Lord Wolseley on Cavalry

The Montreal Gazette, 20 Auguest 1892

Lord Wolseley, writing in the March number of the United Service Magazine says:

"This is not the place to discuss the advisability or the possibility of making our splendid cavalry learn to be as efficient as foot soldiers as they are now as cavalry. I, for one, don't believe in the military Jack-of-all-arms, and I feel the result would be a failure. The man would have the efficiency of neither arm. We persuade our foot soldiers that they are more than a match for the finest men on the finest horses, and we teach our cavalry that if they will only ride home no infantry can stand against them. But what is to be the faith we are to instil into this hybrid soldier? He will have no confidence in himself on foot or on horseback, and the soldier without implicit faith in his own arm is a poor creature. I strongly recommend that those who wish to pursue this subject to read Modern Cavalry by my old friend and comrade, Col. G.T. Denison."

Lord Wolseley, also in the same magazine, says:

"In all epochs the Horse have naturally thought themselves superior to the Foot. A name has often much to do with the fighting of soldiers; and if a man is proud of the official designation given to his arm of the service, no one but an idiot who had to get hard work out of the arm would have any other, no matter how technically wrong such a title might be. You cannot make the cavalry soldier or the mounted soldier, whatever may be his functions in war, think too highly if himself. His training teaches him that he belongs, as it were, to the aristocracy of the army, and places him in a position far above that of what the Indian Service terms the "Peidal Wallah." This feeling was given full vent to in a cavalry song of the period, when Forrest, Fitzhugh, Lee, Morgan, Sheridan, Stewart, and other leaders of mounted troops were justly the popular heroes of the day. I can only remember the refrain, which ran thus:—

"If you want to smell hell, just jine the Cavalry—jine the Cavalry!"

Posted by regimentalrogue at 12:01 AM EDT

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