There, indeed, is the grand paradox. Quite convinced as patriotic Englishmen that we did better in South Africa than the Germans could have done, we nevertheless turn to Germany for light and leading on the mounted problems of to-day. Though I name Germany in particular, and would be justified, for the purposes of my argument, in confining myself to Germany, it need scarcely be added that Continental practice in general has a fatally strong influence on British practice. One may argue interminably, and perhaps not without some success, against the alleged peculiarities of the Boer War, but in the last resort one meets that most exasperating, because most intangible and inconclusive, of all arguments—"other nations believe in the arme blanche. Germany, for example, believes in it. Germany has a large and magnificent army; therefore, Germany and the other nations must be right." As a moderate and sober expression of this view, I quote the following from a leading article which appeared in the Times of September 16, 1909—an article itself founded on the views of the able Military Correspondent of that journal, given after the manœuvres of 1909:

Although almost every word in this paragraph invites criticism, I need call attention only to those I have italicized:

1. “The rôle of Mounted Infantry,” in effect, begs the whole question. It instantly calls up the starved and stunted functions of that arm, as it is now organized and trained, and by innuendo suggests something utterly devoid of dash and mobility.

2. “Experienced.” Russia I shall come to later. When have Germany, Austria, or France had national experience, in civilized war, of the smokeless magazine rifle?

3. “Civilized.” Were the Boers not a civilized enemy?

4. “Numerical superiority.” The suggestion is that, having a small force of Cavalry, we should be all the more careful to obtain excellence in the arme blanche. This is, indeed, an amazing argument. Is our solitary division to court brute physical collisions with the Continental masses? Even “Cavalry Training” admits that the smaller the force, the greater the necessity of relying on the rifle. Think of South Africa—of Bergendal, for example, and scores of other actions! The admission, of course, gravely imperils the arme blanche, because it implies, what is the literal truth, that the rifle can impose tactics on the steel. But how escape the admission?

5. “It follows that we must not be deficient in a weapon possessed by potential foes.”

That will serve as a text for this chapter. Observe that the doctrine of mere imitation is put in its frankest form. Our Lancers already carry three different weapons. If Germany were to add a fourth or a fifth, in that case, too, it would “follow,” no doubt, that we must “not be deficient.” If we act on this principle at all, it was surely a pity that we did not act upon it when the Boer War was imminent. Our “potential foes” then possessed a weapon in which our Cavalry were lamentably deficient, and lacked a weapon which proved to be nothing but an encumbrance to our Cavalry. Did those circumstances prevent us from sending our Cavalry to the war equipped and trained on Crimean lines, more than forty years out of date? Do they prevent Mr. Goldman, even now, from denying that, even for South Africa, that equipment and training were wrong? What I want to lay stress on is the absence of any recognition that there are some general principles at stake. Votes are counted, selected foreign votes, given by “potential foes” to whom our “records are open,” being regarded as equal in value to our own. America, not being a “potential foe,” has no vote. Colonel Repington himself, in the Times of September 14, briefly disposed of the question in just this way. Yet he is too able a man not to know that imitation is not a principle, that counting votes is not decisive, and that the arme blanche must be justified by arguments based on the facts of modern war. Is he prepared so to justify it? I have never seen his full profession of faith. I always seem to detect in his writing the attitude of one who on this matter passively accepts the official doctrine as it stands, and who works with enthusiasm and vigour to make a success of an existing system. After all, I seem to hear him saying, we cannot go far wrong, because our potential foes believe in the same system. I may be in error, but I venture to issue the challenge to him to expound, illustrate, and justify the arme blanche theory; to declare for the “terror of cold steel,” for the dash which can only be inspired by the steel weapon, for the power of the steel to impose tactics on the rifle, for the inevitable shock duel; and to state whether he agrees with General French, or Mr. Goldman, or General von Bernhardi, as to the nature of the abnormalities which make the lesson of the Boer War negligible. If he will help with his keen logic to illuminate the maze of contradictions through which I shall thread my way in this and the next chapter, he will do a still greater service to the true interests of the Cavalry. He will admit that he has undergone conversion since 1904. At a time when he and all the world were under the hallucination that the Cossacks were good mounted riflemen, he wrote that the tactics necessary to destroy them would be the Boer tactics, and that they were “not to be beaten by serried ranks, classic charges,” and “prehistoric methods” of that sort (Times, April 2, 1904).

