To return to the book under discussion. Is it possible to gain from it any clear and definite idea of the respective functions and the relative importance of the rifle and the lance and sword as weapons for Cavalry? Unfortunately, no. We have to deal with hazy generalizations scattered over the whole volume, each with its qualification somewhere else. It is true that warnings against the use of the steel greatly preponderate; and although, by selecting quotations from various chapters, each party to our controversy could easily claim the General as an adherent to his cause, the advocates of the rifle could certainly amass more favourable texts. The following passage might almost be regarded as conclusive--"We must be resolute in freeing ourselves from those old-fashioned knightly combats, which have in reality become obsolete owing to the necessities of modern war" (p. 111)--if its teaching were not weakened by such a maxim as this: "The crowning-point of all drill and of the whole tactical training is the charge itself, as on it depends the final result of the battle" (p. 325). But let us get closer to his actual argument. The reader should carefully study pp. 101 to 105, where, under the heading "B.--The Action of Cavalry" and sub-heading "1.--General," the author discusses in close detail the action of "Cavalry in the fight." The reader may wonder why he should have to wait till the hundredth page for this discussion. With the exception of some introductory pages, whose general sense, on the question of weapons, is against the lance and sword, the greater part of the first hundred pages are devoted to "Reconnaissance, Screening, and Raids," functions none of which, least of all the third, can be performed without fighting, or at least the risk of fighting, while fighting cannot be performed without weapons. The reason probably is that the author, in arranging his scheme, instinctively tended, like all Cavalry writers, to regard reconnaissance as a sphere where Cavalry can confidently rely on meeting only Cavalry of exactly the same stamp as themselves, and where combats will as a matter of course be decided in the old knightly fashion by charges with steel. Such a state of things has no resemblance to real war. Raids, for example, are invariably levelled against fixed points and stationary detachments. The author himself is acutely aware of this truth, as we shall see hereafter; but the postponement of the topic of weapons until the middle of the book is typical of the confused arrangement of the whole, a confusion attributable to the ubiquity of the rifle in all combats and the insuperable difficulty of supposing it to be an inferior weapon to the steel. It is impossible, therefore, to adhere strictly to the order in which the author arranges his treatise. I shall begin with the general chapter just referred to, and proceed, as far as possible, according to his own order from that point onwards.