At the same time his views on the specialisation of training are far from extreme.  The cavalry spirit must be encouraged:  but it must not be permitted to overshadow that wider camaraderie which is the Army spirit.  “It is not only possible but necessary,” he says, “to preach the Army spirit, or, in other words, the close comradeship of all arms in battle, and at the same time to develop the highest qualities and the special attributes of each branch.  The particular spirit which we seek to encourage is different for each arm.  Were we to seek to endow cavalry with the tenacity and stiffness of infantry, or to take from the mounted arm the mobility and the cult of the offensive which are the breath of its life, we should ruin not only the cavalry, but the Army besides.  Those who scoff at the spirit, whether of cavalry, of artillery, or of infantry, are people who have had no practical experience of the actual training of troops in peace, or of the personal leadership in war.  Such men are blind guides indeed."[19]

For cavalry, then, Sir John French sees a brilliant future.  “The opinion which I hold and have often expressed is that the true role of cavalry on the battlefield is to reconnoitre, to deceive and to support.  If the enemy’s cavalry has been overthrown, the role of reconnaissance will have been rendered easier.  In the roles of deception and support, such an immense and fruitful field of usefulness and enterprise is laid open to a cavalry division which has thought out and practised these roles in its peace training, and is accustomed to act in large bodies dismounted, that I cannot bring myself to believe that any equivalent for such manifest advantages can be found even in the most successful raid against the enemy’s communications by mounted troops."[20]

[Page Heading:  A HISTORIC PHRASE]

How brilliantly Sir John French trained his men to accomplish these multiple activities, recent history has shown.  We may note in passing, however, that mechanics have now divested the cavalry of one of their chief functions.  The aeroplane is now the eye of the army and the strategical role of the cavalry is no more.  The mounted arm will almost certainly now be confined to screening operations and to shock tactics, after the opposing armies have come into touch with one another.  History, therefore, has obviously justified Sir John French in his championship of the cavalry spirit.  Without it his horsemen would have been no match for the German cavalry.  Thanks to their training, they “went through the Uhlans like brown paper” in General Sir Philip Chetwode’s historic phrase.

FOOTNOTES: 

[16] Sir John French’s Preface to Cavalry by General von Bernhardi.  By permission of Messrs. Hugh Rees, Ltd., and Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton.

[17] The Great Boer War, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  By permission of Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co.