Umpires need not confine themselves to deciding the results of engagements. They might very well draw the attention of patrols that act in a manner incompatible with service conditions to the hostile spirit of the population, or, if necessary, bring about real or assumed attacks that would inflict such losses or damage on the patrols as they would probably have suffered in war. They can, in short, do much to give the manœuvres a semblance of reality.
The rôle of umpire is also a useful training for regimental officers. Regimental and squadron commanders cannot form a correct idea of the possibilities and functions of their reconnoitring detachments unless they have accompanied patrols as umpires.
It is, in my opinion, impossible to go too far in the direction of making conditions resemble as much as possible those of actual warfare, as one of the greatest difficulties to be faced consists in sustaining the interest of the troops and the semblance of reality.
Goethe, in his "Wilhelm Meister," remarks how rare it is to find among men "any kind of creative imagination." Nothing, indeed, is more difficult than to take a keen interest in hypothetical conditions. This truth applies particularly to soldiers, and the difficulty is one from which most peace exercises suffer.
Some very powerful incentive is required to induce troops to really enter into the conditions presupposed by the general idea of the manœuvres. They must continually imagine the existence of real warfare, with all its exactions and influences, and they must act consistently according to the spirit of purely imaginative conditions. It is during the reconnoitring exercises of the cavalry that the men's powers of imagination are most heavily taxed, and that most mistakes and unnatural situations result in consequence. Even the officers display a lack of imagination in their inability to conform to service conditions, to appreciate the difficulties and dangers of any situation, and to take them into account when making their dispositions, and in their general conduct.
During the last decade, reconnaissance at our smaller field-training exercises and manœuvres has suffered greatly from red-tape methods and the consciousness of peace conditions. I refer mainly to the transmission service. Times without number, single horsemen arrive with messages from points behind the enemy or his outposts, so that the messenger must ride right through the enemy, thus entailing the certain loss of the report. It should be unnecessary to point out that the best messages are quite useless if they do not reach their destination.
It is a vital mistake in our army, and one to which I have frequently drawn attention, that these single orderlies are sent with messages, and that even for long distances. Granting that the improbable might happen, and they were successful in finding their way without maps, often at night and in foggy weather, through a strange country, single horsemen would, in the enemy's country, be often captured or fall a prey to the hostile population. In spite of all this, every one is opposed to sending a patrol with a message, and, when it is done, the patrol's strength is cut down most unwarrantably. I am afraid that only bitter experience will teach us the folly of this procedure.
It also frequently happens that technical appliances for transmission are use in a most illegitimate manner. Telegraph-lines belonging to both sides have before now actually been laid peacefully side by side, and had their respective termini within the cantonment area of the opposing armies. Until quite lately, telegraphic messages were often sent through the enemy's lines.
In these exercises both sides, as a rule, find considerable difficulty in remembering the assumed hostility of the population, and in making corresponding dispositions. When selecting quarters, this point is frequently forgotten, and patrols spend the night in villages in hostile country, and in close proximity to the enemy's cantonments, where escape, in time of war, would be practically out of the question. On such occasions the prospect of comfortable quarters, where the horses can be well cared for, has probably more influence on the patrol leader's plans than military exigencies, and the protective measures taken would probably prove correspondingly inefficient. The exercises should therefore be so arranged that the patrols and, if possible, the reconnoitring squadrons of both sides, advance into the enemy's country, thus placing themselves in difficult situations; and the umpires should have instructions to interfere immediately if anything were done that would entail serious consequences in war time, as the lesson that should be learnt is how to act in the enemy's country.
Particular stress should be laid on the method of writing reports. If instruction in this direction is to bear fruit, all the details as to contents, time and place of despatch, and any other important points must be thoroughly discussed. Our cavalry still suffers from bad habits contracted during peace training. It has not learnt to reconnoitre on a large scale, and consequently pays too much attention to details of the drill-ground, while it is unable properly to distinguish between strategical exploration and tactical reconnaissance. Even in larger exercises, where stress should be laid on ascertaining merely the strategical dispositions of the enemy, the tendency is always to report in detail, and as often as possible, while the relative importance of such reports is seldom assessed at its right value.