But let me repeat one last caution. It is a harmful result of this otherwise healthy controversy that we tend to argue too much in terms of the "charge," meaning the mounted charge, culminating in a fight at close quarters, or even in a mêlée. For all we know, future science, by making it a sheer impossibility to get so large an object as a horse through a fire-zone, may eventually render such an attack by horsemen, in whatever formation and with whatever weapon, altogether impracticable. What will there be to regret in that? Sailors do not mourn over the decay of the cutlass and the ram. _So long as we win_, it does not matter whether or not we charge on horseback, or how near we can ride to the objective before we begin the fire-fight. And, come what will, the horse, by the correct use of ground and surprise, will always be a priceless engine of strategical and tactical mobility. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 7: Note, for example, his reiteration of the phrase, whose falsity anyone can demonstrate, that the Boers showed "no offensive power," with the implied inference, never explicitly worked out, but left in the realm of vague insinuation, that this failure was in some way connected with their lack of lances and swords, weapons which they would not have taken at a gift, and could not have used if they had had them.] [Footnote 8: See "War and the _Arme Blanche_," pp. 113-115.] [Footnote 9: Conscious, apparently, of the gross personal discourtesy to Sir John French, he adds that "since General French was there, lack of energy cannot be imputed to the attack." This not only stultifies what precedes, but is untrue. The attack was painfully unenergetic; nobody has denied it. The point is that the lack of energy was due to the fact that the Cavalry were not armed and trained for such an occasion. Of their three weapons, two, the lance and the sword, were useless, and the third was a trumpery little carbine, which in peace theory had been regarded as an almost negligible part of their equipment. What they needed was the fire-spirit, a serious firearm, and training in mobile fire-tactics.] [Footnote 10: See _supra_, pp. 17-27.] CHAPTER X THE MORAL THE moral is simple and inspiring--self-reliance, trust in our own experience, as confirmed by the subsequent experience of others. By all means let us borrow what is good from foreigners, and I should be the last to deny that, on topics unconnected with combat and weapons, there are many valuable hints to be obtained from General von Bernhardi's writings, and those of other foreign Cavalrymen. But let us not borrow what is bad, nor lose ourselves in the fog which smothers his Cavalry principles, when our own road to reform is plain.