But enough has been said to show the difference in cavalry leaders. In a cavalry engagement A’s squadron will beat B’s nineteen times out of twenty. B, poor fellow, is a danger to the State, and generally not happy in his position. No man likes work which he performs indifferently. Will this kind of leader ever charge unless he receives a direct order to do so, and even then will it be well done? Take it all round, any officer who is up to the business of efficiently training and leading a squadron must possess qualities which would have rendered his career a successful one in any walk of life. It is impossible to enumerate the hundred and one cares, anxieties, and responsibilities which beset a squadron commander. But it is a good thing to mention what he should regard as his guiding stars. They are:-- 1. Efficiency for war in men and horses. 2. Avoidance of mere samples of efficiency. 3. Constant steps taken to make the soldiers confident in their power to use their weapons with deadly effect. 4. To make every trooper self-reliant in danger or unusual circumstances, especially when alone. 5. To cultivate the offensive spirit and a determination to get at the enemy somehow. 1. Efficiency for war in men and horses. Men not worked hard in peace-time are quite useless in war, where they have the added privation of want of food and sleep. Active service is quite unlike peace service; in the latter a man often spends but an hour or two in the open and most of the rest of the day in grooming and cleaning up; these duties are, generally speaking, a pure waste of time, as far as cavalry is concerned, in war. Too much of this barrack-square soldiering is apt to unfit men and make them slack and tired after a long day’s work, of which gillies, herdsmen, and keepers would think nothing. Few officers are knowledgeable enough to be able to discern the difference between fit, hard horses and poor horses. Looking at the horse sideways on, the ribs may easily deceive one, but following a horse it is much more easily seen to which category he belongs. The poor horse is split up and hollow in the region of the muscles lying alongside the backbone. Feeling the neck is not a safe criterion--big neck muscles may merely mean that the horse has been fed on the ground; the appearance of the coat is also fallacious. A sharp canter of a mile should, however, furnish a good test, as the blowing and snorting of an untrained squadron and a soapy lather instead of a clear watery sweat at once tell their tale.