4 Mr. Edward Arnold's Spring Announcements 



WAR AND THE ARME BLANCHE. 



By ERSKINE CHILDERS, 



Author of 'The Riddle of the Sands '; Editor of Vol. V. of the 

 '"Times" History of the War in South Africa,' etc. 



With an Introduction by the Right Hon. Field-Marshal 

 EARL ROBERTS, K.G., 



Author of * Forty-One Years in India.' 



Large crown 8vo. js. 6d. net. 



The writer attacks the present armament of cavalry, with whom 

 the sword or lance is the dominant weapon, and the rifle the sub- 

 ordinate weapon. All forms of compromise being impossible, he 

 advocates the abolition of the steel weapon, and the conversion of 

 cavalry into the highest and most perfect type of Mounted Rifle- 

 men. His historical argument is based mainly upon the South 

 African War, in the course of which steel weapons were abandoned 

 altogether, and an exceedingly high type of mounted rifleman 

 developed ; but he traces the slow revolution in mounted methods, 

 wrought by improved firearms, from the middle of the last 

 century up to the present day, culminating in the Manchurian 

 War, where, as in South Africa, the steel was practically of no 

 account. The author's view is that the education and efficiency 

 not only of the cavalry, but of all our mounted troops, home or 

 colonial, regular or volunteer, mounted infantry, mounted rifle- 

 men, or yeomanry, depends on clear notions as to the relative 

 value of the rival weapons, and he shows what confusion and 

 obscurity the undefined functions of the steel weapon import 

 into any consideration of the vitally important functions of the 

 mounted rifleman. He advocates one pure type, under a single 

 name — Cavalry — for all purposes. 