General von Bernhardi’s work, “Cavalry in Future Wars,” admittedly inspires British Cavalry practice. Is he, in the matter of the steel weapon, a trustworthy guide?

Let me first recall the attitude of the German General Staff towards the mounted problems raised by our war. The whole of the issue we are discussing is “taboo” to them. Indeed, the whole mounted question is “taboo” to them. In the rare comments on mounted action—comments confined mainly to the Kimberley operations, and referred to in my own Chapters VI. and VII.—the German Official Historian never so much as by a line even indirectly contrasts the relative powers of mounted riflemen and Cavalry. During the period covered by the History, he speaks of the Boers nearly always as though they were Infantry, and alludes in general terms to their “purely defensive powers,” in spite of incidents—rare, no doubt, in the early stages, but strongly suggestive of the future—like Talana Hill, Nicholson’s Nek, Wagon Hill, Spion Kop, Waterval, Kitchener’s Kopje, Sannah’s Post, all of which occurred within the period described. And just at the time of Sannah’s Post and De Wet’s raids, when the Boers were beginning a consistent development of aggressive mobility, not in the “regular” battles, where in numbers they were hopelessly outmatched, but in independent adventure; just, moreover, when aggressive mounted effort on our side was beginning to be more urgently necessary than ever before, the detailed narrative ends. After March, 1900, “the battles furnish in their details little instruction of tactical value,”^[74] and the whole campaign from Bloemfontein to Komati Poort receives only a brief summary. The guerilla war—a wholly mounted war—obtains half a page.

Then comes a “tactical retrospect,” in which it becomes perfectly clear that for the writer the whole interest of the war centres in the development of fire-tactics for riflemen. Whether they have horses in the background or not seems to be immaterial, and for practical purposes he assumes that they have not. This assumption destroys the value of more than half his criticism. The whole point was that the Boer riflemen were mounted riflemen, able, by the rifle, to defend a position in small force against superior force, and, by the horse, to leave that position when it became too hot. Obviously these men, though they could be, and were, attacked vehemently by Infantry, could never, unless they courted suicide, be defeated and destroyed by Infantry, who walk and do not ride. Obviously, too, you cannot expect even the best Infantry under the best leaders eternally to sustain at the highest level the ardour of the fire-fight on foot unless they know that riflemen equal in mobility to the enemy—that is, mounted riflemen—are co-operating with equal ardour and efficiency for that defeat and destruction of the mounted enemy which mounted men can alone ensure. This sense of skilled and effective co-operation is exactly what our Infantry did not have, from causes I need not enter into again. The German critic is blind to the defect, because he is blind to the whole mounted problem. Regarding the Boers as Infantry, he regards our Infantry and the Generals who controlled them as solely responsible for the incompleteness of our victories, and goes to the monstrous length of attributing this incomplete achievement partly to the “inferior quality of a mercenary army.”

The writer of the retrospect knew that the Boers had horses, for in one passage he alludes to their “mobility,” and he knew that we had a large body of Cavalry and mounted riflemen, for in another solitary passage he casually alludes to their ineffective turning movements. But the “Infantry fight,” which in all war “decides the battle,” is the main theme throughout, and remarkably interesting the critic’s observations are. So far as they go, they apply just as closely to mounted riflemen as to Infantry, though the critic himself is wholly unconscious of the analogy and of the implied condemnation he over and over again makes on the theory underlying the steel armament of Cavalry.

If he had proceeded with a study of the war, and had thoroughly digested the fact that the Boers not only had horses, but could attack, what would have been his conclusions? If only he had thoroughly realized that our Infantry had not horses, he would, I am sure, have modified some of his strictures on the use of that arm, on the excessive “dread of losses,” and so on. Some inkling of the truth that mobility often transcends vulnerability, and that mounted riflemen can in the long run be thoroughly defeated only by mounted riflemen, would have dawned upon him. But who knows? So strange and persistent is his reticence about the arme blanche, so outspoken his surprise and delight when—for example, at Paardeberg—he finds Cavalry using the carbine with success, that one would almost imagine he had received the mot d’ordre for silence on the whole topic. However, let this be clear, at any rate: (1) That there is no explicit comfort for the arme blanche in any page of these two volumes; (2) that there is no suggestion of any peculiarity or abnormality in the Boer War which renders its lessons inapplicable to future wars. Mr. Goldman’s case for peculiarity crumbles in the light of this searching analysis of fire-tactics. Substitute “mounted riflemen” for “riflemen” in cases where the facts obviously demand the change, and the whole structure of “strategical mishandling” and slack Boer resistance falls to pieces. The idea that the Boers needed only the arme blanche to make them formidable is refuted a hundred times by implication.

