What is the logical outcome? It is, that unless (1) our cavalry force is redundant, or (2) there are difficulties in feeding our independent cavalry, or (3) the enemy’s cavalry is very weak, or (4) our cavalry comprises squadrons, which we cannot, from reasons of want of training or armament, oppose to the enemy’s cavalry, we shall see every available squadron taken from the protective cavalry and handed over to the independent cavalry. Intelligence comes before security.[51] Meanwhile the protective rôle will be carried out by divisional mounted troops, cyclists, and infantry detachments (see sec. 92, F.S.R.). _Ceteris paribus_, the first advantage will be with the side which can put the greatest number of squadrons into the corps of independent cavalry, and, in view of this, a fact plainly spoken of and counted upon in all strategical conceptions of future campaigns on the Continent, the preponderance of well-trained squadrons is clearly the object to be aimed at. Generally speaking, the ideas which are promulgated as to the rôle for the weaker cavalry, by which a cavalry, worse trained, worse armed, and proportionately less in numbers will compensate for these shortcomings by superior tactics, are purely Utopian. This “fond thing vainly invented” may interest or beguile the mind of the unfortunate tax-payer, but does not belong to the regions of plain military common sense, which, in its preparation for war, has no place for chance work, and must have no weak link in the chain. Let those with whom the wish is master of the thought read General von Bernardi’s most recent statement in _Cavalry in Peace and War_, p. 356, where speaking of the German force of trained cavalry, enormous as it already is, he says: I have repeatedly stated that I consider our cavalry to be of itself too weak. The more I study modern warfare, the more convinced do I feel that the value of the arm, when handled according to modern ideas, has increased. Let us remember that cavalry cannot be improvised, and that even squadrons of the best class of mounted rifles, formed entirely of natural horsemen and fairly good shots, are very heavily penalized, apart from their armament and training, unless they have professional brigade, regimental, and squadron leaders, and know how to work with horse artillery. They cannot be expected to face trained and properly organized cavalry brigades on anything like equal terms. At the same time, if reliance is placed on numbers, one is at once faced (i.) by the forage supply and its carriage, (ii.) by the enormous item of expense in remounting, already referred to in the chapter on “The horse.”