German Influence on British Cavalry. Erskine Childers

[1] Report of German Medical Staff. No French figures available.

      CHAPTER II

      SIR JOHN FRENCH ON THE ARME BLANCHE

      So the matter stood until, early in 1910, General von Bernhardi produced his second work, "Cavalry in War and Peace." An admirable English translation by Major G.T.M. Bridges promptly appeared, again with an Introduction by Sir John French.

      It must, one might surmise, have given him some embarrassment to pen this second eulogy. The previous book had been "perspicuous," "logical," "intelligent," and, above all, "exhaustive and complete." Two wars, it is true, had intervened, but neither, according either to Sir John French or, we may say at once, to General von Bernhardi, was of any interest to Cavalry. What fresh matter, either for German exposition or for British eulogy, could there be? That is one of the questions I shall have to elucidate, and I may say here that the only new fact for General von Bernhardi is the recent promulgation of a revised set of Regulations for the German Cavalry, Regulations which, in his opinion, though "better than the old ones," are still almost as mischievous, antiquated, and "unsuitable for war" as they can possibly be, and whose effect is to leave the German Cavalry "unprepared for war." But this is not a new fact which could properly strengthen Sir John French in recommending the German author to the British Cavalry as a brilliantly logical advocate of the lance and sword, and it is not surprising, therefore, that the tone of his second introduction is slightly different from that of the first.

      For the first time there appears a reference to the German Cavalry Regulations, from which the English reader would gain an inkling of the fact that General von Bernhardi is not a prophet in his own country, and that all is not harmony and enlightenment among the "progressive" Cavalry schools of Europe. On one specific point—raids—Sir John French "ventures to disagree" with General von Bernhardi, and he writes, also in quite general terms, that he does not "approve of all that the German Regulations say about the employment of Cavalry in battle." But even this latter note of criticism is very faint and deprecatory; nor is there anything to show that the writer, except on the one point mentioned, is not thoroughly at one with the German author's principles. The main purpose of this Introduction, as of the earlier one, is to claim that Bernhardi's book is a triumphant justification of the lance and sword. It is a "tonic for weak minds," an antidote against the "dangerous heresies" of the English advocates of the mounted rifleman, whose "appeals from ignorance to vanity" deserved scornful repudiation.

      Once more, and in warmer language than ever, the General protests against the pernicious tendency to attach value to the lessons of South Africa; but this time, fortunately, he gives some specific reasons for regarding the war as "abnormal," and I shall devote the rest of this chapter to an examination of these reasons.

      They are four: (1) That the "Boer commandos dispersed to the four winds when pressed, and reunited again some days or weeks later hundreds of miles from the scene of their last encounter." This curious little summary of the war shows to what almost incredible lengths of self-delusion a belief in the arme blanche will carry otherwise well-balanced minds—minds, too, of active, able men like Sir John French, who have actually been immersed in the events under discussion. One fails at first to see the smallest causal relation between the phenomena of the war as he sets them forth and the combat value of the lance and sword, but the implied argument must be this: that these weapons could not be given a fair trial in combat because there was no combat, or, rather, only combat enough to cause the hundred casualties and prisoners for which, by the recorded facts, the lance and sword were accountable.

      We figure a bloodless war, in which at the mere glimpse of a khaki uniform the enemy fled for "hundreds of miles"—at such lightning speed, moreover, that one of the chief traditional functions of the arme blanche, pursuit, was wholly in abeyance. Who would gather that there had been a "black week"; that Botha and Meyer held the Tugela heights for four months against forces between three and four times their superior in strength; that Ladysmith (where there were four Cavalry regiments) was besieged for four months, Kimberley for the same period, and Mafeking for seven months; that for at least nine months no "dispersion" took place even remotely resembling that vaguely sketched by Sir John French; and that during the whole course of the war no tactical dispersion took place which would conceivably affect the efficacy of the lance and sword as weapons of combat? A mere statement of the fact that the net rate of Boer retreat, even during the purely partisan warfare of 1901–02, was almost invariably that of ox-waggons (two miles an hour on the average), that until the last year of the war the Boers were generally accompanied by artillery, and that from the beginning of the war to the end not a single waggon or a single gun was ever captured through the agency, direct or indirect, of the lance and sword, shatters the hypothesis that these weapons had any appreciable combat value.

      But that is only the negative side of the argument. We have to deal with a mass of plain, positive facts in favour of the rifle as an aggressive weapon for mounted troops. The Boer rifle caused us 29,000 casualties, over 40 guns and 10,000 men taken in action—losses which, to say the least, are evidence that some stiff fighting took place; for men who, when "pressed," run for "hundreds of miles" cannot take prisoners and guns.

      We have before us the details of some hundreds of combats, in which Cavalry as well as other classes of troops were engaged, and the only effective way of testing the value of the steel weapons is to see what actually happened in these combats. The result of this inquiry is to show that the lance and sword were practically useless both in attack and defence, whatever the relative numbers and whatever the nature of the ground. No serious historian has ever attempted to make out any case to the contrary. No responsible man at the time would have ventured publicly to assert the contrary. It was patent to everybody—leaders and men—that the Boers were formidable because they were good mounted riflemen, and that our bitter need was for mounted riflemen as good as theirs. It is only when years of peace have drugged the memory and obliterated the significance of these events—melancholy and terrible events some of them—that it is possible to put forward the audacious claim that the lance and sword had no chance of proving their value because the Boers invariably ran away from them.

      It must be evident that if this first reason for the failure of the lance and sword given by Sir John French is valid, it would be needless to proffer any others. And the others he does proffer only demonstrate further the weakness of his case. "Secondly," he says, "the war in South Africa was one for the conquest and annexation of immense districts, and no settlement was open to us except the complete submission of our gallant enemy." Such a campaign, he goes on to say, "is the most difficult that can be confided to an army," etc. Perfectly true—we agree; but what bearing has this obvious truth on the combat value of the lance and sword?

      The issue before us is this: Is a certain mode of fighting possible in modern days? Is it practicable for men to remain in their saddles and wield steel weapons against men armed with modern rifles? "No," answers Sir John French, "it is not practicable, if your aim is annexation and the complete submission of a gallant enemy." Poor consolation for the unhappy taxpayer who pays for the maintenance of exceedingly expensive mounted troops, and commits himself to a scheme of conquest and annexation in the faith that these troops are efficient instruments of his will! Where would Sir John French's argument lead him, if he only followed it up and supplied the missing links? But that is the worst of this interminable controversy. Such nebulous arguments never are worked out in terms of actual combat on the battle-field.

      Thirdly, says Sir John French, the horses were at fault. "We did not possess any means for remounting our Cavalry with trained horses. … " "After the capture, in rear of the army, of the great convoy by De Wet, our horses were on short commons, and consequently lost condition, and never completely recovered it." This is an old argument, expressed in the old vague, misleading way. The war lasted nearly three years, beginning in October, 1899. The period referred to by Sir John French was in February, 1900. Long before this, when there was no complaint about the horses, the futility of the lance and sword, and the grave disabilities under which the Cavalry laboured owing to their inadequate carbine, had been abundantly manifest. The steel weapons may be said to have been obsolete after Elandslaagte, on the second day of the war.

      At the particular period referred to by Sir John