And now let us turn to Bernhardi. Here, by a welcome contrast, we have an enthusiast for the mounted arm. Not a disproportionately ardent enthusiast by any means. Armament apart, not a word he says in support of the profound importance of Cavalry in future wars is exaggerated. On the contrary, he underrates their rôle, as I shall show. The Boers, in the one allusion to them, are not “Infantry” for him, but “Cavalry,” and he has evidently been deeply impressed by the bearing of our war upon Cavalry problems—how deeply impressed it is impossible to say. His first edition was published in 1899, just before the war began; the second, which Mr. Goldman has translated, in 1902, when it was barely over. His strong views on the great importance of fire-action were evidently inspired by the American Civil War and by the poor performances of the shock-trained European Cavalries, including those of the Prussian Cavalry, in the wars of 1866, 1870, and 1877. In his second edition he never illustrates specifically from our war, probably from lack of sufficiently full information. But his allusion to the remarkable character of the Boer charges is in harmony with the whole spirit which pervades his chapters on fire-action.

Any Englishman who is aware of the fact that our own “Cavalry Training” is based, sometimes to the extent of textual quotation, on Bernhardi’s work, and, on the recommendation of General French, resorting to that work not merely as the most complete and brilliant exposition of modern Cavalry theory, but as a refutation of the opponents of shock, must be struck at the very outset by two singular circumstances:

1. The dominant feature of the book is insistence on fire.

2. So far from representing German practice, Bernhardi writes avowedly as the revolutionary reformer of a dangerously antiquated system, upheld by authorities whom long years of peace and the memories of a war far too easily won have drugged into unintelligent lethargy. In 1899, when, without a suspicion of our own defects, we were complacently beginning a war which threw Cavalry defects into the strongest possible light, Bernhardi was fiercely combating these very defects in the face of a strongly hostile professional and public opinion. In the preface to his edition of 1902, when our war was ending, he complains that “of the demands which I put forward concerning the organization and equipment of the [German] Cavalry, none have as yet been put into execution,” though he concedes that the “necessity of reforms” has “made progress.” Organization is of no immediate concern to us. By equipment we find later that he refers (among other less important points) to the rearmament of the Cavalry with a firearm “ballistically equal in all respects to the rifle of the Infantry”—that is, to a reform adopted by us during the war, and retained ever since. Some of his recommendations for the education of Cavalry officers in the rudiments of fire-tactics would make our youngest Yeomanry subaltern blush. On the importance of fire for Cavalry there is nothing in the book which has not been commonplace to all intelligent critics of the American Civil War of 1862–65.

Now I want to give the reader a warning and a suggestion. The warning is not to assume that Bernhardi is representative of “other nations.” The German Cavalry is now only just about to be equipped with a good firearm. Count Wrangel is preaching to the Austrian Cavalry a doctrine in flat contradiction to Bernhardi’s. The French Cavalry, General de Negrier tells us, s’obstinent dans leur rêve of classic charges and contempt for fire-tactics.^[75] My suggestion is this—that we should measure Bernhardi’s views by the reactionary views which he set out to fight. He is a German, writing exclusively to Germans, ruthlessly exposing German defects, and making his remedies conform to these defects. His only allusion to British Cavalry is when he speaks, on page 185, of “Anglo-maniacs and faddists” in connection with a question of breaking horses. After all, the most passionate reformer must limit himself to more or less feasible aims. I do not mean for a moment that the General consciously refrained from giving overstrong meat to babes; but when we remember the milieu in which he lived, the influence to which, during his whole life, he was subjected, and the mountains of prejudice which he had to surmount, it seems marvellous, not that he should go no farther than he does go on the path of intelligent reform, but that he should have gone as far. As a matter of worldly wisdom, de Negrier is probably wrong in telling to a yet more backward Cavalry the full, logical, scathing truth about the archaic absurdities of shock.

