chapter vi. The total number provided for the British army was 518,794
(mules 150,781). The net wastage accounted for was in horses 347,007 (mules 53,339). The Boers took the field with 50,000 to 60,000 horses, which were renewed several times. Their net wastage is estimated conjecturally at 100,000.
Lastly, let me remind the reader of what I believe to be the real gist and essence of this complaint about horses. The theory of shock among several other rigorous conditions presupposes the presence at any and every moment of fresh horses capable of bearing down upon their objective at a gallop, and during the last fifty yards at the “charge,” and in perfect formation. This condition alone is enough to make shock a negligible factor in future wars—_if_, that is, Cavalry are going to play the great part in war which they should play, but which they have not played for the last forty years. Mounted riflemen are subject to no such conditions, and would lose half their value if they were. Picture a Boer charge—the little grass-fed ponies breaking from their “trippling” trot to what would correspond in European Cavalry to a moderate canter.
3. _Lack of Opportunity._—From ground and horses we pass to the more important part of Mr. Goldman’s case for “abnormality.”[69] Though he never admits that Cavalry work fell short in any respect in South Africa, he is evidently conscious that this perfection needs much special proof, and he falls back on the proposition that they did not have a proper chance of distinguishing themselves in their own special line. Two absolutely distinct causes—the one domestic, the other external—are represented as having produced this lack of opportunity:
(_a_) They were not employed properly—_i.e._, as the context shows, by Lord Roberts in particular, though he is not named.
(_b_) That the Boers, owing to their habit of retiring without “fighting to a finish,” did not permit the Cavalry to “discharge Cavalry duties.”
Footnote 69:
I ought, perhaps, to allude to another argument which appears in Mr. Goldman’s Preface to Bernhardi, though it is expressed in very vague terms, and the meaning is beyond me: “The Cavalry, after the first few weeks of 1900, as an effective force had practically ceased to exist.” Figures of strength and disposition will be found in my previous chapters.
I have alluded in previous chapters to both these points. Let me add a word more.
As to (_a_), Mr. Goldman’s argument is vitiated from beginning to end by that old confusion between strategy and tactics, between mobility and combat, which lies at the root of _arme blanche_ doctrine. The express point he is arguing, remember, is the relative value of Cavalry and mounted riflemen, of the steel weapon and the firearm, or, to be more accurate, the steel weapon plus the firearm, and the firearm alone. Now, the horse, whether used strategically or tactically, is common to both types. Weapons are used only in combat. We are concerned, then, purely, with a question of weapons and of combat. Strategy only concerns us in that the ultimate end of all strategy is combat. If there were to be no combat, equipment for a strategical errand would be vastly simplified. We should discard all weapons and all ammunition, and use the lightest men we could possibly find. In defending the steel weapon, therefore, and in showing that it had not its proper opportunities, we should expect to find Mr. Goldman dwelling on tactical opportunities. Quite the reverse. His complaint—both in the Appendix to his own book and in his Preface to Bernhardi—is that the Cavalry were denied strategical opportunities. If he proved this up to the hilt, he would not have furthered the _arme blanche_ theory one whit. But does he prove it? “Strategical” is, of course, ambiguous, but let us follow his loose employment of the word in calling the Kimberley raid “strategical.” He would not—and, indeed, does not—contend that at that period Roberts denied the Cavalry independent opportunities. He begins with the general advance of May, 1900.
