d between the drill
days, in which at least the combined action of masses within the
limits of Field-Service exercises can be practised.

The question then arises whether it would not be as well to sacrifice
a part of the tactical training of the Divisional Cavalry in the
interest of the proposed strategic manoeuvres, and whether the
advantages we anticipate from these latter might not, at any rate
partially, be attained in another manner. It seems to me that to a
certain extent this may well be possible, if we can only make up our
minds to break with our existing arrangements regulating the present
exercises, and order a certain number of garrisons, detailed in
groups, to operate one against the other. If this grouping is carried
out without reference to Corps boundaries, and the exercises are so
managed that the troops need only spend one night out of quarters,
during which they can bivouac, very great advantages at very small
cost would be derived, because, since in these operations it is not at
all necessary to carry them through to their culmination in an
engagement, but only to concentrate them for the purpose, when
necessary, in a practical manner, and to set all the machinery for
reconnoitring, for transmission of orders, and reports, in operation,
the damages to cultivation might be kept within very reasonable
limits.

An example will help to make the idea clearer. If from the regiments
in Metz, Thionville, and St. Avoid on the one side, and of those in
Saarburg, Saargemund, Saarbrucken on the other, two opposing forces
are constituted, it would be easy to draw up a general idea by which
each element of the group considered as an independent Cavalry screen
covering the advance of an Army had reached on a given night the
points at which they are actually quartered. The distances of the
places named one from another are such that they fairly represent a
possible situation in War, and a single day's march might well bring
them into collision. Inexpensive bivouac places could easily be found
in the wooded districts of Lorraine or elsewhere, and the Infantry in
the respective garrisons might represent the heads of the following
Armies' columns without undue interference with their programme of
training. If the Cavalry march out with four squadrons only per
regiment, the fifth can find horses for a part of the train, the point
being not so much the number of such waggons provided as the service
loading of those th