But, disregarding this necessity, the Regulations contemplate reinforcing the main firing-line from the horse-holders (p. 139), so making the armfuls of lances still bigger. And then what is to happen if, in a "real fight," the brigade wants to advance and the Brigadier is told it can't, because some of the horse-holders are fighting, and the lance-encumbered remnant cannot move? And so on. He seems, so far as I understand him, eventually to throw up in despair the problem of keeping the led horses "mobile," and to fall back on the plan of "immobility," a plan which he himself in several passages admits can be used only when there is no likelihood whatever of any sudden call upon the led horses either for advance or retreat. If the Regulations, as he says, are "not suitable for real war," neither is his counsel of despair. The chapter is quite enough to cure the most liberal-minded Cavalryman of his last lingering inclination towards fire-action, even though he is told that fire-action _must_ be used in all but "exceptional cases." "Abandon my proper rôle for this?" he might answer. "No. My proper rôle is good enough for me, as it was good enough for Frederick the Great." There is worse to come; but let me comment here upon the astounding fact that Sir John French should regard chapters like this as sound instruction for war. Our Cavalry profess, at any rate, to have now solved the lance-problem during fire-action by their latest method of carrying the lance. But that is a minor point. It is the ignorance of, and pessimism towards, fire-action, as disclosed in this and subsequent chapters, which ought chiefly to strike English readers. And all Sir John French has to say is that "we expose our ignorance and conceit" in accepting the teaching of our own war experience, and that our duty is to assimilate the best foreign customs. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 3: See "War and the _Arme Blanche_," Chapter XI.] CHAPTER VI THE FIGHT OF THE INDEPENDENT CAVALRY I.--GERMAN VIEWS.