But, again, we must pause to define the terms we are using. Mr. Goldman’s definition of the “strategical use of Cavalry” is on page 412 of “With French in South Africa”: “The use of that arm in such a fashion that, _without of necessity engaging in any tactical action_, certain well-defined effects are produced.” Note the words I have italicized, for they prepare the way in advance for Mr. Goldman’s appreciation of the action of Zand River, which he gives as a “concrete case to explain his argument.” “At that action French’s Cavalry division was employed on the extreme left flank of the army to produce _a purely tactical effect_.... His operations _could only, and did only_, have the effect of causing the enemy gradually and in perfect order to withdraw from the position commanding the river.... The effect was _purely tactical_, for the early withdrawal of the enemy, unbeaten, undemoraiized, gave no chance to Cavalry shock action.” What is the inner meaning of this contempt for “purely tactical effects”? Simply this, that our Cavalry, owing to their armament and methods, were outmatched in combat by the Boers. Let the reader examine once more the facts and maps of this action in the “Official History,” the _Times_ History, Mr. Goldman’s own narrative, or any other. He will see that “could only” and “did only” are synonymous terms to Mr. Goldman. Eight thousand Boers held a twenty-five mile front, with their main strength in the centre and left, against nearly 40,000 British troops, of whom 13,000 were mounted. Aiming at envelopment and destruction, Roberts gave the Cavalry a supremely important tactical object. Of the two turning forces employed, two brigades of Cavalry, supported by 2,200 mounted riflemen, were to make an extensive sweep round the Boer right flank, and gain an intercepting position at Ventersburg Road Station. The Cavalry got well round to the rear in very good time (for the movement was a complete surprise to Botha), but were subsequently checked by small flank-guards. One brigade was badly mauled, and the whole division was delayed long enough to enable Botha to withdraw his whole force in safety. The Lancer brigade, near the railway, and next in line to French’s division, though lightly opposed, showed no greater aggressive capacity (see “Official History,” vol. iii., p. 56, and map), and the same applies to the remaining Cavalry brigade on our extreme right. Mr. Goldman is content: there could not have been any “tactical effect.” The logical inference is that Cavalry can have no tactical value at all.[70] For he does not suggest _any tactical_ alternative for them. One tactical retort to these immense Boer extensions was, as I indicated, a piercing movement; but Mr. Goldman makes no such suggestion, although in the same Appendix (under “Security and Information”) he expressly gives as one of many normal Cavalry functions that of “piercing the opposing Cavalry screen with a division or divisions cut loose from the main army.” As I have pointed out, for purposes of analogy, the Boer army on this, as on so many other occasions, did represent a Cavalry screen.
Footnote 70:
This, as I shall show in the next chapter, is precisely the conclusion reached unconsciously by Bernhardi, and consciously by Wrangel. Their only tactical rôle _with the steel_ is in the “collision of Cavalry masses”—_i.e._, between masses of Cavalry who both believe in the steel and engage on that understanding.
And what is his suggested strategical alternative? This, that the Cavalry division should have been, say, “100 miles to the north of the main army, moving south, while our main army moved north.” The effect on the “ill-disciplined Boer troops” would have been “incalculable,” and then, in some unexplained way, would have come the “opportunity for the shock tactics of Cavalry.” How wonderfully simple war seems to Mr. Goldman, and how carelessly he must have read his master, Bernhardi, who makes short work of this conception of miraculously easy and effective raids in modern war! But let us look a little closer. The Cavalry had arrived from Bloemfontein at Smalldeel, freshly remounted, on the 8th. On the 9th French’s two brigades covered twenty miles of their turning movement. On the 10th, the day of the battle, they covered upwards of thirty miles, and their horses were too tired for them to be able to act on the suggestion of Roberts for an enveloping march that same night round the Boer army and to the north of Kroonstad. Starting at 6.30 a.m. next day, they were too late to produce any important results.
The tasks set the Cavalry, whether we call them strategical or tactical, were as heavy and responsible as the most ardent leader could desire. This craving for grandiose strategical “effects” without combat is thoroughly unhealthy and distorted. I venture to lay down the proposition that no Cavalry has a right to complain of strategical mishandling until it has proved beyond question high combative capacity. With carbines and inadequate fire-training this high standard was beyond the reach of the Cavalry. It has been said that Roberts misused them in the Middelburg operations of July 23–25, 1900. Study the facts. French had planned a very extensive circuit. Roberts, who had no spare mounted troops for his main columns, prescribed a shorter curve. On the 24th both Cavalry Brigades, even with the help of Hutton’s mixed force of 3,000 men, were held up for four hours by a small rear-guard. Casualties, two men wounded. It is impossible to assume that a wider circuit against so mobile an enemy would have produced important results.
Genuine strategical independence for a purely Cavalry force, on the lines of the great Civil War raids, was never in question during this period, and would have been useless if feasible.[71] The nearest approach to such an expedition was the futile divisional march of 173 miles across the Eastern Transvaal in October, 1900, where some Infantry and a few mounted riflemen, besides masses of ox transport, accompanied the column. There was no mobility worth the name; the column became nothing more than an escort to its own transport. The Kimberley raid was not, of course, one of strategical independence. The division as a whole was never more than twenty miles from large portions of the main army, and was not rationed independently for a longer period than three days. Kimberley was a friendly town, and after the return of the main army, on which the force was dependent for all but temporary supplies, forage ran out owing to De Wet’s stroke at Waterval. Mounted riflemen were associated with Cavalry, and the Cavalry themselves won success by acting well as mounted riflemen.
Footnote 71:
See Bernhardi’s warning, “Cavalry in Future Wars,” pp. 169, 170.
