One reaches the bedrock of French's curiously sane conception of war
when one asks him to define war. In dealing with those gentlemen who
tell us that the Boer War was fought under such abnormal conditions
that it is useless as a ground-work for conclusions as to future wars,
he uttered a memorable retort. "All wars are abnormal," he observed,
"because there is no such thing as normal war."[16] There we have one
of the axioms both of his theory and of his practice. There can be no
fixed conditions, and so there can be no final theories as to the
conduct of warfare. Theory is simply a means to an end. And the
successful general is he who most ably adapts the general body of
theory suitable for all cases to the particular campaign on which he
is engaged.

[Page Heading: A VEXED QUESTION]

Broadly, however, French has very clearly defined what he considers to
be the use and the abuse of cavalry. After the Boer War, as is well
known, opinion on the subject of the future of the mounted arm was
bitterly divided. There were those who saw in French's success a
justification for the cavalrymen of the old school, armed _cap à pie_.
There were others who, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, saw the end of
their day approaching. The author of _The Great Boer War_ says of the
charge before Kimberley: "It appears to have been one of the very few
occasions during the campaign when that obsolete and absurd weapon the
sword was anything but a dead weight to its bearer." And again: "The
war has been a cruel one for the cavalry.... It is difficult to say
that cavalry, as cavalry, have justified their existence. In the
opinion of many the tendency of the future will be to convert the
whole forces into mounted infantry.... A little training in taking