cisely in accordance with the nature of their surroundings. In
districts of virgin forests and marshland they remained "mounted
rifles," in the open prairie country of the west they became cavalry
pure and simple, though for want of time they never rivalled the
precision of manoeuvre and endurance of modern Prussian or Austrian
horse. In South Africa the same sequence was followed, and had the Boer
War lasted longer it is certain that such Boer leaders as de Wet and de
la Rey would have reverted to cavalry tactics of shock and cold steel at
the earliest possible opportunity.

Therefore when we find, extending over a cycle of ages, the same causes
producing the same effects, the natural conclusion is that the evolution
of the cavalry arm is subject to a universal law which persists in spite
of all changes of armament.

_Employment of Cavalry._--It is a fundamental axiom of all military
action that the officer commanding the cavalry of any force comprising
the three arms of the service is in the strictest sense an executive
officer under the officer commanding that particular force as a whole.
The latter again is himself responsible to the political power he
represents. When intricate political problems are at stake, it may be,
and generally is, quite impracticable that any subordinate can share the
secret knowledge of the power to which he owes his allegiance.

The essence of the value of the cavalry soldier's services lies in this,
that the demand is never made upon him in its supremest form until the
instinct of the real commander realizes that the time has come. Whether
it be to cover a retreat, and by the loss of hundreds to save the lives
of tens of thousands, or to complete a victory with commensurate results
in the opposite direction, the obligation remains the same--to stake the
last man and horse in the attainment of the immediate object in view,
the defeat of the enemy. This at once places the leader of cavalry in
face of his principal problem. It is a matter of experience that the
broader the front on which he can deliver a charge, the greater the
chances of success. However strong the bonds of discipline may be, the
line is ultimately, and at a certain nervous tension, only a number of
men on horses, acting and reacting on one another in various ways. When
therefore, of two lines, moving to meet one another at speed, one sees
itself overlapped to either hand, the men in the line thus overlapped
invariably a