Mr. Goldman’s idea that hundred-mile circuits would end in “opportunities for shock” is utterly chimerical. It is against all evidence, from this war and others, European, American, or Asiatic, and Bernhardi scouts it.[72] The ride from Kimberley on February 15, selected by Mr. Goldman as a case where for once “Cavalry” were used in a proper “strategical” manner, did not end in shock; on the contrary, it ended in tactical fire-action pure and simple. The chance for interception was of the same tactical character at Zand River. In point of fact, at one moment during the latter action an attempt was actually made at an open-order Cavalry charge, by a brigade against about 200 Boers.[73] It came to nothing. And the reason, as given by Mr. Goldman and the Official Historian? Horses too much blown. And yet Mr. Goldman cries out for hundred-mile expeditions which are to culminate—with fresh horses—in shock.
Footnote 72:
“Cavalry in Future Wars,” p. 51. Non-frontal pursuits, especially “strategical” pursuits, are to be by fire-action.
Footnote 73:
Mr. Goldman’s estimate. The _Times_ Historian speaks of a “party,” the Official History a “commando.” The total force detached by Botha against the division was certainly very small.
No one, of course, would go so far as to assert positively either of Roberts or of any Commander-in-Chief in any war that he never once missed an opportunity for the strategical use for _mounted troops_. That is a different matter altogether. The issue lies between steel-armed troops and the mounted riflemen, whom Mr. Goldman ignores. Why not a bare allusion to Plumer’s brilliant defence of Rhodesia, or to the relief of Mafeking—a strategical march of 250 miles in fourteen days, with fire-fights _en route_, by irregulars?
With regard to General Buller’s use of Cavalry I need add nothing to my criticisms in Chapters VIII. and IX. His fault was to carry disbelief in the steel for the Boer War to the extent of disbelieving in Cavalry altogether for that war, a wholly unwarrantable point of view, derived from an equally distorted conception of the utility of Cavalry.
(_b_) _Refusal of the Boers to Stand._—The facts speak for themselves. Only by avoiding the whole topic of Boer aggression, and by treating Boer rear-guard skill as a non-Cavalry quality which “made pursuit practically impossible,” is the point even arguable. Indeed, I approach it again with the utmost reluctance; for Mr. Goldman’s _idée fixe_ that the Boers were from first to last mortally afraid of the lance and sword carries him to lengths where no upholder of mounted riflemen who respects and admires the Cavalry and attacks only their weapons and methods can consent to follow him. I shall refrain from making controversial use of these passages, and shall confine myself, briefly, to less difficult ground.
Mr. Goldman is probably thinking mainly of the operations of Lord Roberts, though his proposition is general (p. 420). He would scarcely contend that the Boers did not “stand” from November, 1899, to March, 1900, on the Tugela heights, or that they did not show positively aggressive qualities and outmatch our Cavalry at Talana and the battle of Ladysmith. With all his belief in the steel, he would scarcely in set terms allege that regular Cavalry would have defended or attacked Spion Kop or Pieter’s Hill better than they were in fact defended and attacked. But these were tactical occasion, presumably with no “tactical effects” to be produced. What, then, of Elandslaagte?
As for the main operations under Lord Roberts, has Mr. Goldman ever seriously reflected upon the relative numbers engaged? Of course, the Boers frequently showed moral weakness—we ourselves were not exempt—but they did not fear the _sword_. Assuredly they “stood” at Paardeberg to their ruin; but was there shock at Paardeberg? Assuredly they may be said to have stood at Dornkop and at the two days’ battle of Diamond Hill, where Cavalry were hotly engaged, and at Bergendal, where seventy-four Boer Cavalry (though Mr. Goldman would never admit they were “Cavalry”) delayed an army and were ejected by Infantry. In the other actions of this period, as I have pointed out, their retreats were conducted in an orderly manner and with small loss.
Let me lay down another proposition, which I believe all Cavalrymen will agree to. No one on behalf of Cavalry has a right to make a general complaint of pusillanimity or insufficient resistance on the part of the enemy, unless (_a_) that enemy has had something approaching numerical equality; or (_b_) has been forced into disastrous retreats, with loss of guns, transport, etc.; or unless (_c_) the Infantry and mounted riflemen associated with the Cavalry have not been seriously engaged. On this latter point the facts of the war and statistics of losses are decisive. There is something that makes the brain a little dizzy about the first two conditions, but the whole case for the _arme blanche_ teems with paradoxes which can only be met by the method of _reductio ad absurdum_.