Read Bernhardi in the light of these circumstances. The early chapters must, I think, have fairly horrified our arme blanche school. He runs amok among all the cherished traditions which held good from the Crimea to Talana Hill.

“The Art of War has been revolutionized (inter alia) by ‘arms of precision’” (p. 1).

Compare Mr. Goldman’s definition of the Art of War, in so far as that art was misunderstood by the Boers.^[76] On page 9 Bernhardi says:

Absolutely correct, if we remember that by “our purpose” he refers to the steel weapon, showing at the outset that he does not realize the nature, as he certainly does not contemplate the adoption of the mounted rifleman’s charge.

He should add, of course, what South Africa proved, and the Japanese Cavalry confirmed on the plains of Mukden—that mounted riflemen have taken the “place of honour” vacated by Cavalry. But his instinct about terrain is sound at bottom. Contrast the demoralizing doctrine of “Cavalry ground,” and Mr. Goldman’s complaint that even South Africa was not “open” enough for Cavalry. Contrast his view of “obstructions,” and his failure to perceive what Bernhardi clearly perceives—that inequalities and obstructions, so far from being a hindrance to mounted troops, are in modern war increasingly necessary for effective action in surprise, and ought to be a matter of rejoicing, not lamentation.

This, of course, is an allusion to the francs-tireurs of 1870, who made it unsafe for the Prussian Cavalry to go about alone. I commend it to those who regard our guerilla war in particular as of no concern to Cavalry. The implication, of course, is that the steel is useless in these conditions. And the same is implied elsewhere of all the duties of scouting and reconnaissance, save alone for the gigantic preliminary shock duel which is to clear the road for reconnaissance, and to which I shall have to recur later.

On the steel in pursuit, Bernhardi is almost ironical. Only when

We may add—and I am sure he would admit—that men who throw their rifles away are an easy prey to any form of physical compulsion. They will surrender to a riding-whip. For sheer rapid killing just conceive of the frightful efficacy of the rifle, as proved by our war! If the horsemen insist on remaining on their horses among these terrified sheep, and if they do not use rifle-fire from the saddle, would not a revolver be at least as effective as a sword or lance? Of course the whole conception of such a pursuit with the steel on any considerable scale is the old Cavalry chimera so rarely seen in practice, never seen in the European wars from 1866 onwards, never seen in the Boer War, never seen in Manchuria. In other passages Bernhardi himself practically admits that it is a chimera.

The amazing thing is that in passages like this, where he is thinking mainly of the deficiencies of the steel, Bernhardi seems for the moment to forget that pure mounted riflemen, and even the hybrids, perfect in both weapons, who represent his own ideal, have the same defensive power as Infantry, to say nothing of the additional offensive (and defensive) power conferred by the horse. When, in other passages, he is thinking mainly of the excellence of the firearm, he is fully alive to the close analogy with Infantry, and goes to the extreme length of insisting that Cavalry shall actually be as good as Infantry at their own game of fire. They can be as good, he says, and if they are not as good, for Heaven’s sake, don’t tell them so, or you will destroy their dash! (p. 249). And they should have a firearm superior even to the Infantry rifle (p. 176). These three passages, on pages 15, 176, and 249, read together, give us in one more form the reductio ad absurdum of the steel weapon. Postulating equal fire-efficiency for Cavalry and Infantry, read the first passage over again, substituting “Cavalry” for “Infantry.” “We cannot attack [i.e., with the steel] even inferior Cavalry [much less inferior mounted riflemen of the pure type] as long as it only keeps the muzzles of its rifles down and shoots straight.” The rest is a truism: morally broken troops of course get beaten. And now postulate superior Cavalry, or, better still, superior mounted riflemen of the pure type, with their full aggressive powers. What becomes of the steel? In Bernhardi part of the confusion is due to the fact that he does not recognize the pure type of mounted rifleman at all, not even in the half-developed form of our Mounted Infantry. Having started from the a priori unreasoned dogma that however reduced the opportunities for the steel, it must be retained, he is continually endeavouring to obtain the benefit of both worlds, and involving himself thereby in palpable contradictions and inconsistencies. Our own authorities are more careful in avoiding the direct reductio ad absurdum. In borrowing from Bernhardi for the purposes of “Cavalry Training,” they eschew passages like those I have quoted hitherto, which to English ears would mean the downfall of the steel, and rely on less compromising matter.

