Fire, and fire alone, rendered the American raids possible. I need scarcely say that there is no incongruity in discussing together the raid proper and the attack on the reserves and communications of a great Army from which my digression originated. The weapon factor is precisely the same in both. Rifles are rifles and lances are lances, whatever the strategical or tactical scheme which bring them into play. We turn lastly to the rôle of that portion of theoretically indivisible Cavalry mass which is maintained as a "reserve behind the front" (p. 204). The author's method is the same: first, to expound at length the duties and powers of this body as though they were its normal duties and powers, and then to state that these normal duties and powers--in other words, the "proper rôle"--of the force concerned are, in nine cases out of ten, impracticable and visionary. He first represents the great mounted charge as the primary object, the great mounted charge, moreover, against _Infantry_; for in this case there will be little chance, he says, of having "to deal with the hostile Cavalry." He proceeds to lay down the truly delightful maxim that the force is to mass behind "that part of the fighting line where the ground is adapted for a charge of large masses," though he has taken great trouble to show in the previous chapter, quite correctly, that this is precisely the kind of ground upon which important struggles will not centre. Then, in flat defiance of all he has said about charges against Infantry, he advocates what in effect is our old discredited friend the "death ride" against unshaken and victorious Infantry (p. 208), "in order to relieve our own exhausted Infantry," etc. The Cavalry are to "ride through the hostile Infantry, and fall upon the Artillery," although we know already that the author "can conceive no case in which Cavalry can break through detachments of all arms," and that an enemy who takes up even a defensive attitude can only be attacked by dismounted action. But in a flash of recollection of a prior maxim, he enjoins that not only the preliminary deployment, but the formation for attack in widely extended order, must take place "beyond the effective range of the enemy's fire"; for "once outside this zone ... nothing else can be done but to gallop straight for the front." Beyond the effective range of the enemy's fire! What is that range? He has told us before that it must, for average purposes, be reckoned 6,500 yards, or nearly four miles. Conceive a charge of four miles, begun out of sight of the enemy, and in the blissful confidence that at the end of it the "ground will be suitable" for fighting on horseback with steel weapons! He proceeds in this strain for four pages, elaborating his topic with detailed tactical instructions, and then comes the usual nullifying paragraph: