Produced by Brian Coe, Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) 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 and arguments adduced in my book of last year, "War and the _Arme Blanche_," with its Introduction by Field-Marshal Lord Roberts. From the nature of the case I have not been able to avoid a small measure of repetition, but I have done my best to confine myself to new ground. A word about my object in writing again. Contemporaneously with the publication of "War and the _Arme Blanche_," General von Bernhardi published in Germany his "Reiterdienst," and an English edition, translated by Major G.T.M. Bridges, D.S.O., under the title "Cavalry in War and Peace," appeared simultaneously in this country. Like its predecessor, "Unsere Kavallerie im nächsten Kriege" (translated under the title "Cavalry in Future Wars"), this new book by General von Bernhardi was headed with a highly laudatory Preface from the pen of General Sir John French, who commended it to military students in this country as a brilliant and authoritative treatise on the employment of Cavalry in modern war. It was included in the valuable "_Pall Mall_ Series" of military books, published by Hugh Rees and Co.; and, in short, unless the critical faculties and native common-sense of Englishmen can be aroused, it is likely to become a standard work. There exists, be it remembered, no similar work, modern and authoritative, by a British author. My object in this essay is to arouse those critical faculties and that common-sense. Without any disrespect to General von Bernhardi, who writes, not for Englishmen, but, as a German reformer, for what he regards as an exceptionally backward Cavalry, I wish to show, not only that we have nothing to learn even from him in the matter of Cavalry combat, but that, if we only have the pluck and independence to break off the demoralizing habit of imitating foreign models, and to build on our own war experience and our own racial aptitudes, we have the power of creating a Cavalry incomparably superior in quality to any Continental Cavalry. The indispensable condition precedent to that revival is to sweep away root and branch the tactical system founded on the lance and sword, and to create a new system founded on the rifle.