We may add—and I am sure he would admit—that men who throw their rifles away are an easy prey to any form of physical compulsion. They will surrender to a riding-whip. For sheer rapid killing just conceive of the frightful efficacy of the rifle, as proved by our war! If the horsemen insist on remaining on their horses among these terrified sheep, and if they do not use rifle-fire from the saddle, would not a revolver be at least as effective as a sword or lance? Of course the whole conception of such a pursuit with the steel on any considerable scale is the old Cavalry chimera so rarely seen in practice, never seen in the European wars from 1866 onwards, never seen in the Boer War, never seen in Manchuria. In other passages Bernhardi himself practically admits that it is a chimera.
“The same holds good for the fight itself. We cannot attack even inferior Infantry as long as it only keeps the muzzle of its rifles down and shoots straight; but once it is morally broken and surprised, then the greatest results are still to be achieved even on an open battle-field” (p. 15).
The amazing thing is that in passages like this, where he is thinking mainly of the deficiencies of the steel, Bernhardi seems for the moment to forget that pure mounted riflemen, and even the hybrids, perfect in both weapons, who represent his own ideal, have the same defensive power as Infantry, to say nothing of the additional offensive (and defensive) power conferred by the horse. When, in other passages, he is thinking mainly of the excellence of the firearm, he is fully alive to the close analogy with Infantry, and goes to the extreme length of insisting that Cavalry shall actually be as good as Infantry at their own game of fire. They can be as good, he says, and if they are not as good, for Heaven’s sake, don’t tell them so, or you will destroy their dash! (p. 249). And they should have a firearm superior even to the Infantry rifle (p. 176). These three passages, on pages 15, 176, and 249, read together, give us in one more form the reductio ad absurdum of the steel weapon. Postulating equal fire-efficiency for Cavalry and Infantry, read the first passage over again, substituting “Cavalry” for “Infantry.” “We cannot attack [i.e., with the steel] even inferior Cavalry [much less inferior mounted riflemen of the pure type] as long as it only keeps the muzzles of its rifles down and shoots straight.” The rest is a truism: morally broken troops of course get beaten. And now postulate superior Cavalry, or, better still, superior mounted riflemen of the pure type, with their full aggressive powers. What becomes of the steel? In Bernhardi part of the confusion is due to the fact that he does not recognize the pure type of mounted rifleman at all, not even in the half-developed form of our Mounted Infantry. Having started from the a priori unreasoned dogma that however reduced the opportunities for the steel, it must be retained, he is continually endeavouring to obtain the benefit of both worlds, and involving himself thereby in palpable contradictions and inconsistencies. Our own authorities are more careful in avoiding the direct reductio ad absurdum. In borrowing from Bernhardi for the purposes of “Cavalry Training,” they eschew passages like those I have quoted hitherto, which to English ears would mean the downfall of the steel, and rely on less compromising matter.
In Chapter IV, “Increased Importance of Dismounted Action” (note in “dismounted action” the old, ineradicable assumption that “mounted action” is only associated with the steel), he is in the height of what I may call his “fire-mood,” and is very reticent about the arme blanche. The firearm, which, remember, should be a better weapon, if anything, than the Infantry rifle, is given many offensive as well as defensive rôles. Pursuits, for example, must not be “frontal,” because “Cavalry can easily be held up by any rear-guard position in which a few intact troops remain.” But who, we wonder, are these “intact troops”? Why not Cavalry, or mounted riflemen, as in South Africa? Is not rear-guard work a conventional and normal function of Cavalry itself? And if it is a case of Cavalry versus Cavalry, why not shock, at the compulsion of one side or the other? On the next page the General himself is demonstrating the value of Cavalry in rear-guard work, and insisting on the paramount importance of the firearm in it.
His further views on pursuit have been incorporated in “Cavalry Training.” Pursuits are to be on “parallel lines” and on the enemy’s flanks, or by way of anticipation, on his extreme rear—circumstances where the “principal rôle falls to the firearm, for only in the fire-fight is it possible to break off an attack without loss in order to appear again at some other point.” This passage, of course, is another implicit abandonment of the whole case for the steel. Think it out, and you will see that I am not exaggerating. It is transferred textually to “Cavalry Training” (p. 229), but, wisely enough, it appears at the respectful distance of forty-two pages from the general remarks on the “Employment of Cavalry,” where, among opportunities for the use of the firearm (pp. 186, 187), pursuit is not mentioned, and where the whole tenor of the instruction is that fire-action is only to be used when “the situation imperatively demands it.” Think this matter out in the light of “fire-fights” in South Africa (Roodewal, for example) or anywhere else, including, of course, fire-fights between or against Cavalry or mounted riflemen. What is the use of a weapon which admits of no tactical elasticity, for that is what it comes to, which can be used only when you are so certain of complete and final success that you need not even contemplate another attack at another point? This, of course, is the real reason for that idleness on the battle-field, that strange lack of dash which, by the admission of their own military authorities from Von Moltke downwards, characterized the Cavalries engaged in the wars of 1866 and 1870. And then there were no magazine rifles. Cavalry dash in South Africa was sapped by faith in the steel, and only partially restored by faith in the rifle. It is the old story: the charge must be the climax of a fire-fight, and therefore it must be inspired by fire. Under modern conditions you cannot mix the two sets of tactics; they are antagonistic and incompatible.
