[61] Wrangel, in _Cavalry in the Japanese War_, puts tersely the true line to take:--“The idea of a thin cavalry screen surrounding their own army for protection against view of the enemy is very fallacious. An energetic enemy, full of enterprise, will easily pierce this thin web with his scouts. Only an active screen can be of any use, which really in practice is no longer a screen only, but is coincident with the true offensive reconnaissance. He who advances regardlessly into the hostile reconnaissance zone, and attacks the cavalry detachments of the enemy with determination wherever they are found, gives the death-blow to the information apparatus of the enemy. His patrols and detachments robbed of these supports are soon useless. They, like their reports, only in the fewest cases are able to reach their destination.” [62] A regulation in the French army is as follows: “One of the most important missions on which young officers should be sent is the conduct of reconnaissance of discovery. Opportunity should be taken to give them practice in this, by sending them to reconnoitre the movement of troops of another garrison. These exercises where the officer stays out for two or three days at the head of his troop are extremely useful.”--_Service de la cavalerie_, p. 190. [63] Plain English words should always be used, if possible, in instruction. [64] Curély, in 1812, at Pultusk, with 100 men of the 20th Chasseurs, captured from the enemy twenty pieces of artillery, and took the general-in-chief of the Russian army a prisoner. [65] Maude, _Cavalry: Its Past and Future_, p. 185. [66] The Atlanta Campaign, p. 389 of Wood and Edmonds’ _Civil War in the United States_. [67] Undoubtedly the press wrote against the cavalry and the medical departments far more than against other arms and departments during the late South African War. Both have made great progress since the war. _Sic itur ad astra!_ [68] True nobility is seen in the reply of Von Moltke, who, asked why he was so economical, as far as his person was concerned, whilst generous to others, replied, that it was in the hope that the officers of the army might be persuaded to follow his example, for that he knew how many families grudged themselves all possible luxuries to keep their sons in their position of officers of the army. “The less a man requires the greater he is,” he added. [69] We like to call to mind Ruskin’s saying in _The Future of England_: “Riches, so far from being necessary to _noblesse_, are adverse to it. So utterly that the first character of all the nobility, who have founded past dynasties in the world, is to be poor; poor often by oath, always by generosity, and of every true knight in the chivalric age the first thing that history tells you is that he never kept treasure himself.”