Motivated by his expectation of war with Germany, Childers wrote two books on cavalry warfare, both strongly critical of what he saw as outmoded British tactics. All were agreed that cavalry should be trained to fight dismounted with firearms, but traditionalists wanted cavalry still to be trained as the arme blanche, charging with lance and sabre. "War and the Arme Blanche" (1910) carried a foreword from Field Marshal Roberts, and recommended that cavalry "make genuinely destructive assaults upon riflemen and guns" by firing from the saddle – Sheffield describes this tactic as "immensely difficult and generally unrewarding" and Childers's views as "bizarre".