AND now, what in Great Britain is the real theory on this question? Let us go to Sir John French again. The South African War, he says, is no guide for the future. It is abnormal, for the reasons stated above. The Manchurian War he has also stated to be abnormal. Where, then, is the theoretical advantage of the lance and sword over the modern rifle? We are left in ignorance. The physical problem is untouched. All we have is the bare dogmatic assertion that the steel weapon can impose tactics on the rifle. This is how Sir John French expresses the theory on p. xi of his Introduction: "Were we to do so" (_i.e._, to "throw our cold steel away as useless lumber"), "we should invert the rôle of Cavalry, turn it into a _defensive_ arm, and make it a prey to the first foreign Cavalry that it meets; for good Cavalry can always compel a dismounted force of mounted riflemen to mount and ride away, and when such riflemen are caught on their horses, they have power neither of offence nor defence, and are lost." Eight years have elapsed since the Boer War. Memories are short, and it is possible now to print a statement of this sort, which, if promulgated during the dust and heat of the war itself, when the lance and sword fell into complete and well-merited oblivion, and when mounted men on both sides were judged rigidly by their proficiency in the use of the horse and the rifle, would have excited universal derision. The words which follow recall one of the writer's "abnormalities" already commented on: "If in European warfare such mounted riflemen were to separate and scatter, the enemy would be well pleased, for he could then reconnoitre and report every movement, and make his plans in all security. In South Africa the mounted riflemen were the hostile army itself, and when they had dispersed there was nothing left to reconnoitre; but when will these conditions recur?" When, indeed? There was nothing, it seems, to reconnoitre, because the enemy always "scattered and dispersed." And the Generals were "well pleased"! "Nothing left to reconnoitre"! One can only marvel at the courage of Sir John French in breathing the word "reconnoitre" in connection with Cavalry work in South Africa.