In Chapter IV, “Increased Importance of Dismounted Action” (note in “dismounted action” the old, ineradicable assumption that “mounted action” is only associated with the steel), he is in the height of what I may call his “fire-mood,” and is very reticent about the arme blanche. The firearm, which, remember, should be a better weapon, if anything, than the Infantry rifle, is given many offensive as well as defensive rôles. Pursuits, for example, must not be “frontal,” because “Cavalry can easily be held up by any rear-guard position in which a few intact troops remain.” But who, we wonder, are these “intact troops”? Why not Cavalry, or mounted riflemen, as in South Africa? Is not rear-guard work a conventional and normal function of Cavalry itself? And if it is a case of Cavalry versus Cavalry, why not shock, at the compulsion of one side or the other? On the next page the General himself is demonstrating the value of Cavalry in rear-guard work, and insisting on the paramount importance of the firearm in it.

His further views on pursuit have been incorporated in “Cavalry Training.” Pursuits are to be on “parallel lines” and on the enemy’s flanks, or by way of anticipation, on his extreme rear—circumstances where the “principal rôle falls to the firearm, for only in the fire-fight is it possible to break off an attack without loss in order to appear again at some other point.” This passage, of course, is another implicit abandonment of the whole case for the steel. Think it out, and you will see that I am not exaggerating. It is transferred textually to “Cavalry Training” (p. 229), but, wisely enough, it appears at the respectful distance of forty-two pages from the general remarks on the “Employment of Cavalry,” where, among opportunities for the use of the firearm (pp. 186, 187), pursuit is not mentioned, and where the whole tenor of the instruction is that fire-action is only to be used when “the situation imperatively demands it.” Think this matter out in the light of “fire-fights” in South Africa (Roodewal, for example) or anywhere else, including, of course, fire-fights between or against Cavalry or mounted riflemen. What is the use of a weapon which admits of no tactical elasticity, for that is what it comes to, which can be used only when you are so certain of complete and final success that you need not even contemplate another attack at another point? This, of course, is the real reason for that idleness on the battle-field, that strange lack of dash which, by the admission of their own military authorities from Von Moltke downwards, characterized the Cavalries engaged in the wars of 1866 and 1870. And then there were no magazine rifles. Cavalry dash in South Africa was sapped by faith in the steel, and only partially restored by faith in the rifle. It is the old story: the charge must be the climax of a fire-fight, and therefore it must be inspired by fire. Under modern conditions you cannot mix the two sets of tactics; they are antagonistic and incompatible.

The passage goes on: “The charge, then, will only secure a greater result than dismounted action when the tactical cohesion of the enemy has been dissolved and his fire-power broken—that is to say, generally it will be of greater service in tactical than in strategical pursuits” (pp. 51, 52). We know from the passage quoted on page 302 what Bernhardi means by “dissolved tactical cohesion.” He means circumstances in which any weapon and any charge will secure surrender. In the next words he falls accidentally into the old error of confusing combat with mobility. What difference does it make to the efficacy of a weapon whether combat has been brought about tactically or strategically?

But, taking the words as they stand, what a light they throw on South Africa and the complaints of strategical mishandling and lack of opportunity! How in the world does Mr. Goldman reconcile them with his contempt for “tactical effects” and his conception of vast strategical circuits ending in shock-tactics? I need scarcely remind the reader that in all the actions on the main line of advance from Paardeberg and Poplar Grove to Bergendal, from February to September, 1900, the conditions of pursuit may be truly said to have been present from the very outset, owing to the great disparity of forces. Roberts was continually endeavouring to do exactly what Bernhardi recommends, to initiate for his mounted troops, not frontal but parallel pursuits, or anticipatory pursuits on the enemy’s extreme rear. He failed because (1) the enemy were themselves skilled mounted riflemen, who were able to hold very extensive fronts with very few men; (2) because our Cavalry were deficient in the very quality which Bernhardi says is essential—fire-power. And now let us read a little farther and see what Bernhardi says in contemplating this very contingency of wide fronts on pages 53, 54, under “Turning Movements Impracticable.” Here he strongly censures the fallacious idea that Cavalry “possesses in its mobility the infallible means of circumventing points of resistance.” “Width of the (enemy’s) front” (and the reader will remember the prodigious extent of the thinly-held Boer fronts) is one of the first obstacles named. Others are summarized in the following paragraph, which I commend particularly to Mr. Goldman:

