rifles mounted with telescopic sights. The pedagogy seems to have been
sound, too, as, unlike the Allies, the German and Austrian armies did not
suffer mutinies until the collapse of the Western Front in 1918.
Following the Armistice in 1918, training budgets shrank. Of course
that didn’t stop professionals from conducting quiet experiments during
colonial and civil wars, and as early as the Spanish Civil War the Germans
had begun replacing bayonets with light machine guns supported by tanks,
artillery, and dive-bombers. In other words, they replaced banzai with
blitzkrieg, a method that the U.S. Marines perfected against the Japanese
in the Pacific and the Chinese in Korea.
In China, budgets were also slim. So in 1912, Feng Yuxiang, “the
Christian general,” ordered his officers and men to run obstacle courses,
lift weights, do forced marches with packs, and practice quanfa(Chinese
boxing). In 1917, a Communist student leader named Mao Zedong also
encouraged his followers to practice taijiquan.But in both cases, this was
because they viewed the boxing as a gymnastic that took little space and no
special equipment rather than as a practical battlefield combative. (As re-
cently as 1976, Red Army generals asked about the value of quanfa said,
“Amidst heavy gunfire, who would want to enjoy the dance posture of
swordplay?” [P’an 1976, 2].)
But outside military academies, fantasy ruled. Thus, during the 1920s86 Combatives: Military and Police Martial Art Training
Sven J. Jorgensen teaches Seattle police officers jûjutsu disarming tricks, November 23, 1927. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Collection, Museum of History & Industry)