er successes. The mounted men in America failed not as a consequence
of the armament they encountered, but because the war brought out no
Napoleon to create by his skill the opportunity for decisive cavalry
action, and to mass his men beforehand in confident anticipation. The
same reasoning applies to the European campaigns of 1866 and 1870, and
the results obtained by the arm were so small, in proportion to the
numbers of squadrons available and to their cost of maintenance as
compared with the other arms, that a strong reaction set in everywhere
against the existing institutions, and the re-creation of the dragoon,
under the new name of mounted rifleman, was advocated in the hope of
obtaining a cheap and efficient substitute for the cavalryman.

Later events in South Africa and in Manchuria again brought this
question prominently to the front, but the essential difference between
the old and new schools of thought has not been generally realized. The
"mounted rifle" adherents base their arguments on the greatly increased
efficiency of the rifle itself. The "cavalry" school, on the other hand,
maintains that, the weapons themselves being everywhere substantially
equal in efficiency, the advantage rests with the side which can create
the most favourable conditions for their employment, and that,
fundamentally, superior mobility will always confer upon its possessor
the choice of the circumstances under which he will elect to engage.
Where the two sides are nearly equally matched in mobility, neither side
can afford the time to dismount, for the other will utilize that time to
manoeuvre into a position which gives him a relative superiority for
whichever form of attack he may elect to adopt, and this relative
superiority will always more than suffice to eliminate any advantage in
accuracy of fire that his opponent may have obtained by devoting his
principal attention to training his men on the range instead of on the
mounted manoeuvre ground.

Finally, the "cavalry" school reasons that in no single campaign since
Napoleon's time have the conditions governing encounters been normal.
Either the roadless and barren nature of the country has precluded of
itself the rapid marching which forms the basis of all modern strategy,
as in America, Turkey, South Africa and Manchuria, or the relative power
of the infantry and artillery weapons, as in Bohemia (1866) and in
France (1870), has rendered wholly impossible the creation of t