Too much time is wasted in educating the troopers to drill on foot, and nothing is done to develop individual initiative in the field. There were not ten of the troopers in my regiment who could have been trusted alone as scouts, and even among the _Volontaires_, men who had all received a good education, not one half of them at the end of the year's training thoroughly understood the use of a map, and with the exception of Delbruck and myself not one could have made a sketch-plan, however rough, of the ground we had been over. Another of the great mistakes made throughout the whole of the French army is the tendency to overburden soldiers as well as horses. Cavalry horses have to carry in the field a kit which, including the rider, amounts to an average of 22 stone, in the light cavalry the kit is, it is true, a little lighter, but there is hardly a stone and a half difference. The light cavalry horses are small, few of them being over 15 hands, while many are under. In the heavy cavalry there is hardly a horse standing 16 hands high, and the average size ranges between 15·1 and 15·2. In the infantry, soldiers have to carry in the field, cartridges included, an average of over 80 lbs. During the Madagascar war this enormous burden was not even reduced, and naturally 50 per cent. of the men died within five months of the beginning of the campaign. Another great fault of the French system is that too much is expected of the troopers, instead of their being regarded exclusively as mounted men. Their uniform is not only grotesque, but is quite unsuitable for riding. I have often heard it said that the introduction of top-boots and breeches would entail too heavy an expenditure--but the Germans have them, and their cavalry is not inferior in numbers to the French. But this is a digression. Our Sergeant Legros was as great a bully as ever; _Volontaires_ were constantly being punished, and never a week elapsed without my being sent to the _Salle de Police_; in fact, Legros got so accustomed to punishing me that many a time he used to say to me in the morning, "I am in a bad temper to-day, and you'll get two days' _Salle de Police_--you'll find out why latter on." At other times he used to tell us that he meant to stick four of the _Volontaires_ in the lock-up that day, and, true to his word, he always found some cause for punishing exactly four of us during the day. I had become so used to punishment by that time that it had grown quite indifferent to me, and I became a mere dare-devil.