But the climax comes when he coolly tells Sir John French that the German Cavalry, whose backwardness and "indolence" he condemns in the very book which Sir John French sponsors, whom he regards as absolutely "unprepared for war," whose "prehistoric" tactics, "old-fashioned knightly combats," "antiquated Regulations," and "tactical orgies," he is at this moment satirizing, would, twelve years ago, with still more antiquated Regulations, with still less education, and with a far worse armament, have taught the Boer peasants lessons with the steel which our faint-spirited Cavalry could not teach them! All patriotic feelings apart, and merely as a military experiment, one would like to have seen the German Uhlans of 1899, with their popgun carbine and Frederician traditions, and without a vestige of aid, inspiration or example from Colonial or Mounted Infantry sources, tackling the Boers at Talana or Zand River, at Colenso, Diamond Hill, or Magersfontein, at Ladysmith or Sannah's Post, at Roodewal or Bakenlaagte. At the last two episodes the General is quite certain that they would have done far more marvellous feats with the steel by means of an old-fashioned knightly combat than the Boers did with the rifle. Serious students of land-war, anxious only to elucidate the purely technical question as to whether horsemen in modern days can fight effectively on horseback with steel weapons, look on in amazed bewilderment, while high authorities on the affirmative side conspire to render themselves and one another ridiculous by dragging in political, psychological, strategical, and even lyrical factors which have nothing whatever to do with the simple issue of combat. There, as I have often said, is the reader's clue through the labyrinth of contradictions. Neither Sir John French nor General von Bernhardi ever really discusses at all the real point at issue. That is why they succeed in agreeing upon it, while differing radically in their logical processes. As the reader probably realizes now, nearly everything the latter General writes is either susceptible of two constructions or is subject to subsequent qualification. This critical essay on the opinions of Lord Roberts and on my book, "War and the _Arme Blanche_," is only another illustration of the same mental habit. Though he is explicit enough on what he regards as the feeble initiative of the British Army in general and the British Cavalry in particular, he never attempts to trace any direct causal connection between this topic and the topic of the lance or sword. He dare not. Remote insinuation is his only weapon. Yet, for the purposes of his article, that specific link is the only thing worth talking about. So far as he does touch the question of physical combat--as, for example, where he says that the Boers "fought entirely with the rifle, and this the mounted troops of England had to learn," "that the Boers were far superior in