The fallacy, of course, lies in the word I have italicized, "therefore," implying that mounted action and shock-action are synonymous, and that there is no mounted action without shock-action. It is natural enough that the author should turn his back on South Africa and Manchuria when he has to maintain such a proposition as this; but how does he reconcile it even with the facts of the American Civil War, which he holds up as the most valuable guide to modern Cavalry? Stuart, Sheridan, Wilson, and the other great leaders, would have laughed at it, and they used wretchedly imperfect firearms. They rode just as far and to just as good purpose whether they used the firearm or the steel, and they fought to win, with whatever weapon was the best weapon at the moment. The General himself expresses the right idea when he says in another passage "that it is not a question whether Cavalrymen should fight mounted or dismounted, but whether they are prepared and determined to take their share in the decision of an encounter, and to employ the whole of their strength _and mobility_ to that end." That is plain common sense; but how is he to get it acted upon by a Cavalry to whom the very idea is strange if he calls shock the "proper rôle" of Cavalry, and contrasts the "offensive spirit" inherent in it with the defensive use of the rifle? Yet he redeems the rifle handsomely enough in numbers of other passages. "It must be kept in view," he says on p. 113, "that it is the _offensive_ on foot that the Cavalry will require," and he condemns the Regulation which inculcates the opposite principle and deals with the fire-fight only as a method of action from which Cavalry "need not shrink." He shakes his head gravely over the ominous suggestion in the same Regulation that cyclists and Infantry in waggons are to be added to the Army Cavalry, in order, by fire, to "overcome local resistance." In a flash of insight he perceives the possibility of those heretical Mounted Infantry masquerading as the hostile Cavalry, and necessitating cyclists and Infantry in waggons to dislodge them before the "knightly combats" can be brought about. "It is a matter of significance," he solemnly observes, "that Infantry in waggons may be detailed to accompany the strategic Army Cavalry." There will soon be a demand, he prophesies, "for Infantry from the Army Cavalry when there is any question of a serious attack on foot, and herewith the free action of the Cavalry will be limited once and for all." Is there no lesson from South Africa here?