ly upon our magazines and the supplies which can be
transmitted from them to the front through the agency of our supply
columns. The carrying capacity and mobility of the latter, therefore,
condition inexorably the degree of mobility in strategical operations
which, under all circumstances, the Cavalry can be counted on to
develop. Whoever relies on more will lay himself open to most bitter
disappointments exactly at the decisive moments.

The supply trains must, therefore, be able to march at least as fast
as the troops themselves, for only on this condition is there any
guarantee that even under difficult circumstances the necessary
supplies will be forthcoming; yet though experience most abundantly
demonstrates the difficulties of maintaining the supplies of the
Infantry in spite of the fact that, as a rule, their columns can cover
the ground faster than the men can march, there appears to be a tacit
assumption that with the Cavalry the trains will always arrive in
time, although they move far slower than the troops they follow and
supply.

There was, indeed, a certain amount of justification for this idea in
the days when Cavalry were more or less tied to the movements of the
rest of the Army; but nowadays, when Cavalry operates independently,
and must cover long distances in the shortest time, it has become
simply preposterous.

We have only to consider that we have now to reckon with average daily
marches of from twenty-five to thirty miles, and that a beaten or
evading force may have to retrace the same distance, perhaps even on
the very same day, at a much faster rate than that at which it
advanced, to perceive its absurdity. What chance would there be for
waggons which could not go out of a walk, and cannot reverse on the
road itself, which check at every hill, and sink to the axles in mud
or sand? How can strategically independent Cavalry provide for the
security of its baggage when it must often be left some days' marches
behind? And yet it is precisely when operating against an active
opposing Cavalry or an insurgent population that protection for the
baggage becomes most indispensable. Again, how are such trains to be
cleared away from the front when the main bodies of the two armies are
closing on one another for battle? or how, after it is decided, can
they be brought forward again to follow their Cavalry in pursuit, and
convey to it the supplies which in such moments it will most need, and
on whose p