Apply these remarks to battle-fields, such as Diamond Hill and Zand River, upon which I commented in Chapters IX. and XII. The logical alternative to circumventing tactics was, as I pointed out, piercing tactics, not the still wider circumventions which French favoured. But piercing tactics signified fire-tactics, and, since the enemy was mounted, swift, aggressive fire-tactics, either into decisive range or through the whole of a fire-zone, with a wheel back from the rear, should the enemy hold their ground. Bernhardi’s alternative is of precisely the same nature. “The actual assault remains necessary now,” and it is the assault by fire. Only, alas! it is always the wholly “dismounted” assault.

Two pages later, after censuring another error, which I have several times alluded to—namely, that of “overrating the power of Horse Artillery to clear the road for Cavalry” (pp. 54 and 178), we come to his allusion to the Boer charges on horseback (p. 56). Surely these must have given him, after all he has said, furieusement à penser. But no. What have “habits and instincts” to do with immemorial official creeds? A page later he is qualifying his remarks about Horse Artillery for the express purpose of admitting that guns are very necessary indeed for covering Cavalry fire-tactics, which, by his hypothesis, must be “dismounted.” I would give much to know exactly what effect upon his mind was made by Mr. Goldman’s deprecatory footnote to the effect that the Boer charges were not “Cavalry” charges, but Mounted Infantry charges; for, remember, he does not recognize Mounted Infantry at all. The real truth is, of course, that when Bernhardi wrote his second edition he knew very little about the last half of our war. No foreign observers were there, and the German official witnesses had decided that there was to be no “tactical interest” after March, 1900. It is doubtful whether the greater number of the charges had even taken place when Bernhardi went to press. Mr. Goldman takes pains to assure him that there were only “one or two” after all. And the whole of our Cavalry school has been assuring him ever since that the war, and especially the guerilla war, was so abnormal as to be quite uninteresting to Cavalry. So error propagates error.

We are prepared, then, for the inevitable. Since for Bernhardi Cavalry must have some “mounted” tactics, clearly those mounted tactics must be derived from the steel. Yet, by the end of Chapter iv., what a chasm seems to have intervened between the firearm and the steel! For the latter weapon he has, explicitly or implicitly, eliminated every combative opportunity save those of complete demoralization in the enemy. The General leaps the chasm with splendid intrepidity. Hitherto the natural inference from his writing is that the firearm has far surpassed the steel in importance, and in several later passages, after leaping the chasm, he speaks of its importance as “equal.” But in the first lines of Chapter v., “Tactical Leading in Mounted Combats,” when his revolutionary instincts must be curbed, all he admits is that dismounted action has “increased considerably in importance.” Then follows the explicit recantation, the confession of the true faith:

The logical hiatus, so familiar in all writers on shock, is complete. There is no attempt made to bridge it. One can almost hear the ghost of Frederick the Great whispering in the impious General’s ear: “What is all this despicable talk about dismounting? Betray the steel? Never!”

Remark that in making this sudden transition the General passes instantly from a general consideration of the uses of Cavalry in war, mainly fire-uses (where any weapon is mentioned at all), to the specific consideration of the “collision of Cavalry masses,” which I will assume for the moment to mean the inter-Cavalry shock fight, the absence of which, from modern battle-fields, he, like General French, seems to regard as unthinkable. “Battle-field,” in its context, evidently means “general battle-field of all arms.” Previously, in Chapter ii., he has referred to that other opportunity for the “Cavalry duel”—namely, in strategical reconnaissance by the independent Cavalry, where, also, I take him to assume that the duel is a shock duel. This battle-field “collision” is the “predominant factor,” and it is here, if I read his real inner meaning aright, and, for practical purposes, here only, that the steel weapon will find its opportunity.

