reconnaissance will have been rendered easier. In the rôles of
deception and support, such an immense and fruitful field of
usefulness and enterprise is laid open to a cavalry division which has
thought out and practised these rôles in its peace training, and is
accustomed to act in large bodies dismounted, that I cannot bring
myself to believe that any equivalent for such manifest advantages can
be found even in the most successful raid against the enemy's
communications by mounted troops."[20]

[Page Heading: A HISTORIC PHRASE]

How brilliantly Sir John French trained his men to accomplish these
multiple activities, recent history has shown. We may note in passing,
however, that mechanics have now divested the cavalry of one of their
chief functions. The aeroplane is now the eye of the army and the
strategical rôle of the cavalry is no more. The mounted arm will
almost certainly now be confined to screening operations and to shock
tactics, after the opposing armies have come into touch with one
another. History, therefore, has obviously justified Sir John French
in his championship of the cavalry spirit. Without it his horsemen
would have been no match for the German cavalry. Thanks to their
training, they "went through the Uhlans like brown paper" in General
Sir Philip Chetwode's historic phrase.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Sir John French's Preface to _Cavalry_ by General von Bernhardi.
By permission of Messrs. Hugh Rees, Ltd., and Messrs. Hodder &
Stoughton.