Once committed, however, the General persists. All cyclist detachments and patrols are "to be brought up to the fight" from everywhere. Roads are not to be blocked (in accordance with the screen idea) until the supreme Cavalry struggle, with its conventional "complete overthrow" of the hostile Cavalry, is over; and all this in flat contradiction of at least two-thirds of the earlier chapter on the Army Cavalry, where it was laid down that reconnoitring squadrons were from the first to be pushed forward from the "various groups of Army Cavalry," and were to be allotted reconnaissance zones; that a separation of Cavalry force was far the most probable line of action; and that reconnaissance was "an every-day task of the Cavalry," its "daily bread," a "duty which should never cease to be performed" for a single moment. And yet on page 89 we come to the staggering, if cryptic, conclusion that "the Army Cavalry will only undertake an offensive screen when the Army is advancing and where the country does not afford suitable localities for the establishment of a defensive screen." The writer then enlarges on the merits of the defensive screen, and, now that his mind is occupied with the idea of defence, makes it perfectly clear that the rifle is absolute master of the situation for the patrols, troops, squadrons, or any other units of both belligerent parties. Your defensive screen acts by fire, and obviously, therefore, whoever tries to pierce your screen must act by fire. These pages reduce to nullity all the romantic hints elsewhere about the charging patrol or squadron, with its "rude force" and its "determined" and "remorseless" attacks. And what of illustrations and examples from modern war? Not one. Nothing but "speculative and theoretical reflection." For anyone who cares to study them, the facts are there--plain, hard, incontrovertible, convincing facts. Sir John French knows all about the South African facts. Screens, on a small or great scale, were matters of daily experience. He himself, with a force of all arms, sustained a screen for two months--primarily protective, but tactically offensive, as all screens must be--in the Colesberg operations of November-January, 1899-1900. He knows perfectly well that lances and swords, for all the use made of them, might as well have been in store, and that the Cavalry engaged acted on precisely the same principles as the Colonial mounted riflemen engaged.