an "I-came-I-saw" narrative, and not understand why
further interest should be shown by the inquirer in what was the
everyday routine of the business of war. For the trite saying that
everything is relative does not forfeit any truth by repetition.

The cavalry had done everything quite according to tactics, which would
only confuse the layman. The wonder was that any of it had come back
alive. On that narrow front it had ridden out toward the Germany Army
with nothing between the cavalry and the artillery and machine guns
which had men on horses for targets. In respect to days when to show a
head above a trench meant death the thing was stupefying, incredible.
These narrators forming a camp group, with lean, black-bearded,
olive-skinned Indians in attendance bringing water in horse-buckets for
the baths, and the sight of kindly horses' faces smiling at you, and the
officers themselves horsewise and with the talk and manner of
horsemen--only they made it credible. How real it was to them! How real
it became to me!

There had been some Germans in hiding in the grass who were taken
unawares by this rush of gallopers with lances. Every participant agreed
as to the complete astonishment of the enemy. It was equivalent to a
football player coming into the field in ancient armor and the more of a
surprise considering that those Germans had been sent out after a
morning full of surprises to make contact with the British and
reestablish the broken line.

Not dummies of straw this time for the lance's sharp point, but
startled men in green uniform--the vision which had been in mind when
every thrust was made at the dummies! This was what cavalry was for, the
object of all the training. It rode through quite as it would have
ridden fifty or a hundred years ago. A man on the ground, a man on a
horse! This feature had not changed.

"You actually got some?"

"Oh, yes!"

"On the lances?"

"Yes."

From the distance came the infernal sound of guns in their threshing
contest of explosions which made this incident more impressive than any
account of a man buried by shells, of isolated groups holding out in
dugouts, or of venturesome soldiers catching and tossing back German
bombs at the man who threw them, because it was unique on the Somme.
Both British and Indians had had the same kind of an opportunity. After
riding through they wheeled and rode back in the accepted fashion of
cavalry.

By this time some of the systemati