ABSTRACT
Writing in mid-1901, even before the conclusion of hostilities in South Africa, Rudyard Kipling confessed critically that ‘We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse’. 1 Much of the subsequent decade would be influenced by the debate to both understand and address those ‘forty million reasons’. 2 In a similar vein, The Times was damning of the army, stating that ‘the war in South Africa has brought to light defects in our Army which cannot be explained away’. 3 Central to the subsequent debate was the need for army reform, a necessity already identified sporadically by army commanders before 1899. 4 This acknowledgement of a need for change was accelerated by the war and continued variably throughout much of the decade leading up to the First World War. 5 While many aspects of this reform comprised high-level organisational change including the abolition of the post of Commander-in-Chief, the constitution and establishment of the Army Council and the inception of the British Army’s General Staff, the decade after 1902 witnessed fundamental doctrinal change throughout the army including in the mounted arms. 6 In essence, this translated into an apparent prominence of the Mounted Infantry in a post-war glow of approbation and eventual re-designation of role, set against a background of remonstrance by its denigrators and their support for the cavalry’s renaissance. 7 It is against this contextual backdrop that the last decade of the Mounted Infantry’s existence was played out.
