Following on the work of the riding school the cavalryman is taught on the drill ground to ride in line of troop at close order. Theoretically the interval between men is “six inches from knee to knee,” but in practice the knees of the men are touching. When a troop of men can keep line perfectly at a gallop, a squadron line is formed; the culminating point of cavalry training is perfection of line in the charge, of which the rate of progression is the fastest pace of the slowest horse. A charge produces its greatest effect when the men ride close together and keep in line, the object being to effect a definite shock by throwing as much weight as possible against a given point at as great a pace as possible. The impact of the charge, in theory, carries the men who make it through and beyond the enemy against whom they have charged, when they are expected to break up their formation and re-form, facing in the direction from whence they have come. The training which a man has to undergo in order to fit him for participating in these shock tactics is necessarily long and severe. In addition to this, cavalry training is directed toward a multiplicity of ends. In any military action infantry have their definite place, which involves bearing the full brunt of attack, maintaining the defensive, or in exceptional circumstances assuming the offensive and charging with the bayonet. Cavalry, however, very rarely bear the full brunt of a sustained attack, as their organisation and equipment render them unfit for prolonged defensive operations. They are used, generally on the flanks of a field force, for making flank attacks and pursuing retreating enemies; they are also used in small bodies, known as patrols, as the eyes and ears of an army. Preceding other arms of the service in the advance, they spy out and bring back information of the position and strength of the enemy, avoiding actual contact as far as possible. Work of this kind calls for such initiative and self-reliance on the part of the rank and file as infantrymen are seldom called on to exercise. Further, all cavalrymen are expected to be as proficient in the use of the rifle as are infantrymen, while they have also to learn the use of the sword, and Lancers still carry and use the lance, which, carried by a certain proportion of the men in the ranks of the Dragoon Guards and Dragoons at the end of the last and beginning of the present century, is no longer used by them. It will be seen from the foregoing that a properly trained cavalryman must be a thoroughly intelligent individual, and must be capable of greater initiative and possessed of more resource than his brother on foot. In many directions, also, he is required to exercise more initiative than the artilleryman, who is always protected by an escort either of cavalry or infantry, and is called on to think for himself and work the gun himself only when all his officers and non-commissioned officers have been shot to stillness.