The Rifle
Both French and German cavalry have, during the last few years, been repeatedly urged by eminent writers on cavalry to bring themselves to a better knowledge of the use of the rifle and fire tactics. The new weapon issued to the German cavalry has been the signal for some of this literature. Calling to mind that it is but a few short years since German cavalry were armed with an out-of-date carbine, and carried only some twenty rounds of ammunition, and further reading between the lines of the latest addition to cavalry literature by General von Bernhardi, these exhortations cannot be considered as uncalled for. But to make them a text on which to lecture our regular cavalry only exposes ignorance of their present training, and makes one wonder if one is awaking from far back in the middle of the last century, when a gallant lancer regiment, on being first armed with carbines, gravely piled them on the stable-barrows and wheeled them to the manure-heap. Our British regular cavalry are at least ten, if not fifteen, years ahead of any continental cavalry in rifle shooting, fire discipline, and the knowledge of when and how to resort to fire tactics.
There are probably few of the more senior who have not come to a conclusion formed from experience that the following quotation[15] is as suitable in many respects to cavalry as it is to infantry:—
Volley firing, and limiting the range against infantry to 500 yards at most, are the surest means of providing against the want of ammunition at the supreme moment. And the sooner it is recognized that long range fire is a special weapon to be used only on special occasions, the better for the efficiency of our infantry in general.
CHAPTER III
THE HORSE
“A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!”
No apology is needed for including in a Treatise on Cavalry a chapter on the subject of the Horse. Were it demanded, it would only be necessary to point to the unfortunate ignorance in regard to horses, horsemanship, and horsemastership which, extending as it does through every gradation of rank of life in the nation, caused our bill for horses in South Africa to total twenty-two millions—that is, about one-tenth of the whole cost of the war. In fact, it may here be remarked that, following this assessment, it is quite probable that the horse question should be rated as 10 per cent in the percentage of importance of matters in preparation for war; that is, in big wars, for our thoughts are apt to be distracted by small wars from the essentials of great wars.
It is unfortunate that nowadays only at most 15 per cent of the men in our cavalry have, before enlistment, had anything to do with horses. Further, few indeed of the officers, though most of them have ridden, and in that best of schools the hunting-field, have gained sufficient experience in their early life, before joining a regiment, in the stable management and training of horses, to enable them to look after their horses well. This they will only attain to after they have had a fairly long apprenticeship under a good squadron leader.