Well, that is precisely what Lord Roberts, the greatest soldier living, and many humbler persons, including myself, have contended for. _Cadit quæstio._ Why not have begun "Cavalry in War and Peace" with these illuminating axioms? Why not have them placed in the forefront of our own Cavalry Manual, in the approaching revision of that important work? Why give the dominating operative weapon only 10 or 15 per cent. of the time of the Cavalry soldier, and make it officially subordinate to steel weapons which can only be used by its indulgence? But I am going a little too fast. The General, as usual, has a qualification. What is it? "But as a necessary corollary from this, to say that there can be no fight with the _arme blanche_ is a mischievous sophism." Again we agree--in the sense, that is, in which the author now elects to use the phrase "_arme blanche_." For he means the bayonet. "Every Infantryman carries a bayonet, because he requires it for the assault. Even Lord Roberts will not take this away," etc. No; and no one in the world, so far as I know, wants to take away the bayonet from the Infantryman. But, as I asked at page 121, what has the bayonet got to do with the lance and sword? The bayonet is fixed to the rifle, and used on foot as an element in fire-tactics. The lance and sword are used from horseback in tactics which are diametrically opposite to and absolutely incompatible with fire-tactics, and every word Lord Roberts or I have written has been directly aimed against this antiquated system of fighting on horseback with the lance and sword. If the Cavalryman, because, by universal consent, he has constantly to do work similar to that of Infantry, requires a bayonet, by all means give it to him. I discussed the question in my previous book, and ventured to regard it as an open one, for reasons which I need not repeat now. But I over and over again took pains to point out the fundamental distinction between the bayonet and the lance and sword. On another point the General misrepresents me. Because I showed by illustration from war the marked physical and moral effects of rifle-fire from the saddle, he treats me as advancing the specific plan of substituting rifle-fire on horseback for the use of the lance and sword on horseback in what his translator calls the "collision of the mounted fight" (Handgemenge zu Pferde). This is a perversion of my meaning. The collisions he is thinking of are obsolete. Though I think that for all conceivable purposes a pistol would be better than a lance or sword, I adhered to the facts, and pointed out that saddle-fire in South Africa was used _before_ contact, and that in order to consummate their destructive rifle-charges, the Boers dismounted, either at close quarters or within point-blank range. II.--_Views of the General Staff._