Another reason why I welcome this book is because it supplies a timely answer to schoolmen who see in our South African experiences, some of which they distort and many of which they forget, the acme of all military wisdom. It is always a danger when any single campaign is picked out, at the fancy of some pedagogue, and its lessons recommended as a panacea. It is by study and meditation of the whole of the long history of war, and not by concentration upon single and special phases of it, that we obtain safe guidance to the principles and practices of an art which is as old as the world. It is not only the campaigns which we and others have fought which deserve reflection, but also the wars which may lie in front of us. General von Bernhardi does not neglect the lessons of past wars, but he gives the best of reasons for thinking that the wars in South Africa and Manchuria have little in common with the conditions of warfare in Europe. We notice, as we read his book, that he has constantly in his mind the enemies whom the German Army must be prepared to meet, their arms, their tactics, and their country, and that he urges his comrades to keep the conditions of probable wars constantly before their eyes. It passes comprehension that some critics in England should gravely assure us that the war in South Africa should be our chief source of inspiration and guidance, and that it was not abnormal. All wars are abnormal, because there is no such thing as normal war. In applying the lessons of South Africa to the training of cavalry, we should be very foolish if we did not recognise at this late hour that very few of the conditions of South Africa are likely to recur. I will name only a few of them. The composition and tactics of the Boer forces were as dissimilar from those of European armies as possible. Boer commandos made no difficulty about dispersing to the four winds when pressed, and re-uniting again some days or weeks later hundreds of miles from the scene of their last encounter. Such tactics in Europe would lead to the disruption and disbandment of any army that attempted them.