Horse, Foot and Tank
BY CAPTAIN B. H. LIDDELL HART THE fortieth anniversary of the introduction of the tank into warfare, by the British, is a timely moment for reflection. In tracing the origin and effect of the 'infantry' outlook, and the persisting tendency to regard the tank as 'an auxiliary to an infantry assault,' Mr. J. A. Terraine goes to one root of the troubles which have 'bedevilled British tank tactics'—and strategy. Indeed, when he says that this mistake 'was not corrected in the Second World War until El Alamein,' I would say that it has never been fully corrected.
But there was another root of the trouble, which was for a long time even more serious in its effect on the development and use of tanks. Anyone who, between the wars, strove to urge the need for armoured mobility is ruefully aware that British officers' devoted attachment to the horse—a passion particularly strong and widespread in this country—was a basic hindrance to military progress. Even during the years of financial restriction much more might have been done to develop our forces but for the prolonged unwillingness to reduce the much greater numbers of horsed cavalry.
In going through the records of that period, recollection of the strength and tenacity of horse-mindedness becomes even sharper. Despite all the evidence of the First World War of the oft-repeated failure of the cavalry to find what was fondly called 'the Gee in Gap' and penetrate the enemy's front, military faith in the horse persisted unshaken. The psychological obstacles which hindered more rapid pro- gress may be illustrated by citing a speech made by Lord Haig in the summer of 1925, at the time I set forth a picture of future mechanised warfare, on land and in the air, in a little book, Paris, or the Future of War. Very different, however, was the view of the most influential British soldier, the Commander-in-Chief of our armies in France in the last war: `Some enthusiasts today talk about the probability of horses becoming extinct and prophesy that the aeroplane, the tank, and the motor-car will supersede the horse in future wars. I believe that the value of the horse and the opportunity for the horse in the future are likely to be as great as ever. . . . I am all for using aeroplanes and tanks, but they are only accessories to th6 man and the horse, and I feel sure that as time goes on you will find just as much use for the horse— the well-bred horse—as you have ever done in the past.'
A decade later the Secretary of State for War (Mr. Duff Cooper). introducing the Army Estimates for 1934.35 under the new rearmament programme that followed Hitler's rise to power, still upheld the value of horsed cavalry. He was warmly applauded from his own side of the House when he declared : 'I have had occasion during the past year to study military affairs both in my public and in my private life'— a reference to his biography of Haig—`and the more I study them the more impressed I become by, the importance of cavalry in modern warfare.'
The Secretary of State was expressing not only his own view, but the Army Council's view. In the following autumn the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd. emphatically declared that `we should go slowly' with mechanisation.
The source and support of this attitude were epitomised in a letter I received at the time : 'An enormous number of influential people in the House and in the counties are intensely pro-cavalry, without having any reasons for their convictions. A love of the hcirse and of hunting seems to blunt all their reasoning faculties.' Such a prejudice, of social roots, was no novelty in our military history. One early example was seen in the way that the English Army became even slower than others to exploit the advent of firearms, and in particular lagged behind in raising the ratio of musketeers to pikemen. Roger Williams in his Discourse of War, 1590, was zealinis in proving the proposition that the pike was the more honourable weapon. Sixty years later, Elton in his Complete Body of the Art Military devoted his second chapter to the same theme under the 'title : `Severall reasons why the Pike is the more honourable arme.' The fundamental reasons are explained by C. H. Firth in his classic book, Cromwell's Army: 'The pike was held more honourable because it was the more ancient weapon. It was also held more honourable because all adventurous gentlemen who enlisted to see the wars, preferred, as the phrase was, "to trail a,pike." Therefore the pikeman was regarded as a gentleman compared with the musketeer.' That point had been brought out by Shakespeare, when in Henry V he depicted the King wander- ing through the camp disguised on the night before Agincourt. Pistol (a symbolical name) asks him : 'Art thou officer, or art thou base, common and popular?' The King replies: 'I am a gentleman of a company.' Trailst thou the puissant pike?' `Even so,' is the King's answer.
The Cavaliers of the seventeenth century sacrificed their cause in obstinate adherence to their conventions. The oppor- tunity that the development of fire-power offered was forfeited by a snobbish preference for the pike and prejudice against the musket. They went down in defeat before Cromwell's newly built army. The cavaliers of the twentieth century sacri- ficed their country under the influence of a similar social con- vention, the preference for the horse and prejudice against the machine. Their order went down in defeat before Hitler's armoured forces. Although that defeat was not final, the effects were most damaging to the prospect of full recovery after the war.
An even closer parallel can be found in the history of the Middle East. It is brought out in Professor David Ayalon's illuminating work Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom, recently published in this country, He shows that the downfall of the Mamluks, who ruled Egypt for nearly three centuries, can be traced to their deep-rooted tradition of horsemanship, and accompanying `socio-psychological antago- nism to firearms.' In consequence they collapsed under the impact of the Ottoman Turks, who developed the use of fire- arms far more eagerly and fully—although the Mamluks had been acquainted with such weapons half a century earlier than the Ottomans.
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