There appears to be only one answer--namely, that these customs are in reality the very customs which von Bernhardi attacks with such savage scorn, and yet by such ineffective and half-hearted methods that he leaves them as strong as before. His qualifications and reservations give Sir John French a loophole, so that what, read through English eyes, should be a final condemnation of the steel becomes to him a vindication of the steel. The link between the two writers is that both disregard the facts of modern war. Since these facts are fatal to the steel theory, both are compelled to disregard them. What wars, then, according to the German expert, are the uneducated German Cavalry to study? He deals with this point on page 5. He dismisses the wars of Frederick the Great and Napoleon. He dismisses the Franco-German War of 1870-71, as we might expect from his earlier work, where he pointed out how meagre and feeble were the performances of the Cavalry compared with those of other Arms. He dismisses the Russo-Turkish War for the same reason, and, by implication, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. All these wars, he says, "present a total absence of analogy." Then, entirely disregarding the whole period in which science perfected the firearm, he dismisses the wars in South Africa and Manchuria. And he comes back to what? The American War of Secession of 1861-1865, which "appears to be the most interesting and instructive campaign for the service of modern Cavalry," but which is "almost unknown" in Germany. In any other branch of study but that of Cavalry an analogous recommendation would be received with a compassionate smile. The element of truth and sense in it--and there is much truth and sense in it--is so obvious and unquestioned as not to need expression for the benefit of any well-informed student. The American horsemen discovered that the rifle must be the principal weapon of Cavalry, and through that discovery made themselves incomparably more formidable and efficient in every phase and function of war than the European Cavalries, who ignored and despised the American example in the succeeding European struggles. So far the writer is on the sound ground of platitude.