War and the Arme Blanche

by Erskine Childers

Lastly, we have the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. That, as I shall show, seals the doom of the arme blanche, and crowns the case for the mounted rifleman. But it is a foreign war, and not, therefore, so peculiarly applicable to ourselves as the Boer War, whose lessons, nevertheless, it drives home. I propose to discuss it at a later stage, and will only remark now that even the most ardent advocates of the sword and lance have to admit that those weapons played no part in the war, while, on the other hand, neither Cavalry, not even the Japanese, approached the standard of fire-action attained in the course of our own war.

One more general word about the history of the subject prior to 1899. A vast amount has been written upon it. There is much common ground. Nobody denies that the relative important of shock manœuvre with the steel weapon has steadily declined for a century. It is generally admitted that the examples of successful shock action in the European wars of the sixties and seventies were relatively very few, and the performances of the Cavalries relatively poor to those of other arms. While persisting in the argument that, had certain conditions been fulfilled, Cavalry work, including shock work, might have been more distinguished, advocates of the steel now generally admit that even then the neglect of fire-action was the main cause of ill-success. Upon this point no one could speak more strongly than Bernhardi. But if there is much common agreement, we must make our minds absolutely clear as to the nature of this agreement. A great part of the controversy has raged round a comparatively narrow point: whether masses of Cavalry can any longer charge Infantry, and, if so, what are the limitations to the success of such a charge. It is agreed that since 1870 limitations are many and severe; but the settlement of that point leaves the major issue untouched. The opportunities of the steel weapon may have diminished, but to the Cavalry school this weapon remains the weapon par excellence for the Cavalry, the indispensably decisive factor in inter-Cavalry combats, which are to take the form of shock duels, and the main inspiration for all the wide and important range of duties belonging to the arm. No historian has studied more profoundly, nor written more brilliantly upon, the development of mounted tactics than the late Colonel Henderson. He was deeply versed in the Civil War, and preached to deaf ears the great possibilities even of an imperfect firearm in the hands of Cavalry. In a masterly analysis of the mounted actions of the European wars from 1866 to 1878,[^[10]] he pointed out the comparative failure of shock, and the magnificent opportunities which would have been open to any body of mounted troops as skilled in fire-tactics as Stuart’s Confederates. He even goes so far as to say that “a few commandos of Boers could have reduced to utter impotence the whole French Cavalry.” Yet, at the end of his inquiry, just when he seems to have proved to an impartial reader that the day of the steel weapon is over and the undivided reign of the rifle begun, he falters. There is a strange logical hiatus. Then the old dogma proves too strong. After all, he concludes, the source of the “Cavalry spirit” is, and must be, the steel. A precisely similar phenomenon, though springing from wholly different causes, and with more domestic justification, occurs in the case of Bernhardi and of Wrangel. Henderson’s solution was that, if we are to have thoroughly expert mounted riflemen, they must be embodied in a separate force.

That compromise should have taken this particular form in Henderson is a circumstance I have never been able to understand. It is utterly contrary to Civil War experience, as he himself interprets it. That he should recommend one pure type, armed with either weapon, or two pure types, each armed with a different weapon; or one hybrid type, with theoretical perfection in both weapon, would be intelligible. That he should recommend a hybrid type, with the steel strongly dominant and the rifle admittedly inferior, plus a pure type of expert mounted riflemen, is strange indeed, after the conclusions he draws from history. But the arme blanche plays the strangest tricks with the acutest minds. Bernhardi and our own Cavalry school are shrewd enough to postulate theoretical perfection in the hybrid type, even if they make the sword the supreme source of dash. We do not know what Henderson’s final opinions were. The essay in which he alludes to the Boers was written before the end of the war. In him we can easily trace the cause of the logical hiatus. He had to take into account the use of the steel by American horsemen in inter-Cavalry combats, but at a time when the imperfections of the firearm left a field to the steel which has since been shut off. Whether the South African War, with its mounted rifle-charges, modified his views, we are ignorant. His first volume of the “Official History” never saw the light, and he died in 1903. But we know this, that the last paper he ever wrote, the “British Army”—though he does not touch specifically on the mounted problem at all—insists primarily on the revolution wrought in all modern tactics by the deadly efficacy of the smokeless, long-range magazine rifle, a revolution whose essence was the substitution of individual skill and intelligence for those formal, machine-like movements of massed bodies which are best exemplified in the case of shock action.

