Relying too much on foreign practice in peace, we also exaggerate foreign exploits in bygone wars where conditions were radically different. I scarcely think it too much to say, after a close study of the criticisms of my book, that, if one could only succeed in proving to present-day Cavalrymen that von Bredow's charge at Vionville was not a valid precedent for modern war, more than half the battle for rational armament and tactics would be won. Quite half my critics threw that famous charge in my teeth, and some accused me of not even knowing about it, since I had not mentioned it. Why should I have mentioned it? I was not aware at the time I wrote that it was seriously accepted as relevant to present conditions. Von Bernhardi, whom I was taking as a representative of the most enlightened Cavalry views on the subject of the steel-charge, does not mention it in either of his works, and in his first work went to some trouble to show how the German and French Cavalry at Mars-la-Tour frittered away time and opportunity by hanging about in masses which "mutually paralyzed" one another, instead of using golden chances for fire-action. He expressly says that the war of 1870 "presents a total absence of analogy," and, as I showed above (p. 140), his own limitations for the steel-charge in modern war absolutely preclude the possibility of any such charge being repeated. Those limitations have for long been accepted by Cavalry in this country also--in theory. But the immortal fascination of that charge! Next door to von Bernhardi's article on my book in the _Cavalry Journal_ of October, 1910, is an interesting descriptive account of it, with maps. And the author ends thus: "The days of Cavalry are not over. For they 'can ride rapidly into the danger that Infantry can only walk into.'" These two little sentences typify perfectly, I believe, the state of mind of those who cling to the _arme blanche_ out of sentiment and without scientific justification. Nobody supposes that the days of Cavalry are over. Far from being weakened, Cavalry, if properly equipped and trained, have potentialities immensely greater than the Cavalry of 1870, because they now possess--in our country at any rate--the weapon which, united with the horse, qualifies them to tackle any other Arm on their own terms. And as the writer of this article truly says, they can ride into the danger that Infantry can only walk into. South Africa proves that, to a certain point. But, alas! that is not the moral that the writer means to draw. He forgets that the rifle of 1870 is, as I remarked before, a museum curiosity, and that, feeble as it was, it nearly cut to pieces Bredow's regiments on their return from the charge. He draws the wrong moral--that Cavalry can still make charges by remaining indefinitely in their saddles and wielding steel weapons from their saddles. In that sense the days of Cavalry are indeed over. Nobody should regret it. What is there to regret?