apply the truth thus ascertained to each individual case of a particular combat. A battalion on outpost service or on a retreat may, perhaps, choose to have with it a squadron in preference to a couple of guns. A body of cavalry with horse artillery, sent in rapid pursuit of, or to cut off, a flying enemy wants no infantry, etc., etc.
If we summarise the results of these considerations they amount to this.
- That infantry is the most independent of the three arms.
- Artillery is quite wanting in independence.
- Infantry is the most important in the combination of the three arms.
- Cavalry can the most easily be dispensed with.
- A combination of the three arms gives the greatest strength.
Now, if the combination of the three gives the greatest strength, it is natural to inquire what is the best absolute proportion of each, but that is a question which it is almost impossible to answer.
If we could form a comparative estimate of the cost of organising in the first instance, and then provisioning and maintaining each of the three arms, and then again of the relative amount of service rendered by each in war, we should obtain a definite result which would give the best proportion in the abstract. But this is little more than a play of the imagination. The very first term in the comparison is difficult to determine, that is to say, one of the factors, the cost in money, is not difficult to find; but another, the value of men’s lives, is a computation which no one would readily try to solve by figures.
Also the circumstance that each of the three arms chiefly depends on a different element of strength in the state—Infantry on the number of the