Using the South African War as his primary source of illustration and guidance, I ask the reader to grapple seriously with the logic and history of this matter. I beg him not to be content, failing incontrovertible arguments, with the assurance of Cavalry men that, in spite of the lessened opportunities for the arme blanche and the greater importance of the rifle, the former weapon must still be regarded as the governing factor in Cavalry training. I ask him to take nothing for granted, but to examine every function of Cavalry, tactical or strategical, defensive or offensive, whether against Cavalry, Infantry, or guns, and with a pitilessly critical eye to investigate the evidence bearing upon this vital question: Which is the better weapon?

He will be discouraged and confused at the outset by the obscurities connected with nomenclature. Names sanctioned by time always have a strong influence in human affairs. Nowhere is this influence more disproportionately strong than in the case of mounted troops. The fine old word “Cavalry” simply means horse-soldiers without regard to weapon; but by the tradition of centuries it has always been, and is still associated with the sword and lance, though, in fact, for a long time past all Cavalries have been accustomed to carry some sort of firearm as well. Then there are Mounted Infantry, a force, so to speak, improvised out of Infantry, with a short additional training as horsemen; then the volunteer Yeomanry, and the Colonial Mounted Riflemen.

Names apart, the reader must ask himself: What happens in action? Does the rifle dictate tactics to the sword, or the sword to the rifle? What precise part does the question of weapons play in the ascription to Cavalry and the denial to Mounted Infantry of all the difficult and important duties of the major reconnaissance, duties obviously requiring many faculties, mental and physical, which have no connection with the steel weapon? Can a man ride quicker or better, be more observant, original, or intelligent because he carries a sword? Finally, how is training to conform to weapons? In the realm of tactics does the official language correspond with the truth? Why should the expression “dismounted tactics,” as opposed to “mounted tactics,” be always used in reference to the use of the rifle by Cavalry? Does not the common factor of mobility transcend the factor of weapons? Cannot mounted riflemen “charge,” not, of course, according to that narrow interpretation of the word which restricts it to shock, but in ways equally, if not more, efficacious? And if, aside from the mobility derived from the horse, the dash shown in these and similar operations can demonstrably be shown to have been inspired by the rifle, is not the old Cavalry maxim that dash is derived from the sword seriously shaken? It is all very well in printed instructions to inculcate perfection in both, but is it humanly possible to maintain unimpaired in the same body of soldiers, still defined as “Cavalry,” the old standard of shock manœuvre, with all the rigorous training it demands, and all the specialized instincts and habits associated with it, while adding all the equally rigorous, and equally specialized education of body and mind, which is indispensable to the production of a good mounted rifleman? If not, which weapon is likely to go to the wall?

Seeking light on these and kindred matters, the student will find himself straying in a fog of loose definitions corresponding to loose thought. He will find the word “Cavalry” used in several different senses for several different purposes; sometimes merely to mean armed horsemen, sometimes with special emphasis on the steel weapon, sometimes with particular reference to the rifle. He will find Bernhardi calling the Boers Cavalry, and his commentator, Mr. Goldman, gravely rebuking him for not seeing that they were Mounted Infantry. He will find General French hotly combating the heresy that “Cavalry duels” are a thing of the past, and confusing in his own mind duels decided by the arme blanche with those struggles for mastery between the rival mounted forces of two opposing armies which, everyone agrees, must be a preliminary factor of high importance in all campaigns; and we find him becoming eloquent on the great and growing rôle of Cavalry in war, as though anybody had ever doubted that proposition, except in so far as it implied that Cavalry drew their power mainly from the arme blanche.

