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Title
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The Doom of the Sword
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Description
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The article discusses the decline of the sword in modern warfare, symbolizing the broader shift from ornamental military traditions to practical combat realities. A comparison is made between a ceremonial Life Guardsman and a soldier in functional khaki, illustrating the need for inconspicuousness on the battlefield. The article criticizes the military's initial failure to adapt, resulting in high officer casualties due to their distinctive uniforms. Over time, officers adopted rifles and blended in with soldiers, making the sword obsolete. The sword, once a symbol of honor and tradition, has lost its relevance in modern combat, replaced by more practical weapons like the bayonet, revolver, and lance. Despite its romantic significance, the article argues that the sword's usefulness has ended. The focus should now be on efficiency and survival rather than maintaining outdated symbols. However, the article affirms that the courage and professionalism of soldiers remain undiminished.
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Date
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December 16, 1899
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volume
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6
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number
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154
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page start
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762
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page end
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763
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Rights
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Public Domain
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content
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The Doom of the Sword
A week or two have passed since the German Emperor, who loves a tall soldier as dearly as did his great ancestor, inspected three Life Guardsmen in the great quadrangle of Windsor Castle. One of them did not matter, for he was simply in undress. The other two were instructive types. The first, as a somewhat cynical writer in the Times observed, was equipped in all the panoply of peace. He was a noble spectacle with his scarlet tunic, his glittering helmet with its flowing plume, his burnished cuirass, his spotless gauntlets, and his huge jackboots. But he was not fit to fight. He rode, with his equipment, at least 1gst., and he was about as conspicuous a target as the heart of a rifleman could desire. The barley-corn would have shown clear, black, and deadly through an open sight against the silver sheen of his cuirass. On the field of war he would have attracted bullets as surely as if he had been a magnet and they had been of steel or iron. Beside him was the fighting man, arrayed in khaki or mud-colour from head to foot, with not so much as a button glistening upon him, dressed in fact upon rational principles so as to attract the eye as little as might be. Insignificant but warlike, he was a sign of the change which has come over the appearance of war. Gone for ever is the pretty dandyism before battle of ancient days. Vanished is the spirit in which the Spartans combed their long hair before the battle, or the French guards donned clean lace ruffles and new gauntlets. In its stead has come the full recognition of the fact that war is a stern business, and that the soldier, if he is to be effective and if he is to have a chance of surviving, must be dressed as carefully with a view to avoid observation as if he were going partridge driving in Norfolk. To this end khaki is about as good a colour, for South Africa at any rate, as can be infused into the texture of any new and sound garment. Indeed there is nothing to beat it except the colour of a countryman’s coat, whatever its original hue may have been, after years of exposure to sun and wind and rain. That is perfect.
So much, at least, our military authorities had recognised before this war began. But the war has taught us other lessons notwithstanding, and the price of them has been heavy, far heavier indeed than it ought to have been. It was notorious all the time that the Boers intended to devote special attention to the officers, and to set aside picked marksmen with the object of singling them out. That practice used not to be considered honourable in ancient days—it was not regarded as “ playing the game’; but in this case it was well known to be the game which the Boers intended to play, and the obvious parry to it would have been to render the officers indistinguishable from the men in dress, equipment, and arms. A considerable move was made in this direction ; but it did not go far enough. Some of the Guards’ officers went out with glittering ornaments in front of their helmets—lambs tricked out for the sacrifice. Others neutralised the effect of their khaki by metal buttons, which, as the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph has pointed out, glittered in the sun like bits of looking-glass ; and at first all carried swords. The swords were in brown leather scabbards, it is true, but to a keen-eyed enemy they were more than sufficiently conspicuous, and in the early days of the campaign our officers fell in great and entirely disproportionate numbers. The swords, we believe, are entirely discarded now. The officers carry rifles and bayonets, and there is absolutely nothing to distinguish the captain from the soldier, except that the former wears Stohwasser gaiters and a revolver, whereas the latter wears putties and no revolver. Even here we should like to see an assimilation. Everything ought clearly to be done to make men and officers as like one another as the partridges in a covey or the sheep in a big flock. We cannot afford to give away chances.
The upshot of all this is conveyed in the words of our title. Save as a ceremonial weapon, in which capacity it may take its place beside the gold lace, the cuirass, the “ glittering spur and the bright sabretasche,” the sword is doomed. With it goes an immense amount of traditional symbolism. For, be it observed, the officer’s sword has been to him as the colours are to the regiment, the emblem of his honour. In poetry it is the ‘good sword which carves the casques of men.’ In romantic stories the officer who is a suitor for a woman’s hand has been heard to say that his sword is his fortune. After Majuba, when the news of the decision to retire came, there was one stern officer who burst into tears, and there was another who broke his sword across his knee; and when the day of trouble comes, and an officer is tried by court-martial, he takes his sword with him as the outward and visible sign of his position as an officer and a gentleman. No singer, living or dead, has celebrated the glory of the sword in language so full of fire and truth as Mr. Henley in his ‘‘ Song of the Sword”:
“Bleak and lean, grey and cruel,
Short-hilted, long-shafted
I froze into steel ;
And the blood of my elder,
His hand on the hafts of me,
Sprang like a wave
In the wind as the sense
Of his strength grew to ecstasy ;
Glowed like a coal
In the throat of the furnace ;
As he knew me and named me
The War-Thing, the Comrade,
lather of honour
And giver of kingship,
The fame-smith, the song-master.”
There, in all the vigour of a Norse saga, is the poetry of the sword; and it must go. But, saving poetry and romance, there is very little of any value which will go with the sword. Except in the most expert hands, it is a very poor weapon indeed even in a hand-to-hand fight, and the officer on service never draws it until the order to charge is given, although he often uses it, sheathed, as a walking-stick. Little, if any, execution is done with the sword in a campaign of this sort, or with the sabre either. Nothing is done with either which could not be done as. well, or better, on foot with the bayonet and with the revolver, on horseback with the lance—a terribly effectual weapon, as this war has shown—and with the revolver also. In the last weapon we are, particularly after study of the records of the American Civil War, confident believers; and the use of it is far more easily acquired than that of sword or sabre, of which very few men are masters. So let the sword go. It is the symbol of valour and of honour, but they will remain. Never, indeed, has either been displayed with more signal brilliance than in this unhappy but unavoidable war. The sword goes, and with it practically all the pomp and circumstance of war; but the essential qualities of the British fighting man endure for ever, and so long as we possess these no more need be desired. Above all things let us be workmanlike. A serious point which must be considered when these regiments come back, and when we are setting our house of war in order, is whether, in order to attract recruits, it will be necessary to keep up the panoply of peace, for really, when you come to think of it, it is not very comforting to reflect that the soldier’s great-coat is about the only part of his uniform which is of the slightest use on active service. Our own idea is that when soldiers can “ get eneugh o’ fechtin’ ” recruits will be plentiful. It is the life in barracks which wearies.