Finally, I ask again, as I asked above, what is the real meaning of this complaint about lack of resistance? Simply this, that the Boers would not engage in shock and imposed fire-tactics on the Cavalry. In his remarks on terrain (p. 423) Mr. Goldman reveals the truth. “Favourable on the whole as the ground was in the Free State, in the presence of Cavalry operating on favourable ground the Boers refused to give battle.” Well, I can only ask the reader to study as one example among scores Mr. Goldman’s own example, Zand River, noting (1) that we were nearly five times superior in total strength, and in guns, and that the regular Cavalry, reckoned apart from mounted riflemen and Infantry, amounted to five-eighths of the whole Boer army; (2) that the terrain was as suitable for shock manœuvre as any Cavalry could expect to obtain, and such as they very rarely would obtain in any probable European battle-field; (3) the tactical incidents of the Cavalry turning movement, the offensive strokes by the Boers, and the failure of our charge. How could the Cavalry lose 224 horses and 161 men in casualties and prisoners and fail in their tactical task, unless someone “gave battle”? In other words, “battle” is synonymous with “shock.” Nothing but shock counts.
Time has convinced Mr. Goldman more and more strongly of this truth. In his Preface to Bernhardi he lectures the Boers in a vein of compassionate condescension on their ignorance of the “Art of War.” It is true enough that there was much in the art of war which the Boers did not understand, or understood fatally late. But what does their mentor, for the purposes of his argument in this Preface, mean by the “Art of War”? He means shock, though he gives it the customary name of “mounted action.”
“Had the Boers understood the Art of War and taken advantage of the openings which their superior mobility gave them, or had they been possessed of a body of Cavalry capable of mounted action, say at Magersfontein, they might repeatedly have wrought confusion in our ranks.”
This passage sets the crown upon the case for “peculiarity.” I leave it as it stands without further comment.
Such are Mr. Goldman’s reasons for regarding his South African War as a vindication of the _arme blanche_. I have not discussed them at excessive length. They are extreme views, but such views, if honestly expounded, as Mr. Goldman expounds them, must be extreme. Many people vaguely entertain similar ideas, but if they take the pains to work them out with facts and maps, they will either be forced to similar extremities or will abandon them altogether. In my next two chapters I shall give further proof of the astounding contradictions in which _arme blanche_ doctrine abounds.
I come to the last of the triumvirate, General von Bernhardi himself. It is a relief. We begin to breathe fresh air after an atmosphere which, I believe the reader will agree with me, becomes sometimes almost unbearably close and enervating. When censure of the Commander-in-Chief, depreciation of a brave enemy, implied depreciation of our own mounted riflemen, complaints about ground, complaints about horses, complaints about anything and everything but the one thing which really merited complaint, when apology and insinuation are carried so far, we begin to long for something stimulating and straightforward, and in Bernhardi we get it. On his work I shall have to write more fully in the next chapter. At this moment I wish only to call attention to his view of the “peculiarity” of the Boer War. It is contained in half a dozen lines on page 56 of “Cavalry in Future Wars.” He has just been praising the Boer charges as having achieved “brilliant results,” in spite of “any kind of tactical training for this particular purpose.” (What a curious sidelight that latter remark throws on official views of "training"!) He adds:
“Certainly weapons and numbers have altered materially since the days of the American Civil War, and the experiences of South Africa, largely conditioned by the peculiar topographical conditions and the out-of-door habits and sporting instincts of the Boers, cannot be transferred to European circumstances without important modifications.”
That is all he explicitly says about the Boer War. But the reader will see at once that here is a totally different point of view from that of Mr. Goldman, whose thesis is that the Boers were not formidable enough to be fit adversaries for our Cavalry, that they would not “stand,” and that their great deficiency was lack of a steel weapon and shock power. The idea underlying Bernhardi’s vague words is much more akin to that contained in the passage quoted from Sir John French, and, of course, it is essentially the right idea. I pass by the “peculiar topographical conditions.” Without further elaboration, we need not take the words to mean in set terms that South Africa was less favourable for shock manœuvre than Europe. The kernel lies in the “outdoor habits and sporting instincts,” creating conditions which “cannot be transferred to European circumstances without important modification.” These words, read in connection with the “brilliant results” of the Boer charges, can only signify that town-bred Europeans cannot hope to imitate methods, excellent in themselves, but demanding outdoor habits and sporting instincts.