The passage goes on: “The charge, then, will only secure a greater result than dismounted action when the tactical cohesion of the enemy has been dissolved and his fire-power broken—that is to say, generally it will be of greater service in tactical than in strategical pursuits” (pp. 51, 52). We know from the passage quoted on page 302 what Bernhardi means by “dissolved tactical cohesion.” He means circumstances in which any weapon and any charge will secure surrender. In the next words he falls accidentally into the old error of confusing combat with mobility. What difference does it make to the efficacy of a weapon whether combat has been brought about tactically or strategically?
But, taking the words as they stand, what a light they throw on South Africa and the complaints of strategical mishandling and lack of opportunity! How in the world does Mr. Goldman reconcile them with his contempt for “tactical effects” and his conception of vast strategical circuits ending in shock-tactics? I need scarcely remind the reader that in all the actions on the main line of advance from Paardeberg and Poplar Grove to Bergendal, from February to September, 1900, the conditions of pursuit may be truly said to have been present from the very outset, owing to the great disparity of forces. Roberts was continually endeavouring to do exactly what Bernhardi recommends, to initiate for his mounted troops, not frontal but parallel pursuits, or anticipatory pursuits on the enemy’s extreme rear. He failed because (1) the enemy were themselves skilled mounted riflemen, who were able to hold very extensive fronts with very few men; (2) because our Cavalry were deficient in the very quality which Bernhardi says is essential—fire-power. And now let us read a little farther and see what Bernhardi says in contemplating this very contingency of wide fronts on pages 53, 54, under “Turning Movements Impracticable.” Here he strongly censures the fallacious idea that Cavalry “possesses in its mobility the infallible means of circumventing points of resistance.” “Width of the (enemy’s) front” (and the reader will remember the prodigious extent of the thinly-held Boer fronts) is one of the first obstacles named. Others are summarized in the following paragraph, which I commend particularly to Mr. Goldman:
“The theory that Cavalry, thanks to its mobility, can always ride round and turn the positions it encounters, breaks down in practice before the tactical and strategical demands upon the arm, partly by reason of the local conditions, and partly because of the consideration which has to be given to time, to the endurance of the horses, and the position of the following columns” (p. 54).
Apply these remarks to battle-fields, such as Diamond Hill and Zand River, upon which I commented in Chapters IX. and XII. The logical alternative to circumventing tactics was, as I pointed out, piercing tactics, not the still wider circumventions which French favoured. But piercing tactics signified fire-tactics, and, since the enemy was mounted, swift, aggressive fire-tactics, either into decisive range or through the whole of a fire-zone, with a wheel back from the rear, should the enemy hold their ground. Bernhardi’s alternative is of precisely the same nature. “The actual assault remains necessary now,” and it is the assault by fire. Only, alas! it is always the wholly “dismounted” assault.
Two pages later, after censuring another error, which I have several times alluded to—namely, that of “overrating the power of Horse Artillery to clear the road for Cavalry” (pp. 54 and 178), we come to his allusion to the Boer charges on horseback (p. 56). Surely these must have given him, after all he has said, furieusement à penser. But no. What have “habits and instincts” to do with immemorial official creeds? A page later he is qualifying his remarks about Horse Artillery for the express purpose of admitting that guns are very necessary indeed for covering Cavalry fire-tactics, which, by his hypothesis, must be “dismounted.” I would give much to know exactly what effect upon his mind was made by Mr. Goldman’s deprecatory footnote to the effect that the Boer charges were not “Cavalry” charges, but Mounted Infantry charges; for, remember, he does not recognize Mounted Infantry at all. The real truth is, of course, that when Bernhardi wrote his second edition he knew very little about the last half of our war. No foreign observers were there, and the German official witnesses had decided that there was to be no “tactical interest” after March, 1900. It is doubtful whether the greater number of the charges had even taken place when Bernhardi went to press. Mr. Goldman takes pains to assure him that there were only “one or two” after all. And the whole of our Cavalry school has been assuring him ever since that the war, and especially the guerilla war, was so abnormal as to be quite uninteresting to Cavalry. So error propagates error.