctrine in flat contradiction to Bernhardi’s. The French Cavalry, General de Negrier tells us, s’obstinent dans leur rêve of classic charges and contempt for fire-tactics.[[75]] My suggestion is this—that we should measure Bernhardi’s views by the reactionary views which he set out to fight. He is a German, writing exclusively to Germans, ruthlessly exposing German defects, and making his remedies conform to these defects. His only allusion to British Cavalry is when he speaks, on page 185, of “Anglo-maniacs and faddists” in connection with a question of breaking horses. After all, the most passionate reformer must limit himself to more or less feasible aims. I do not mean for a moment that the General consciously refrained from giving overstrong meat to babes; but when we remember the milieu in which he lived, the influence to which, during his whole life, he was subjected, and the mountains of prejudice which he had to surmount, it seems marvellous, not that he should go no farther than he does go on the path of intelligent reform, but that he should have gone as far. As a matter of worldly wisdom, de Negrier is probably wrong in telling to a yet more backward Cavalry the full, logical, scathing truth about the archaic absurdities of shock.
Read Bernhardi in the light of these circumstances. The early chapters must, I think, have fairly horrified our arme blanche school. He runs amok among all the cherished traditions which held good from the Crimea to Talana Hill.