There was the
infantry arm to which Barnet belonged and which was supposed to fight
on foot with a rifle and be the main portion of the army. There were
cavalry forces (horse soldiers), having a ratio to the infantry that
had been determined by the experiences of the Franco-German war in 1871.
There was also artillery, and for some unexplained reason much of this
was still drawn by horses; though there were also in all the European
armies a small number of motor-guns with wheels so constructed that they
could go over broken ground. In addition there were large developments
of the engineering arm, concerned with motor transport, motor-bicycle
scouting, aviation, and the like.
No first-class intelligence had been sought to specialise in and work
out the problem of warfare with the new appliances and under modern
conditions, but a succession of able jurists, Lord Haldane, Chief
Justice Briggs, and that very able King's Counsel, Philbrick, had
reconstructed the army frequently and thoroughly and placed it at last,
with the adoption of national service, upon a footing that would have
seemed very imposing to the public of 1900. At any moment the British
Empire could now put a million and a quarter of arguable soldiers upon
the board of Welt-Politik.
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