This idea, expressed in one shadowy form or another, of an element of superiority in the Boers, is very common; commoner, I think, on the whole than its antitype, the idea of inferiority, though I have more than once heard both propounded, unconsciously, in the same breath by the same person. But it is never in this country voiced authoritatively; and with good reason, for it shakes to its foundations the whole fabric of the shock system and opens up a line of thought which can end only in one way. Mr. Goldman does not even hint at it, except in connection with that strange faculty for fighting _defensive_ rear-guard actions which he regards as quite outside the topic of Cavalry. General French, while implying that the Boers were formidable, is silent about the reason.
Let us face this shadowy argument for what it is worth. What does it mean? That we cannot train our Cavalry to become genuinely mobile mounted riflemen, with the rifle charge as their tactical climax instead of the shock charge, which is not a climax at all, but an isolated species of encounter in glaring conflict with real battle conditions? The contention, if it is really made, is absurd. If we cannot artificially create inbred instincts and habits so strong as those of the Boers, we have the advantage of moral and tactical discipline, acquired only too late by the Boers. We can work in the right direction on the magnificent material we have, and instead of imbuing the wrong spirit deliberately imbue the right spirit. We can teach our men to “fight up” to the charge and rely on one and the same weapon both for the process of “fighting up” and for the charge itself, when and where the actual mounted charge is necessary. The tactical form of the Boer and British rifle charge—that is, in successive lines and with wide intervals—was precisely the same as our own open-order steel charge as practised at Klip Drift and at the present moment. The crucial difference lay in spirit and object; the spirit leading up to the charge was that of the rifle, and the object was that of overcoming the enemy with the rifle, not necessarily in a mêlée unless by way of pursuit, but at decisive range.
Is saddle-fire an accomplishment our Cavalry cannot acquire—an accomplishment which at this very moment we inculcate for “picked men and scouts” of the Mounted Infantry, a force with not a quarter of the mounted training that the Cavalry receive? For professional troops it cannot be more difficult to acquire than skill with the steel weapon on horseback. That is an art which, as everybody knows, demands long and continuous drill and practice. Indeed, it must demand longer drill and practice, because true shock—that is, heavy impact—involves close, knee-to-knee formations, rigid, mechanical, symmetrical, not only difficult to attain in themselves, but exceedingly difficult to combine with the free and effective use of steel weapons. Obviously, neither saddle-fire nor the use of steel weapons can safely be enjoined in times of peace for volunteer troops like our Yeomanry, for example, who obtain at the most a fortnight’s continuous field training in the year.
I ask the reader seriously to follow out the train of thought suggested by those pregnant words “outdoor habits and sporting instincts.” Is it not common sense that these habits and instincts, fortified by drill and discipline, must be the very foundation of mounted success in war, and is not a system of tactics founded upon them likely to be a good system? Should it not be the aim of a highly-civilized industrial people to aim at approximating as far as possible to such a system? Or, taking as their starting-point indoor habits and urban instincts, are they to persist in working in the opposite direction? Was it not the possession of these habits and instincts by such a large number of Americans at the time of the Civil War that led to the brilliant achievements of Cavalry in that war, mainly through trained reliance on the firearm, imperfect weapon as it was? Was not our own possession of sporting and hunting aptitudes, embodied in Englishmen and Colonials alike, our very salvation in South Africa? Of course it was. Wherever these natural instincts were strong enough to burst the bonds of ancient tradition, there we obtained enterprising Cavalry leaders. The same instincts called into being many good leaders among Infantrymen, gunners, and sappers, and among ordinary civilians from every quarter of the Empire.
Do we not pride ourselves on this fact? Is it not a commonplace in every Englishman’s mouth that, hard and bitter as the struggle was, “no other nation”—and among other nations Germany is often instanced—could have engaged in it so successfully as ourselves? There is sound truth in the boast. But it is the emptiest and silliest of boasts if we do not recognize the meaning behind it, which is nothing but this—that we have a greater proportion of men in our Empire who possess those outdoor habits and sporting instincts which take shape in skilled mounted riflemen. And when we envisage a European war, are we to forget this boast and, ignoring not only our own priceless experience but our own innate capacities, revert to the antiquated European system?
If there are other arguments for “peculiarity,” I do not know them. But if I have carried my readers with me, they will agree that in this chapter and every other, in investigating and combating alleged peculiarities I have, in fact, been pursuing phantom arguments round the circumference of a vicious circle. Disguise it as we may, the real peculiarity of the Boer War was that the Boer horsemen did not carry steel weapons. European Cavalries do. Let us turn to Europe.