218 CO-OPERATION BETWEEN GUNS AND CAVALRY. 
get that it is purely an auxiliary. Therefore the worst fault a gunner 
could commit would be to interfere with the free movement of the 
squadrons, or hamper their effective action. If circumstances demand 
that the cavalry go straight to the front, then the guns must get out of 
their way to a flank, and they must always be careful that by no 
chance should they incline towards the cavalry during their advance. 
The bias if any should be in the other direction (applause). 
Moreover another reason for guns going straight ahead is that nothing 
decisive is ever accomplished in a cavalry action except by flank attacks. 
The squadrons work away from the guns therefore to gain the 
enemy’s flank. He changes front to face them, and in doing so not 
only offers a chance of enfilade fire to our batteries, but at the same 
time masks his own. 
‘“That is all very well,” some one will say, “but what are the enemy 
about all this time ?”’ Certainly, gentlemen, I am only spinning a pretty 
theory. Nevertheless such is the consummation we hope to reach by our 
manoeuvre, and all we can ever do in war is to try and act correctly 
ourselves and trust that our foe will make more errors that we will. It 
is only a question of who makes the most numerous and gross blunders 
after all, and in seeking perfection for ourselves we need not seek it for 
the foe also (applause). 
When the guns do move into the decisive position they are to go at 
their best pace. 
If more than one battery is engaged it will be best to place the 
batteries in échelon, the one furthest from the fight being in advance. 
Hach battery can thus change front on a central gun easily, and fire be 
turned quickly in the different directions which a moving target may 
necessitate. 
How far to the front can they go without undue rashness ? 
‘The general rule says that they should advance one-third of the 
distance which separates the opposing forces. They ought however 
almost always to have an escort and then they are safe enough as long 
as they keep nearer to their friends than to their foes. 
An escort will protect them from enterprises on the part of small 
hostile bodies, and, if the main body of the enemy fall upon them, it 
will be doing the very thing I have said it should not do. Its cohesion 
will be broken up, and it will pay dearly for its blunder, if our cavalry 
are at all decently handled. 
Meanwhile the batteries, even if they are ridden through, will be 
comparatively little injured. 
I think the text-books have exhausted the subject of fire discipline. 
But now after the first collision there comes a phase of the fight when 
I think the guns most often in actual war have got their chance. 
When we read the story of cavalry combats we find that they have 
often ended in but “a lame and impotent conclusion.” The first lines 
meet, there is some cutting and hacking, one side begins to yield, then 
the second lines come up, the fight sways back again, and so on, what 
Lord Anglesey in one of his letters calls a “ see-saw ” supervenes, and 
finally perhaps both sides end by finding themselves much in the 
¢ 
