ommands are handled should be so thoroughly
flesh and blood of both leaders and led, that under all circumstances
a sufficient result is secure. To reach this ideal is the true purpose
of our training.

In the permanent existence of Divisions it seems to me there is great
danger that such a guarantee for their successful employment would be
sacrificed.

We have seen that the demands likely to be made on the Cavalry require
widely different arrangement of the disposable forces; that this
requirement increases in importance as the Arm falls numerically
beneath the needs of the situation, and that only a most adaptable
organization can deal adequately with the emergencies this numerical
insufficiency may entail. Hence it is to be feared that a permanent
constitution in Divisions might lose this requisite adaptability, and,
however highly we may appreciate the advantages of a firmly welded War
organization, one should never allow the form to interfere with the
practical application of the means--_i.e._, never allow the troops to
become so rigid as to hamper their employment in the field. But this
is just what would happen if the Divisions were maintained on a
permanent War footing.

Every application of Cavalry Masses requires a certain measure of
drill control, because it depends always on the movement of closed
bodies of troops, and if the Cavalry Divisions are constantly drilled
together under the same Leader in Peace, there is at least a very
great risk that this certain degree of drill control, which we
recognise as indispensable, will degenerate into hard-and-fast
prescription, since the Leader has always the same number of units at
his disposal, and will thus by degrees habituate himself to consider
these as invariable quantities in the solution of every tactical
problem.

Our experiences with the Regulations for 1876 show that this danger is
by no means imaginary, for by the constant practice of the so-called
'Three-Line Tactics' we had already progressed far on the downward
path which leads to tactical destruction. If the 'Form' would not fit
the conditions, so much the worse for the conditions. Fortunately,
thanks to subsequent changes, we have shed the worst of these
tendencies, and are on the high-road towards freer and more adaptable
tactical formations, but to me it seems that any attempt to fetter
this progress by the adoption of a more or less rigid organization can
only result in evil for the whole Ar