"Should the Cavalry commander not have at his disposal sufficient force to meet all these demands," says the General, "he will be generally better advised to abstain from the attack and to carry out his mission in some other manner...." "It is only when conscious of great moral and tactical superiority, or when there is any prospect of surprising the enemy, that an attack should be dared without the necessary numerical preponderance" (p. 166). In other words, after his _reductio ad absurdum_ of the steel, the writer in the next breath proceeds to an equally conclusive _reductio ad absurdum_ of the rifle. Any Cavalry leader who acted on the General's principles would be instantly sent home in disgrace. According to these principles, numerically equal bodies of Cavalry cannot fight one another at all unless in those "exceptional cases" where the ground is favourable for the "purely Cavalry fight," when there are no other Arms to complicate the situation, and where neither side even for a moment "takes up a defensive attitude" for any purpose whatever. If any one of these conditions is unsatisfied, the numerically equal forces are mutually paralyzed, and each must seek to "carry out its mission in some other manner." But, alas! by hypothesis there is no other manner. "The attack obviously can only be made dismounted." Presumably, then, these Cavalries are to do nothing at all in modern war. I am not making an unfair use of isolated passages. In later portions of his work the General frequently repeats his warnings against fire-action without great numerical and moral superiority, though not, perhaps, so frequently and emphatically as he inveighs against impracticable shock-action. Under "VIII.--The Various Units in the Fight" (p. 239), we learn that a "squadron is generally too weak to carry out an offensive fight on foot." By the time you have abstracted horse-holders, "mounted and dismounted reserves," and "patrols and sentries," there is nothing left with which to fight. Similarly, a squadron must never "undertake a defensive fight on foot unless absolutely necessary, or when the led horses can be disposed in a safe place in the neighbourhood, where the flanks cannot be turned, or where the arrival of reinforcements can be relied on." Observe that there is no limitation here as to the strength of the enemy, no demand for numerical or moral superiority. The rule is almost absolute. A squadron can only charge on horseback. So that in average enclosed country, where charges cannot be arranged, two opposed squadrons must maintain a masterly inactivity. We think of the 74 isolated "Zarps" at Bergendal in their desperate defence against enormous odds, and of the 150 Griqualanders who defied a division of Cavalry for a whole day at Dronfield.