GERMAN INFLUENCE
ON BRITISH CAVALRY
BY
ERSKINE CHILDERS
AUTHOR OF
"WAR AND THE ARME BLANCHE," "THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS,"
"IN THE RANKS OF THE C.I.V."
EDITOR OF VOL. V. OF "THE 'TIMES' HISTORY OF THE WAR"
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
1911
[All rights reserved]
Printed in Great Britain
PREFACE
This essay is meant to be read in connection with the facts andarguments adduced in my book of last year, "War and the ArmeBlanche," with its Introduction by Field-Marshal Lord Roberts. Fromthe nature of the case I have not been able to avoid a small measure ofrepetition, but I have done my best to confine myself to new ground.
A word about my object in writing again. Contemporaneously with thepublication of "War and the Arme Blanche," General von Bernhardipublished in Germany his "Reiterdienst," and an English edition,translated by Major G.T.M. Bridges, D.S.O., under the title "Cavalryin War and Peace," appeared simultaneously in this country. Like itspredecessor, "Unsere Kavallerie im nächsten Kriege" (translated underthe title "Cavalry in Future Wars"), this new book by General vonBernhardi was headed with a highly laudatory Preface from the pen ofGeneral Sir John French, who commended it to military students in thiscountry as a brilliant and authoritative treatise on the employmentof Cavalry in modern war. It was included in the valuable "PallMall Series" of military books, published by Hugh Rees and Co.;and, in short, unless the critical faculties and native common-senseof Englishmen can be aroused, it is likely to become a standardwork. There exists, be it remembered, no similar work, modern andauthoritative, by a British author.
My object in this essay is to arouse those critical faculties and thatcommon-sense. Without any disrespect to General von Bernhardi, whowrites, not for Englishmen, but, as a German reformer, for what heregards as an exceptionally backward Cavalry, I wish to show, not onlythat we have nothing to learn even from him in the matter of Cavalrycombat, but that, if we only have the pluck and independence to breakoff the demoralizing habit of imitating foreign models, and to buildon our own war experience and our own racial aptitudes, we have thepower of creating a Cavalry incomparably superior in quality to anyContinental Cavalry.
The indispensable condition precedent to that revival is to sweep awayroot and branch the tactical system founded on the lance and sword, andto create a new system founded on the rifle.
I shall endeavour to show, using von Bernhardi's "Reiterdienst," withSir John French's Introduction, and our own official Manuals, as mytext, that in the matter of modern Cavalry warfare no principles worthyof the name exist among professional men. The whole subject is in astate of chaos, to which, I believe, there is no parallel in all thearts of war and peace. And the cause of that chaos is the retention intheory of a form of combat which is in flagrant contradiction with theconditions exacted by modern firearms, and is utterly discredited bythe facts of modern war.
The excellence of the translation furnished by Major Bridges has madeit unnecessary for me to introduce into this essay the various termsand phrases used in the original German text. After a study of thattext, I am satisf