That is just what we have to fear. That was the old, narrow, ignorant outlook of the continental Cavalries, who were always waiting for favourable opportunities, and accounts for the idleness and lack of enterprise which von Moltke stigmatized in 1866, and for the paltry character of their performances as a whole, which von Bernhardi recognizes and condemns. It accounts for the miserable failure of the Cossacks in Manchuria, and explains the success of the Japanese Cavalry, once they realized the worthlessness of their German instruction and textbooks, and discovered for themselves the worth of the rifle as a stimulus to activity and mobility. Von Bernhardi says (p. 202): "The greatest imaginable error ... is to adopt a waiting attitude ... in order that the possibility of a great charge might not slip by unutilized." That error is precisely what we have to fear. Teach Cavalry that their lances and swords are their principal weapons, and that the rifle is a defensive weapon; tell them that the "climax of training" is the steel charge, "since upon it depends the final result of the battle"; found their "spirit" on the steel; make it in theory their "proper rôle"; give it a vocabulary of stirring epithets, like "glorious," "relentless," "remorseless," and all the rest, and they are only too likely, eager for battle as they are, to "wait for favourable opportunities" which will never occur, when they ought to be busy and active with their horses and rifles. The sections on pursuit and retreat are modelled on similar sections in von Bernhardi's earlier book, "Cavalry in Future Wars," and escape therefore some of the contradictions of the later work. Since they lay predominant stress on fire, we can only hope that their obvious blindness to the true reasons for fire does little harm. Pursuits, whether by Infantry or Cavalry, be they frontal, parallel, or intercepting, will always be governed by fire. The thing that really distinguishes Cavalry from Infantry is that they have horses, which give them a vast scope for a class of intercepting tactics which Infantry cannot undertake so easily. But even Infantry will be better at any form of pursuit than a purely shock-trained Cavalry. Sir John French would have intercepted the Boers, not only at Paardeberg, but at Poplar Grove, Karee Siding, Dewetsdorp, and Zand River, if his Cavalry had understood the rifle as well as they understood the horse. Retreat is the counterpart of pursuit, and the same principles apply. Cavalry ought to be able to fight a rearguard action better than Infantry, because, thanks to their mobility, they can choose defensive points more freely, hold them longer, and fall back to others quicker. But if they are taught that it is beneath them to entrench and to defend a fire-position with stubborn tenacity, and that their proper rôle is to be performing Frederician fantasias with the lance and sword, then they are likely, "in real war," to be relegated to a sphere "outside