Topic: Militaria
The Sabre
Military Men and Matters
The Montreal Gazette, 8 January 1892
"The Sabre," said Colonel John S. Mosby, the famous Confederate soldier, recently, "is about as useless in actual warfare as the fifth wheel of a coach. It is only a tradition. Gunpowder knocked it out, and it has been retained in the service largely on sentimental grounds. On dress parades and occasions of ceremony the sabre does well enough, but no sane man would think of using a sabre in a modern battle, During the Franco-Prussian war only seven men were killed by the sabre on both sides, and you could count up the men killed in our own war by that weapon on your fingers. We discarded it altogether in my command. In the ancient days when King Arthur was on earth the sabre was of some use, but it is entirely out of place in the nineteenth century. The government could save money and at the same time improve the efficiency of the service by abolishing the sabre from the army.. Fiction writers will of course cling to it, for its loss would deprive them of one of the chief articles of their stock in trade. The paper hero must 'cut his way through the ranks of the enemy' just so often or his is no good. Then, it looks well—on paper—for a regiment or army to 'charge one the enemy with sabres drawn,' etc. All that kind of stuff may 'go' in books, but it is supremely ridiculous to military men."
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