The cavalry, indeed, of both combatants proved singularly ineffectual, and, as I have just pointed out, failed as a means of attack or to pursue retreating armies; and an interesting feature was the dismounting of the cavalry and its employment as infantry in the trenches. Cavalrymen were divorced from their horses and given infantry guns; and their equipment and appearance approached very nearly that of the foot-soldier. The Cuirassiers, for instance, took off their picturesque manes and removed the top pieces of their helmets, and thus very nearly imitated the _bourguinet_, or low, mediaeval-looking helmet of the French infantry. Even reconnaissance, the old duty of the cavalry, has been undertaken by the aeroplane; and the horse-soldier, indeed, has little place in modern warfare. Some experts, however, hold that a new rôle has emerged from the war which the cavalry is qualified to fill. It consists in their employment in large forces flanked by mobile cannon and cyclists, whereby their offensive radius is greatly extended. In these few pages I have endeavoured to sketch the varied phases of a war that opened with the glittering pageant of the time of Napoleon and merged into the dreary and sombre monotony of trench warfare. The "heroic" days of battle were over, but a new heroism arose. Men fought no longer to triumph as men among men; they were content to go forward, nameless and unrecognised: "to march heroically" (in the words of the French writer), to become, not men among men, but— "des morts parmi les morts." *CHAPTER XVI* *MILITARY COMMAND AND THE REVOLUTION* "On nous fait une guerre ennuyeuse!" How often was the plaint heard in France, where this war of "wait and see," this terrible game of patience, racked the nerves not only of the soldiers in the trenches, but of the multitudes who scanned the morning news in the hope of some startling manoeuvre and stunning victory which should end the hideous nightmare of trench warfare. Had Napoleon and his like passed, then, for ever? Could France never produce his peer? A man who would rise above all difficulties; who would drag guns over the snows in hollowed-out tree-trunks; who would arrive where no man had arrived; who would achieve the impossible? Times, it is true, had changed, but sound opinion urged the recognised fact that there is only one kind of strategy, just as there is only one geometry. The geometric truth of to-day is the geometric truth of a thousand years ago; it never changes. Thus, strategy is always strategy though the circumstances may change, and the café critic was a little inclined to blame the military command for the dreary monotony of the conduct of the war.