ition, rather than a subtraction from his duties and the
training he must have. The day of cavalry--as cavalry and nothing
else--has passed. For today the cavalryman must be familiar not only
with the sword, lance and revolver, but with the rifle as well. It has
been demonstrated that such long periods of trench warfare may develop
that it becomes necessary for him to dismount and make himself valuable
in the scheme of military economy by fighting as infantry until such
time as the enemy line is broken and he can again take to his horse and
the work of harrying the retreating foe.

The war has been full of surprising results as regards cavalry. It was
popularly supposed that in facing such terrible modern weapons as the
repeating rifle of long range, the machine gun and the automatic field
pieces which have become so well known as the French "75s," any body of
cavalry which attempted to charge the enemy would be annihilated.

CAVALRY'S SUCCESSFUL CHARGES.

Yet all through the early stages of the war one reads of desperate, and,
what is more to the point, successful charges made by British cavalry
against batteries of German field pieces. There was one instance in
France, just back of the Belgian frontier, where a charge of British
lancers against a German battery, which had a commanding position, saved
the day for a greatly-outnumbered allied detachment, which was
conducting that most difficult of all maneuvers, a rear guard action,
covering the retreat of the body of the army. The charge of the lancers
took the Germans so by surprise, and was executed with such speed, that
despite the heavy fire they poured into the advancing horsemen the
latter were at work among them with spear and saber before
reinforcements could be brought up. Then the cavalry, dismounting and
unslinging their carbines, defended the position with such tenacity that
the German advance was delayed several hours, sufficient for the rest of
the allied forces to make good its withdrawal and the consolidation of
the new lines chosen for defense.

This idea of cavalry serving in the double role of infantry and cavalry
is a distinctly American development, a trick which the Federal and
Confederate armies taught the world during the Civil War, and of which
the British made excellent use in South Africa against the Boers. The
fact which this war has established, however, is that the older use of
cavalry, in the charge against infantry, artillery and ev