the flashing of swords, followed by the crash and sound of an
engagement. The man who would conduct this imagined spectacle
satisfactorily would therefore be dependent rather on the timely
uprush of the spirit than on the mechanical certainty of the mind. He
would need to act by inspiration and impulse, rather than by cold
thought. Quite obviously some other and less resplendent being would
have to time the rise of his curtain in the theatre of war. He would
be the last man whom one would figure, like Kipling's successful
General, "worrying himself bald" over a map and compasses.

[Page Heading: THEORY AND PRACTICE]

But the popular version does less than justice to the modern cavalry
leader in general and to French in particular. We have seen him as a
subaltern poring over his books before his colleagues were out of bed.
We have seen him varying the monotony of War Office administration by
solving problems in tactics. Indubitably he is a student: incidentally
he is an innovator. This fact of mental duality raises him in a moment
out of the ruck of mere cavalry experts--of both sorts. On the one
hand he is not a competent machine working out other people's ideas in
the field of battle: on the other he is no blundering theorist whose
ideas crumple into ineffectual dust under the stress of actual
warfare. He can carry out with the ardour of the soldier the schemes
which he has formulated with the cold cunning of the strategist. It is
difficult indeed to say in which field of cavalry work he more greatly
excels--that of theory or practice. We shall see later that he
possesses qualities altogether apart from those of the theoriser or
the man of action. Suffice it now to glance at the astonishingly
complete theory of cavalry on which his marvellous execution is
founded.