[4] All the principal students of war of the type of Von Hoenig, “A. A.,” Lewal, Von Schmidt, Galliffet, Kaehler, Prince Kraft, Verdy du Vernois, Cherfils, Meckel, Waldor de Heusch, Von Schell, and others in a minor degree, express unlimited confidence in the possibilities of cavalry if trained according to a sufficiently high standard.—Elliot, Cavalry Literature, Preface.
To preserve the superiority of an army in war, the system of tactics must be changed every ten years.—Colonel Bonie.
[5] Colonel Bonie, speaking of the French cavalry before the war of 1870–71, says: “In the midst of this indifference war suddenly broke out and we were obliged to appear on the field with our old ideas and our old mistakes.”
[6] This is written with the reservation that experience shows that much of the best and most useful work rendered to an army by its cavalry is never known and certainly not recorded. The effectual manner in which General Samsonov, after the battle of Telissu, checked pursuit, held off, and at the same time kept touch with the Japanese for three weeks or more, is dismissed in a few lines of history.
[7] An American, writing in 1899, delivered the following prophecy: “Cavalry may be an expensive arm to organize, equip, and subsist, but if it comes to a matter of dollars and cents the security of the British Army in recent reverses would have been worth a million times what an effective cavalry screen might have cost. From the moral effect of the recent defeats the war in South Africa is expected to cost the British Government between 100 million and 300 million dollars.” Later he adds: “Let not our legislators forget in the coming reorganization of our army the importance, nay the economy in money and lives which cannot be measured by money, of maintaining an adequate force of cavalry. Cavalry cannot be made in a month from militia. The transformation process is slow. Given brave and fearless men, well-bred horses, expert marksmen, improved arms and equipments, it is not necessarily cavalry. Training is necessary and training takes time, but when war begins, time is the one element which is most in demand.”
[8] A cavalry reformer, writing sixty or more years ago, says: “What is the use of trying to get the authorities to abolish the steel scabbard, when no attention was paid to a similar request fifty years ago?”
[9] Cavalry in War and Peace, p. 175.
[10] Though it is said that the Afghans point very effectively by means of an upward prod.
[11] Leaves from the Diary of a Soldier and Sportsman, p. 256.
[12] Studies in Troop Leading, p. 196, note.