Читать книгу War and the Arme Blanche - Erskine Childers - Страница 7

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In war the moral advantage of a weapon, whether used in offence or defence, depends absolutely on its physical efficacy. It will inspire confidence in its possessor and fear in his adversary in direct proportion to its average working utility. Practical fighting men cannot be induced for long to retain either a sentimental affection or a superstitious awe for a weapon of proved inferiority. In the early days of a war, when the merits of new weapons, or of old weapons in new hands, are still in doubt, such irrational feelings have been known to operate; but they do not last. At the beginning of the South African War the Boers feared the horseman’s sword, but the fear did not last. The physical capabilities of the weapon, in harmony with the physical capabilities of the horse, determine the moral impulse of the horseman and the moral effect upon the enemy.

In endeavouring to apply this simple criterion to the case of the arme blanche and the rifle, we are confronted at once with two formidable obstacles, the “Cavalry spirit” and the “terror of cold steel”—the former a subjective idea, the latter its objective corollary.

No one but a Cavalryman, perhaps, can fully appreciate the depth and intensity of the old tactical tradition of the Cavalry, a tradition many centuries old, the treasured heritage of many glorious fields. There is nothing which exactly corresponds to it in other arms. Both the Infantry and Artillery have been accustomed to rely continuously on improvements in their weapons and to modify their field training accordingly. But, as I have pointed out, the steel weapons of Cavalry are not susceptible of improvement. With stereotyped weapon, however great the traditions behind them, the tactics have tended to be stereotyped, not absolutely, of course, but relatively to the progress made in other arms. Hence there has grown up what is known as the “Cavalry spirit.” This consecrates the past, and entrenches the type behind an impregnate rampart of sentiment. Let us note that in relation to other branches of the service the “Cavalry spirit” is something of an anomaly. No one speaks, at any rate with the same peculiar emphasis, of an “Infantry spirit” or an “Artillery spirit,” though the peculiar traditions of these arms are no less glorious, their esprit de corps no less admirable, their ardour in action no less great. No; the Cavalry spirit in latter days has come to be an unconscious tribute to change, and at the same time the symbol of resistance to change.

Let us be quite clear about the nature of this spirit, otherwise we may be misled by a mere point of nomenclature. I pass by that bilateral definition, referred to in the beginning of this volume, which, as I pointed out, represented mere lip-service to the rifle, and is not seriously accepted by Cavalrymen themselves. Historically, here and on the Continent the Cavalry spirit dates back to a time when there was but one category of mounted troops, that known as “Cavalry,” to which all the war duties naturally belonging to men provided with horses were assigned, and whose primary weapons were the steel weapons. It has outlived the intrusion of the rifle into mounted tactics and the introduction of new pure types under the names of Mounted Infantry and Mounted Riflemen. Outliving these innovations, it has naturally retained, for Cavalrymen at any rate, a wider significance than present conditions warrant. It implies in the larger sense dash, speed, audacity, resource, nerve—qualities which should be the possession of all soldiers vested with the high mobility given by the horse. And it covers, in the larger sense again, all the duties still arbitrarily assigned to Cavalry and arbitrarily withheld from mounted riflemen—duties many of which have only the remotest connection with the steel weapon, and could be—have been, in fact—performed equally well, and better, by troops relying on the rifle. But, stripped of all these confusing elements, which are due to the secular association of the horse and the steel weapon as inseparable corollaries of one another, the Cavalry spirit, in its inmost essence, means the spirit of fighting on horseback with a steel weapon, in contradistinction to the spirit of fighting on foot with a firearm. As I have said before, with opposing bodies of horse who both deliberately elect to contend on horseback with the steel we have nothing to do. Our sole concern is to estimate the influence of the modern rifle upon that method of fighting. Now, in view of the physical principles set forth above, is the Cavalry spirit, as I have defined it, a sensible thing to inculcate?

I shall prove that the “terror of cold steel,” the objective counterpart of the “Cavalry spirit,” is a myth. Cold steel, no doubt, may seem terrible enough to troops taught to rely on it, but no Infantryman worth his salt feels any terror of the horseman’s steel. Infantry are taught in our own country to despise it, not to fear it. A fortiori mounted riflemen, with the combative power of Infantry plus high mobility, should be taught not to fear it. They are not so taught.

Strangely enough, the refutation of the theory of terror, and incidentally of the whole theory of the arme blanche, is contained within the covers of the Training Handbooks. Let the reader study carefully the whole of page 92 of “Infantry Training” (“Meeting an Attack by Cavalry”), noting specially the opening words about “open ground” and “broken ground” in the case of a foot-soldier versus an individual trooper. Forming square to meet shock has, of course, long been abolished. Then let him read pages 60 and 61 of “Mounted Infantry Training,” where he will actually find gravely set forth directions for forming square to resist Cavalry, so vulnerable are Mounted Infantry taught to regard themselves when “surprised in the open” (the vague old phrase!) by Cavalry. Why give Mounted Infantry horses at all? Meanwhile some zealot for the horse and the rifle has been allowed to insert on page 57 a direction for Mounted Infantry to use saddle-fire, though only in the case of “scouts and picked men.” So near we are to common sense, and yet so far! Fancy a scout, whose aim is secrecy, using saddle-fire!

In all this insistence on imaginary sources of awe the true moral factors underlying mounted action are forgotten. The greatest of these is surprise. Behind the weapon is the horse, and the horse is common to all mounted troops. Properly handled, mounted men will always be able to exert a strong moral effect upon non-mounted men, simply from their mobility, from their power to change or gain ground rapidly, to feint, raid, and swoop, envelop, outflank, mystify, outmanœuvre—in a word, to surprise their slow-moving antagonists. It is the horse which invests them with this power, not the weapon, and if we are to speak of “terror,” it is primarily the terror of surprise—in its widest sense—which hampers and daunts unmounted troops in dealing with mounted troops. Conversely, it is primarily the power of inflicting surprise which instils dash into horsemen, however armed. Nor is surprise merely an aggressive aim of horsemen; it is a defensive instinct, since the mobility which gives surprise is set off to some extent by the vulnerability of that engine of mobility, the horse. Here we come back to physical conditions. Surprise is useless unless materialized through the agency of a deadly weapon. For the materialization of surprise what comparison can there be between a smokeless, accurate magazine rifle and a weapon which is harmless unless and until physical contact is attained, especially if it be remembered that the sort of physical contact indispensable to success can only be brought about under such a rare combination of exceptional circumstances as I have described?

To mounted riflemen surprise presents a whole world of activity unknown to shock horsemen. In extreme, but not at all abnormal cases, they can initiate, elaborate, and carry a surprise to complete and crushing victory without even so much as being clearly seen by the defence. In intermediate cases they can always be content with a far less degree of surprise than shock horsemen, for whom surprise only materializes at the supreme moment of a shock charge home. In remoter cases still they can exercise a strong moral effect even at great distances by a threat upon flanks or communications, when shock-trained horsemen would leave the nerves of the enemy absolutely undisturbed.