Perhaps I make too much of a point of pride. Let Sir John French at any rate see the amusing side of the situation. He has set forth[10] his own four reasons for the failure of the lance and sword in South Africa: (1) The lightning speed of the Boers in running away from combat--a habit which left our Cavalry nothing even to reconnoitre; (2) the fact that our military object was nothing less than the complete conquest and annexation of the enemy's country; (3) that, owing to the release of prisoners who fought again against us, we had to contend with double the number of men nominally allowed for; (4) the condition of the horses. The last factor the German author does not pretend to take seriously as an explanation of the failure of the Cavalry; and with regard to the first three his view, as far as it receives clear expression, is diametrically the reverse of that of Sir John French. So far from alleging that the Boers "dispersed for hundreds of miles when pressed," he dwells repeatedly on the immobility imposed by their ox-waggons, says that they were "tied down" to an unparalleled extent, and censures the Cavalry for what he regards as their unparalleled slackness in attack against such a vulnerable and unenterprising enemy. So far from agreeing that there was "nothing to reconnoitre," he points out that the Cavalry "did not understand reconnaissance by Cavalry patrols," a statement true enough in itself, but valueless without the reason--namely, the mistaken armament and training of the Cavalry--a reason which would, of course, have applied with infinitely greater force to "any other European Cavalry," because no Cavalry but our own would have had the invaluable assistance of Colonial mounted riflemen, armed and trained correctly. So far from finding an excuse for the failure of the lance and sword in the fact that our aim was conquest and annexation, he appears in the last page of his article to argue that, had these weapons been used more "relentlessly," the British nation would not now be in what he evidently regards as the degrading situation of having Boers on a footing of political equality with British citizens! Finally, so far from pleading the abnormal accretions to the Boer Army through the release of captured prisoners, he makes a particular point of our vast numerical superiority and of the "disappearing smaller numbers" of the enemy.