The steel-charge, close or open, was the traditional function of our Cavalry; it was the only form of combat that they really understood when they landed in South Africa, and they were supremely efficient in it. The point is that in practice they _could_ not charge with the steel, except in the rare and well-nigh negligible cases which are on record. They ceased altogether to try so to charge, because to fight with the steel on horseback was physically impossible. Their steel weapons were eventually returned to store on that account. And they profited by the resulting change of spirit, and by the acquisition, late as it came, of a respectable firearm. To say that the fire-charge invented and practised by the Boers as early as March, 1900, when lances and swords were still in the field, and imitated to some extent by our own Colonials and Mounted Infantry, could, after all, have been done as well and better with the lance and sword, is conjecture run mad. Sir John French has never used the argument. He could not, with any shadow of plausibility, combine it with his complaint about the lightning flights of the Boers and the absence of anything to reconnoitre. It is, I grant, the most impressive official testimonial ever given to the _arme blanche_, but it is not business. One might as well argue that the work done by Togo's torpedo-boats would have been done better by the beaks of triremes. We _know and have seen_ what actually happened. We had nearly three years in which to arrive by experiment at tactical truths. In the name of common sense let us accept the results, especially when they are corroborated by the results of the other great modern war, that in Manchuria. III.--OTHER CAVALRY VIEWS. Directly or indirectly, I think that in the course of this volume I have replied to most of the criticisms which my previous book, "War and the _Arme Blanche_," drew forth. But I should like to make a brief reference to an interesting discussion of the subject conducted mainly by Cavalry officers on October 19, 1910, at the Royal United Service Institution. A reader of the report in the _Journal_ of November, 1910, must feel that the proceedings would have gained in clarity and harmony had von Bernhardi's belated maxim that the "firearm rules tactics" been made the basis of the debate. Strange things were said on the side of the _arme blanche_. One officer urged that Cavalry should not have a rifle--that arbiter of tactics--at all, should use shock alone, and should not be "frittered away as scouts." Another complained that, in arguing mainly from the South African and Manchurian Wars, I "could not have selected two worse examples." I am not to blame. It is not a case of selection. These are the _only_ great civilized wars since the "revolution" (to use von Bernhardi's phrase) wrought by modern firearms.