The South African War, no less than the Manchurian War, throws a flood of light on all these difficulties. It seems strange that it should be necessary to recommend a thorough sifting and weighing of the South African evidence. Yet it is necessary, for it is the fashion now to dismiss that war as abnormal, and throughout this volume I shall have to devote considerable space to arguing why, for the purposes of this controversy, it should not be regarded as abnormal. In the meantime, I appeal for the maintenance of some reasonable sense of proportion in this matter. The war lasted more than two and a half years. It cost upwards of 200,000,000 pounds sterling. It exacted supreme efforts, military and economic. The total number of male belligerents opposed to us from first to last, foreigners and rebels included, scarcely exceeded 87,000. The total number of soldiers put into the field to meet them from first to last exceeded 400,000. For us, as I have already reminded the reader, it was the first great war against a race of European descent since the Crimea. For us, and for everyone else, it was the first test on the grand scale of the smokeless magazine rifle, not only in the hands of Infantry, but in the hands of mounted troops, and in the hands of mounted troops operating against Cavalry of the old type. Artillery apart, our foes one and all were mounted riflemen of the pure type. By degrees all our own mounted troops, of whatever category, became merged in the same type. And the war gradually became a mounted war. Mounted efficiency became the touchstone of success. Unprepared in multitudes of ways for the great struggle, it was in this respect from first to last that our chief deficiency lay. On the other hand, it was by their skill in the use of the horse and rifle combined that the Boers were enabled to defy us for so long.

Merely to state these elementary and indisputable facts is to prove that the war cannot lightly be regarded as abnormal. Common self-respect, to say nothing of historical judgment, should forbid such a manner of thinking. We need to recognize both our faults and our merits as disclosed at that great turning-point in our Imperial history. Pushed, as it is pushed, to extremes, this idea of abnormality becomes a narcotic, lulling us into lethargy and reaction. This was our war, won only by a vast expenditure of our blood and treasure. It has its memories of bitter humiliation as of glorious achievement, and those memories are ours. The experience is mainly valuable to us in that it is ours. In moments of exaltation we congratulate ourselves, probably with sound justification, on having, in spite of many blunders, achieved what a Continental army could not have achieved. And yet, when it comes to reading the plainest technical lesson of the war, we find the leading exponents of Cavalry doctrine brushing aside our own priceless experience, appealing to Germany for light and guidance, and introducing German formulas—meaningless to Germans themselves—into British instructional handbooks.

One of the worst features of this insistence on abnormality is the tendency it breeds in Cavalry writers to read the mounted operations of the war from the Cavalry point of view only. Had things been otherwise, had there been the normal opportunities for shock manœuvre, how much more brilliant would have been the part played by the Cavalry! That is the line of argument, prompted, as no one can fail to observe, not only by an abstract faith in the arme blanche, but by a very natural anxiety to place in the best light the achievements of the Cavalry in South Africa. Confined within proper limits, that motive is unexceptionable, but the moment it begins to have the effect of converting a technical question into a sentimental question it becomes vicious. That is what has happened. No one can doubt the fact who reads Mr. Goldman, General French’s military biographer, and notes the laboured efforts to extract from the most unpromising material conclusions favourable to the arme blanche, and the deplorable loss of perspective which such an effort entails. May I say here, if Mr. Goldman will permit me, that, although controversy will compel me to criticize his work unsparingly, I gladly and sincerely recognize its value as a historical narrative. We differ, not about facts, but about the reading of facts. I think his very natural admiration and affection for the Cavalry have led him into the error of believing that their reputation, as a branch of the service, is bound up with the reputation of the steel weapon. Believing the contrary myself, I cannot help chafing sometimes under what seems a sort of coercion into assuming the rôle of a detractor of the Cavalry, while my sole desire is to attack their armament. I fancy that all critics of the arme blanche have to face the same disagreeable ordeal. I can only do my best throughout to make my attitude clear. The topic ought to present no difficulties. As a nation, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves if we cannot discuss a great theme like this dispassionately on its merits. The Cavalry, like every other body of mounted troops in the King’s dominions, is an Imperial possession. We are all proud of them, and if we criticize their methods, it is with the single object of making sure that the energies of this splendid body of men are directed into the most fruitful channel. In all wars we know we can count on their setting a high example of the great soldierly qualities, but we also want to make sure of their taking their right place at the outset, and maintaining that place throughout, as the leading exponents of progressive thought applied to mounted problems, and in that capacity to serve as models to all their Imperial comrades, and to the world at large.