sances in the widest
sense, undertakings against the enemy's communications, pursuit,
protracted engagements covering retreats, marches with columns and
convoys, finally, the arrangement and execution of wide strategic
movements under practical conditions, with accurate computation of
time and space, the suitable employment of fighting power for the
attainment of the strategical object, and the best strategic
introduction of the consciously sought-out combat, all within the
limits imposed by the magnitude of the masses handled, are matters
which in future will form the principal sum of all Cavalry activity,
but find no place in our scheme of education.

Even the Imperial Manoeuvres do not meet the situation, because, in
the first place, only comparatively few regiments are annually
affected by them; and in the second, the forces are generally from the
outset in such close proximity with one another that it is only,
perhaps, on the first day that a suitable situation for their
strategic employment may be said to arise at all.

Whilst in this manner our whole training is adopted for conditions
which in future campaigns can only arise exceptionally, whilst it
practically ignores the true sphere of action of the Cavalry, we are
working in a vicious circle of forms and misrepresentations which
belong to an extinct era of Warfare, and which have long since ceased
to have any but the smallest connection with the facts of stern
reality.

That things were no better in the period before the last Wars the
negative results obtained by our Cavalry in 1866 and 1870 sufficiently
prove. In no sphere of their action during these campaigns did they
obtain the results the Arm is really capable of--not because the
material in the ranks was inferior, but simply and solely because in
equipment and training they had lagged behind the requirements of the
time. These experiences should have been to us a serious warning not
to fall into similar errors a second time; and yet at the present
there is most serious danger that a future War may again find us
regarding by far the most important branch of our duties from a
standpoint which has long since passed away.

The reasons for this state of affairs seem to me of a twofold
character. In the first place, the tasks accruing to the Arm in War do
not receive either amongst its own officers, still less amongst those
of the rest of the Army, their proper appreciation, because in this
direction gui