ght under such abnormal conditions
that it is useless as a ground-work for conclusions as to future wars,
he uttered a memorable retort. "All wars are abnormal," he observed,
"because there is no such thing as normal war."[16] There we have one
of the axioms both of his theory and of his practice. There can be no
fixed conditions, and so there can be no final theories as to the
conduct of warfare. Theory is simply a means to an end. And the
successful general is he who most ably adapts the general body of
theory suitable for all cases to the particular campaign on which he
is engaged.

[Page Heading: A VEXED QUESTION]

Broadly, however, French has very clearly defined what he considers to
be the use and the abuse of cavalry. After the Boer War, as is well
known, opinion on the subject of the future of the mounted arm was
bitterly divided. There were those who saw in French's success a
justification for the cavalrymen of the old school, armed _cap a pie_.
There were others who, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, saw the end of
their day approaching. The author of _The Great Boer War_ says of the
charge before Kimberley: "It appears to have been one of the very few
occasions during the campaign when that obsolete and absurd weapon the
sword was anything but a dead weight to its bearer." And again: "The
war has been a cruel one for the cavalry.... It is difficult to say
that cavalry, as cavalry, have justified their existence. In the
opinion of many the tendency of the future will be to convert the
whole forces into mounted infantry.... A little training in taking
cover, leggings instead of boots, and a rifle instead of a carbine,
would give us a formidable force of 20,000 men who could do all that
our cavalry does, and a great deal more besides.... The lesson both of
the South African and of the American Civil War is that the light
horseman who is trained to fight on foot is the type of the
future."[17] This is the opinion of a very competent civilian who
deeply studied the South African campaign. But it is the opinion of a
civilian.

On the other hand many experts, most of them military men, insist that
the day of shock tactics is far from done. They instance the charge
before Kimberley as a case in point. Obviously all the elements of
disaster were there. Only a brilliant use of the traditional cavalry
attack saved the situation--and Kimberley. Situations of that sort
are bound to arise again. How is the mounted infantrym