When will our soldiers base their rules on war facts? As I have said, the facts show that it is still possible, in certain conditions, for men on horses, big target as they are, to penetrate a modern fire-zone, and attack and defeat riflemen and Artillery; but it is impossible to do so if they insist on conforming their methods to the assumption that they are to do their killing work by remaining in the saddle and wielding steel weapons. That idea is fatal. It is that idea which promotes these rules about not too narrow fronts, these grotesque mounted rallies in mass, and this pregnant silence about the real point of interest--what actually happens when a line of horsemen, stirrup to stirrup, or in extended order, wielding lances and swords, impinges on an extended line of dismounted riflemen. We know from war experience that such a charge, stirrup to stirrup, is as extinct as the dodo, and is advocated in set terms by no rational being. It has not even been tried or contemplated since 1870. We know that the widely extended type has shared the fate of the other, because, with the loss of physical "shock," the steel weapons have lost their whole historical _raison d'être_. The only practicable mounted charge known to modern war is that of the mounted riflemen, who _fight up to the charge_, and use the only weapon which is effective against riflemen--namely, the rifle, fortified, if need be, by the bayonet. This charge is not an essential to victory. Heaven knows we lost guns and men and transport enough in South Africa without any mounted charging. The very object of a missile weapon is to overcome distance in a way that the lance and sword cannot overcome it. For all we know, even the mounted rifle charge may wholly disappear as science improves the firearm. But that improved firearm will itself rule combat, and banish into still remoter realms of memory the reign of the lance and sword. I have excepted the case of the "utterly demoralized" enemy--utterly demoralized, of course, by _fire_. He is, naturally, fair game for any weapon, and experience proves that the firearm once more is incomparably the best weapon. Lances and swords are, relatively, slow, cumbrous, and ineffective. A magazine pistol used even from horseback is a better weapon than either. Nothing is said by our authorities as to attack during the battle upon the enemy's reserves and transport, enterprises in which von Bernhardi, after dismissing as a rare exception the great shock-charge, concludes that Cavalry are to seek their decisive opportunities. We may assume that, like raids on communications, they are ruled out. But no alternative to the shock-charge at the crisis is suggested, for the parallel pursuit is, of course, a subsequent phase. There is only the ominous reservation that, if the _ground_ is not favourable to the shock-charge, the "Cavalry commander must look for his chance elsewhere, _or wait for a more favourable opportunity_" (p. 227).