With our authorities all goes by clockwork on Frederician and Napoleonic lines. "The enemy should be surprised," so that the charge may follow immediately after the deployment. The attack is to be on the echelon system ridiculed by von Bernhardi, but the encounter, nevertheless, is not to be "broken up," but is to be by the "simultaneous action of all brigades." The artless enemy co-operates, allows himself to be surprised upon the right piece of "favourable" ground, and courteously presents an objective which may be struck simultaneously. The Artillery of both sides ceases fire, fascinated by the sublime spectacle of the "collision"; the machine-guns, which have been "affording a means of developing fire _without dismounting_," also retire from business, and the knightly combat rages on its appointed level arena. Then comes the pursuit (p. 211). Troops are either to "pursue at top speed in disorder," or to "rally at once at the halt"; and on page 128 elaborate directions will be found for the practice of this "rally," which von Bernhardi says is an "absolute impossibility in war," and that it is "indeed astounding that we should give way to such self-deception." Is the rally, we wonder, one of the "best foreign customs" which Sir John French urges us to assimilate, or one of the worst, which he has accidentally overlooked? It is only when our authorities have finished with the pursuit, which is to "completely exhaust and disorganize the beaten enemy," and when, the hostile Cavalrymen vanquished, our own Cavalry has been safely launched on its reconnoitring duties (p. 212), that they consider, under quite a distinct heading, and without a hint that it may have anything to do with what precedes, the dismounted action of Cavalry against what is described with judicious vagueness as an "enemy" (pp. 213-216). Then we have the same demoralizing injunction that von Bernhardi, in his fire-mood, so strongly combats--namely, that a "fire-fight is not to be protracted"; and the same equally vicious suggestion that von Bernhardi, in his steel-mood, acquiesces in--namely, that defence in any shape is a somewhat abnormal function of Cavalry; that they are not supposed to conduct stubborn defences ("tenacious" is Sir John French's own term); and that they should never demean themselves by constructing anything serious in the way of entrenchment (p. 215). But it is scarcely necessary to add that the led horses are not the nightmare to our authorities that they are to von Bernhardi, and that we do not yet stultify our own directions for fire-action by warnings about the minimum size of units, and the imperative need for moral, numerical, and tactical superiority. Yet these warnings are regarded, according to his own account, as inspired wisdom by Sir John French, whose own introductory remarks are conceived in an even more reactionary spirit than those of the "acknowledged authority" whom he recommends to British readers.