‘If I read his real inner meaning aright;’ I am bound to make that reservation. One has to make such reservations in criticizing all “shock” literature at the present day, because the irruption of the unruly firearm into the sacred precincts of shock results in obscurities the task of unravelling which can only be compared to the elucidation of a difficult Greek text. Two incompatible things have to be reconciled, and it is beyond the wit of man to depict their reconciliation in clear and logical language. How easy it would have been for Bernhardi (if he really meant it) to say early in his book, “For Cavalry the predominant factor is the collision (i.e., the mutual collision) of Cavalry masses. In this inevitable class of encounter the steel is, and must be, supreme; therefore the steel must be the dominant weapon for Cavalry. Otherwise, and for all other purposes (except, for example, the pursuit of utterly demoralized Infantry and one or two other very rare opportunities) the firearm has usurped its place,” and then arrange his treatment of the subject frankly and clearly from this point of view. Then—if one only could extort from him his definition of a “mass”—one would have something concrete and definite to deal with. But such a course would have compelled him to rewrite his entire work, and to open his eyes to the inconsistencies with which it teems, just as the same course would compel the compilers of “Cavalry Training” to court self-stultification. It is ludicrous first to vest Cavalry with the full fire-power of Infantry, who are to have no fear of Cavalry, and then to say that the steel weapon must decide the mutual combats of Cavalry, who are riflemen plus horses. Even as it is, the jar of the ill-locked points (if I may change my metaphor) is audible as Bernhardi passes from one set of rails to the other. By the time he has reached this Chapter v. he has already, thanks to fire, almost banished the “battle-field” from consideration. “Cavalry has been driven out of its former place of honour on the battle-fields of the plains” (i.e., from the only terrain fit for shock). But surely the collision of Cavalry masses on the battle-field, this “predominant factor,” must involve a “place of honour.” What can there be more honourable than the defeat of the enemy’s mounted troops? In South Africa such a defeat would have signified the defeat of the whole Boer army on any given occasion. But I do not want to cavil over words. Take the General’s summary at the end of Chapter ii., “Duties during the War.”

The meaning of this is plain, if we remember that Bernhardi contemplates only one type of horsemen, Cavalry, which are the only troops with the “requisite mobility and independence” to reconnoitre, screen, and pursue. It is a truism that horses facilitate these objects. Their weapon is a distinct question, and all that precedes is an implicit condemnation of the steel, at any rate for anything in the nature of mixed combat. The reader will bear in mind the passages on pursuit.

Now, in the light of this passage and all that precedes it, read the chapter on “Leading in Mounted Combats.” Combats against whom? Surely against mounted Cavalry? Surely “collision” must, in its context, mean that? Yet for twenty full pages we read on, more and more bewildered, through passages more and more suggestive of mixed general combat, until on page 83 we come with a shock to the isolated consideration of “Cavalry duels,” which he declares to be “essential,” though he admits that they led to “mutual paralysis” and “deadlock” during the war of 1870. A moment later, and for the rest of the chapter, he is deep once more in fire and all that appertains to fire on the modern “battle-field.” And he ends with an eloquent purple patch on the “real work” of Cavalry being in pursuit.

Happily, in the case of Bernhardi, one is dealing with what au fond is not a complex mental structure. He does not arrange his subject with any ulterior purpose. He does not seriously attempt to reconcile faith with science, the arme blanche with the firearm. He passes from one to the other with complete insouciance, instinctively locking the thought-tight door which divides them, and bestowing on both the enthusiasm of an ardent nature. But the enthusiasm is of significantly different qualities. For the firearm it is predominantly technical and scientific; for the arme blanche it is romantic. In this very chapter, having delivered himself of the raison d’être, he enlarges on the difficulties of manœuvring and leading masses of Cavalry for shock, and shows himself acutely alive to the artificiality of the whole system, to its liability to fall to pieces under stress of a few rifle-shots, and to the absolute impossibility of effecting a sudden tactical transformation to fire-action under pressure of unforeseen conditions, after an advance has begun. The steel is treated poetically. For some reason it has always been regarded as a poetical element in war. In these days of scientific brutality, the less poetry unfounded on hard science and hard facts the better. It is better to be busy in battle with a prosaic weapon than to be idly weaving dreams which never come true. In Bernhardi, the poetry being on the surface, the profound physical and moral fallacies, underlying the arme blanche for Cavalry, become the more patent.

