CAVALRY NOT OBSOLETE

Hokitika Guardian, 25 May 1929, Page 2

CAVALRY NOT OBSOLETE

IMPORTANT DUTIES FOR HORSEMEN. The view that cavalry is the only arm capable of carrying out the duties of reconnaissance with certainty and completeness is maintained by General Sir George Barrow in a recent issue of the “Cavalry Journal.” It was thought that aircraft would supplant the mounted arm in the field of reconnaissance. General Barrow declares that that anticipation has not been fulfilled. Aircraft observation fails in fog and mist. How blind a fog or mist can make airmen was proved during manoeuvres in Hampshire an 192(3. A large force ol aircraft was to have been employed for reconnaissance, hut owing to a mist the machines did not leave the ground. Without , in the least intending lo underrate (

the value of the mechanised force, General Barrow emphasises one or two important facts in favour of the horse. When it is a question of employing t.lie most powerful of all weapons—surprise lie maintains that cavalry remains unequalled as an instrument for that purpose. The mounted man too can take his lirrse over difficult and enclosed country, and exploit it belter till an his iron equivalent. Further, horses can exist on half, or even quarter, rations for a time, and can live on the country over which they arc operating. “The mechanised vehicle,” General Barrow points out, “comes to a dead stop when its fuel is exhausted, and nothing wiil coax it to move another inch.”

('IIUiSEES AS KINDLY POLICEMEN

“ 1 think a very important function of the cruiser, is forgotten,” writes Commander A. J. Southby, M.P., in (he “Sunday Times.” “The cruiser—as far as the British. Einpiro is concerned—is a policeman much more often than a combatant. Our business on sea', just as our business on land, needs its protectors, and the fulfilment of that need has, in my opinion, nothing whatever to do with armaments in the ordinary sense.’ Whatever one’s views upon miltiarism and armaments may he, no one but a revolutionary extremist would wish to see our police force abolished. 'They are, firstly, guardians of the liberties and goods of the citizen, and, secondly, instruments for the detection and punishment of robbery and crime. So, too, we must regard the work of our cruisers—or many of them. They are not bristling carriers of bate, but, as I have said, kindly hard-working policemen, shepherding the trade of the v, alt spread Empire.”