Leave them to judge whether the plan of those tactics will be dashed off by the pen of the ready-writer as a result of experiences gained during a Whitsun-week holiday on some suburban training ground, or whether the soldier who has felt the sharp stress of an enemy’s victory, the heavy hand of adversity and the rough lessons of retreat, who has seen the barometer of his men’s fate rise and fall under cyclonic conditions, will painfully and doubtfully elaborate it. Cromwell, Frederick, Galliffet, these with bitter experience of the everyday imperfections of human nature, and a well-weighed determination to insist on tactics which will override those weaknesses, did not attempt to avoid or shirk the difficulty of losses. A cool contempt for the contingencies is the primary qualification in the search for successful methods in cavalry tactics, as well as in the encounter itself. Turning now to the detached duties of cavalry, of security and information, no less do we see the recurrence of the same ideas. The Curélys and de Bracks, the Mosbys, the cavalry who, “like a heavy shower of rain, can get through anywhere,” such come right down to us from ancient history. The daring hearts who, trusting in a good horse and a knowledge of woodcraft, torment the enemy, whether in camp, bivouac, on the march, or on the line of communication, are a product of all campaigns, ready to the hand of those who know where to find them, and how to inspire them aright so as to get the very best out of them. And what will good men not dare and undergo for a word of praise or encouragement from one whose soul is in what he says? Again and again, what is learnt in the hard school of campaigning, and generally where that campaign has been lost, carries the best lesson. Has any nation set itself more resolutely to correct the faults of its cavalry[5] than the French nation after the 1870 war? Conversely, the nation that wins, learns little or nothing; no lesson is worse than that of easy success in small wars. Witness the Russian successes in Central Asia for a series of years, followed by the _débâcle_ of their cavalry action in the Manchurian War when pitted against an enemy whose cavalry was scarcely “in being,”[6] and the erroneous conclusions arrived at in regard to cavalry by those who only saw the first portion of the operations in South Africa 1899-1902. Von Moltke is credited with saying: “People say one must learn by experience; I have always endeavoured to learn by the experience of others.” The real lessons learnt from war are extremely difficult to impress on the taxpayer, who, in modern Great Britain, only reads of them in the newspaper, and who at best does not wish to pay for one more cavalry soldier than is absolutely necessary. The cavalry leader must recognize that the arm is expensive, therefore it cannot afford to be inactive; it is the hardest arm to replace, therefore it must be used to the full.