Take, for example, this conception of the indispensable inter-Cavalry shock fight, which, as I say, I think he really believes to be the only serious rôle of the steel, though, by the way, he never explicitly says in speaking specifically of the Cavalry duel, that it must be a shock duel (p. 83). I suspect that such a categorical axiom would revolt his common sense. Remember once more that he regards the ideal Cavalry qua riflemen, as the equals of Infantry, technically and morally. Read back, or forward, and see what he says about the steel versus Infantry, about Cavalry having been driven out of their place of honour on the battle-fields of the plains, about the revolution in conditions caused by arms of precision, etc. Then recollect that Cavalry, unlike Infantry, have horses, allow for country which is not a plain, and construct your own picture of the duel. Lastly, test your picture by South African experience, where the duel, without a trace of shock, lasted for two and a half years, and include, as the finishing touch, the fact, which Bernhardi only once dimly adumbrates and has not seriously envisaged, that mounted riflemen can charge.

One searches the whole of his volume in vain for light upon the profoundly difficult questions which arise from this intermixture of steel-tactics and fire-tactics in one Arm. Though in spirit the whole book is a recognition of the fact that the firearm is absolute arbiter of modern combats, directly he regards the steel in isolation he becomes completely absorbed in “mass” formations, and in every species of drill and manœuvre which is antagonistic to, and abhorrent to, fire-tactics. In this steel mood there is no confusion in his mind about the meaning of “shock.” There is no compromise toward “extensions.” For Cavalry charging against Cavalry (pp. 221, 222), “it is a vital article of faith that only the closest knee-to-knee riding—jamming the files together by pressure from the flanks—will guarantee victory or their personal safety.” Against “Infantry” (and why not against dismounted Cavalry?) the utmost he concedes is that the “files must be loosened, and every horse go in his normal stride,” but perfect cohesion and symmetry must be maintained. In other words, the essence of true shock—heavy impact—is retained without any qualification. The General, from his own point of view, is perfectly right. Unlike Mr. Goldman, he would have ridiculed the idea that there was shock at Klip Drift with the troopers many yards apart.

And now contrast the directions of our own “Cavalry Training,” whose compilers, more sophisticated than the innocent Bernhardi, cannot proceed too far in defining shock and the purposes of shock for fear of falling into transparent solecisms. Section 103 (p. 125) is entitled “Instruction in the Attack against Cavalry.” (Note the tacit assumption that Cavalry are always on horseback and always on plains, for on any other interpretation the section is meaningless.) The charge, it is laid down, must have “rapidity and vehemence ... firm cohesion, highest speed, and determination to win, ...” but “cohesion” is only further defined as “riding close.” If this is a symptom of compromise, it is fatal compromise from the point of view of shock; for I noticed that in criticizing inter-Cavalry charges at the Cavalry manœuvres of 1909, the Military Correspondent of the Times repeatedly censured the lack of cohesion and “boot-to-boot” riding as likely to cause failure against “the best foreign horsemen.”^[77] What a satire on our imitative policy! But in Section 104 (p. 129), “Instruction in the Attack against Infantry and Guns,” a reason appears for some anticipatory tinge of compromise. “The troop will usually attack in an extended formation.” And here, too, according to Colonel Repington, the Cavalry in 1909 were not up to the mark, this time from excess of cohesion.^[78] Again we see the fatal results of compromise.

All this would be anathema to Bernhardi, who by a singular irony is the model of our Cavalry School. He knew what shock was, and however flagrant the inconsistencies he was drawn into, clung honestly to that true conception. Our authorities know perfectly well that these extended formations are utterly incompatible with shock, and ought to know from South African experience that they are only strictly compatible with a fire-object and a fire-spirit. Then, indeed, they are formidable.

Had I space I could multiply examples of inconsistency in Bernhardi’s book. How, after war experience of our own, the arme blanche school in this country had the courage to enlist under his banner was a mystery to me on first reading his book, until I came to that blessed formula on page 90, which I had better repeat once more.