CHAPTER X

THE MORAL

THE moral is simple and inspiring--self-reliance, trust in our own experience, as confirmed by the subsequent experience of others. By all means let us borrow what is good from foreigners, and I should be the last to deny that, on topics unconnected with combat and weapons, there are many valuable hints to be obtained from General von Bernhardi's writings, and those of other foreign Cavalrymen. But let us not borrow what is bad, nor lose ourselves in the fog which smothers his Cavalry principles, when our own road to reform is plain.

Some measure of reform, if report is true, is to take shape in the next revision of the Cavalry Manual. I end, as I began, with expressing the hope that reform may be drastic. But reform cannot end with the Cavalry Manual. It is absolutely necessary to introduce clearness, consistency and harmony into the four Manuals: "Cavalry Training" (with its absurd postscript for Yeomanry), "Mounted Infantry Training," "Infantry Training," and "Combined Training." At present the contradictions between these official Manuals is a public scandal. But I suggest that the task of reconstruction is absolutely impossible unless the basis taken be that fire, by whomsoever employed, is absolute arbiter of tactics, and that the Cavalryman is for practical purposes a compound of three factors--man, horse, and rifle.

The lance should go altogether. Whether the sword is retained, as the American Cavalry retain it, rather as a symbol than as a factor in tactics, or is dispensed with altogether, as our divisional mounted troops and our Colonial mounted riflemen dispense with it, is a matter of very small moment, provided that the correct principle be established and worked out in practice. It was because I doubted the possibility of establishing the correct principle in this country without abolition that in my previous book I advocated abolition, on the precedent of the South African War. The adoption of a bayonet or a sword-bayonet is, in my own humble opinion, an interesting open question.

THE END

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD

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UNEXPLORED SPAIN.

By ABEL CHAPMAN,

Author of "Bird-Life of the Borders," "Wild Norway," "On Safari";

And WALTER J. BUCK,

British Vice-Consul at Jerez.

_With more than 200 Illustrations from Drawings by the Authors, Joseph Crawhall, and others, and from Photographs, including some by H.R.H. Philippe, Duke of Orleans. 1 Volume super-royal 8vo._, 21s. net.

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THE END OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT.

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The period dealt with by the Author comprises the last thirty years of the Irish Parliament. The system of Dual Government--that "vulture gnawing at the vitals of the Empire," as Lord Rosebery has called it--was then on its trial. It had already broken down in Scotland, and in Ireland the irrepressible conflict between closer union on the one hand and complete separation on the other went steadily on to its destined end.

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GERMAN INFLUENCE ON BRITISH CAVALRY.

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In the course of the keen and widespread controversy aroused by the Author's book, "War and the Arme Blanche," published last year with an introduction by Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, it became clear that foreign influence--and especially German influence--was the principal cause of our adherence to the obsolete tactics based on the lance and sword. This impression has been confirmed by the recent appearance of a translation of General von Bernhardi's latest work, "Cavalry in War and Peace," with a commendatory preface from the pen of General Sir John French, our foremost cavalry authority. No modern work of this same scale and character, by a British cavalry writer, exists, and it is this work, therefore, which Mr. Childers, in his coming volume, "German Influence on British Cavalry," submits to close analysis and criticism.

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