On its merits, then, and on broad lines, I propose to discuss this question, avoiding so far as possible everything tending to cloud the vision with prejudice or bias. When I illustrate from recent facts it is not with the barren and invidious purpose of apportioning blame or praise, but with the single aim of elucidating the truth.
CHAPTER II
THE THREEFOLD PROBLEM
I.—The Physical Problem.
In preparation for the historical evidence, I propose to state what I consider to be the constituent elements of a threefold problem. There is the purely physical problem, which in the marshalling of rival sets of precedents, and in the formulation of rival definitions of the Cavalry spirit, has almost always been overlooked. There is the psychological problem, and there is the problem of training.
The physical conditions are simple, so simple as scarcely to need comment, were not habit and usage apt to obscure the origin of long-accepted maxims. I am almost afraid to submit my first proposition, so naked a truism must it appear. The primary distinction between the horse-soldier and the foot-soldier lies in the horse, not in the weapon carried by the man. No permanent, fundamental distinction, either before or after the invention of gunpowder, has ever existed between the weapons carried by foot-soldiers and horse-soldiers respectively. At this day both classes alike carry both a steel weapon and a firearm. A vast amount may depend (and otherwise I should not be writing) on the way the weapon may be permitted to govern mounted tactics, but from time immemorial it has been the superior mobility derived from the horse that has given to Cavalry, using the word in its widest sense, all the special functions which distinguish it from Infantry. Let us beware, then, if we find a writer coupling together the horse and the steel weapon as though, by some immutable law, they were inseparable factors of efficiency. Surely, they are not. The common denominator is the horse. To ignore the lance or sword is not, with all respect to Sir John French, to ignore the horse.[[11]] The sole issue is, by the agency of what weapon can the horse, in conjunction with the will and the manual skill and strength of the man, be used to the best advantage?
If the horse has his merits, he has his drawbacks. Let us consider both, strictly in relation to the question of weapons. Let us remember at the outset what is too often forgotten, that the weapon is only used in actual combats. In all those phases of war which precede combat, for the rapid transportation from one point to another of any body of troops great or small, ease of movement and secrecy of movement are the paramount considerations. In a strategic raid or a tactical turning movement, in any operation, offensive or defensive, from the action of a patrol to the action of a division, the carriage of troops into the zone of combat is a problem of mobility and secrecy pure and simple. Any weapon which unduly burdens the horse or rider, or renders them unduly conspicuous, is an obstacle to those ends only to be justified by showing that it is indispensable for combats. Similarly, any system of training which is designed to facilitate combat with any particular weapon, but which reacts unfavourably upon mobility or secrecy prior to the phase of combat, is, to that extent, to be deprecated. The scout exemplifies the principle in its extreme form. Acting as a scout, he is not meant to fight, but to move quickly, and to see without being seen. It is quite possible that a few unarmed scouts might decide the fate of armies; certainly scouts have, in fact, done so without recourse to weapons.
Hitherto, so far as the merits and drawbacks of the horse are involved, we are concerned only with his speed and endurance on the one hand, and his visibility on the other. But as soon as we regard the horse as entering the zone of combat, we are confronted with a new and serious qualification to his value—namely, his vulnerability. This, in one degree or another, is an invariable source of weakness. The danger to be incurred may be reduced to a minimum, as in the case of the pursuit of utterly demoralized troops. Surprise and stratagem may modify the risk to an indefinite extent, but the risk always exists, and can be overcome in the last resort only by a mobility so high as to transcend it. We arrive thus at the two opposing factors, mobility and vulnerability, the one tending to counteract the other; and from the physical point of view it is upon the correct estimate of the relative strength of these two factors that the solution of every tactical mounted problem depends. It goes without saying that the invention and improvement of the firearm, by immensely extending the zone of vulnerability and immensely increasing the degree of vulnerability within that zone, has profoundly affected the conditions of this ever-present problem. The reader, no doubt, will add that the same general principle applies to Infantry. True; but there is especially good reason to insist on its application to mounted troops.
Arrived at this point, we must, for the sake of clearness, disregard the hybrid type of horseman, and picture, for the time being, as separate personalities, the horseman armed with a steel weapon and the horseman armed with a firearm. Later on we will fuse the two personalities in one, when we come to consider training. But for the present I want to concentrate attention on the relative value in combat of fire and steel.
Let us take first the horseman armed with the steel weapon.
Two characteristics must be noted at once: (1) His steel weapon is used from horseback only; (2) as against riflemen, whether mounted or dismounted, it is only used in offence. In both these respects it differs from the bayonet.