Not long ago the ideal laid down in training a horse for cavalry work was to make him as “clever across country as a good hunter, active and handy as a polo pony, and reliable as a shooting horse.” Nor is it advisable to lower that ideal. Major Noel Birch in his excellent book, _Modern Riding_, tells us “the ideal is an excellent one and seldom impossible if the training is scientific.” A lack of imagination prevents the soldier, who has not undergone the vicissitudes of active service, from quite grasping the situations which cavalry work may bring about for him, since, whilst acting as a scout, any cavalry soldier may be called upon to engage in personal combat, to swim a rapid river, again to leave his horse standing alone in the open whilst he creeps over a ridge to reconnoitre a valley, or to ride for his life or freedom over stiff fences or big ditches. _À propos_ of this, a story is related of Seydlitz. He had been telling Frederick the Great that a cavalryman should never be taken alive. One day the King was riding with him over a bridge, and in order to try and prove him wrong, gave an order to the advanced guard to face about and close one end of the bridge, and to the next files coming on similarly to close the other end. He then asked Seydlitz what he would do now. Seydlitz put his horse at the parapet and leapt over it into the stream. This was a high trial for the manners of the horse as well as the determination of the man. Undoubtedly a good swordsman on a perfectly trained horse should account for any three men of ordinary ability mounted on average horses. Napoleon said that “two mamelukes could make head against three French cavalrymen, but that one thousand French cuirassiers could easily beat fifteen hundred mamelukes.” One showed high individual training of man and horse in single combat, and the other collective training as a troop or squadron. Both are difficult of attainment, and both point to considerable trouble, forethought, and knowledge on the part of the trainer. In the days of the professional soldier the training of the horse was probably at a higher standard than at present, because it was made plain to every man’s mind that a good horse meant honour, profit, and safety to him. There was, therefore, as much competition for a horse which was likely to train well, and for a trained horse, as there is nowadays for a finished hunter or polo pony trained on similar lines. In all ages there have been some men who could do wonders on horses quite unrideable by others, but the exceptions are not to the point. We have to consider how to train horses in a manner suitable to cavalry work.