MOUNTED INFANTRY 366 V. YEOMANRY 368 VI. IMPERIAL MOUNTED TROOPS 370 VII. CONCLUSION 371 INDEX 373 INTRODUCTION BY FIELD-MARSHAL EARL ROBERTS, V.C., K.G. I have read with the greatest interest Mr. Childers’s illuminating book “War and the Arme Blanche.” My opinion of the subject with which it deals is already so well known throughout the army that I need not labour to say how entirely I agree with the author’s main thesis; indeed, anyone who will take the trouble to read “Cavalry Training” (1904), will see that I anticipated the arguments which he has so ably developed. This being so, it is not surprising that I should view the regulations laid down in “Cavalry Training” (1907), with some concern. Let us consider briefly what the history of this question—the comparative value of steel weapons and firearms for Cavalry in war—is. Until within the last few years our Lancer regiments depended entirely on the lance and sword, while other Cavalry regiments depended almost entirely on the sword.[1] This was inevitable because of the inaccuracy and short range of the smooth-bore carbine. Tentative changes were made when rifled arms were adopted, but it is only within the last thirty years that Lancer regiments have had any firearm given to them save a pistol.[2] With such an equipment and such traditions it was perhaps but natural that the training of Cavalry should have been almost exclusively devoted to shock tactics and the use of the _arme blanche_. ----- Footnote 1: No reference was made to the lance in the 1904 Regulations, because that weapon had been discarded as practically useless, owing to the introduction of breech-loading rifles. Now, unfortunately, the lance has been reintroduced—a retrograde movement. The lance is a positive impediment to dismounted action, as it adds greatly to the difficulty of led horses being moved forward when the men advance. In other words, it ties the men to the horses. Footnote 2: When the 9th Lancers were ordered to join my column on Field Service in Kuram in 1879, carbines had to be served out to them, and the men had to be put through a hurried course of musketry. ----- But why now, with a different equipment, should Cavalry still be trained on the old tradition, and their rifles reside in buckets attached to the horse, only to be used on certain exceptional occasions to “supplement the sword or lance”? (“Cavalry Training,” sec. 142.)