XVII 



I HAVE from youth been reasonably familiar with the 

 performances of European cavalry, and have studied the 

 Arabian horse in the French army in Algiers, and in his 

 native haunts on the Libyan and Syrian deserts. I have 

 sought assiduously for records of great performances ; but 

 exceptional work is only called out by exceptional needs, 

 and abroad these are apt to be wanting. Granted that 

 the German cavalry, for example, is marvellously drilled ; 

 that it has the stomach to fight has been a notorious fact 

 ever since the days of Ziethen and Seidlitz. Granted 

 that it can perform precise evolutions or charge without 

 confusion on the battle-field in masses greater than our 

 entire cavalry force; yet this by no means reaches the 

 heart of distance riding. Such a thing as our raider and 

 pursuer drills would never be dreamed of in Germany. 

 All our work on the plains tends to distance riding, and 

 in no other regular army in the world does this obtain. 

 The Austro-Hungarian cavalry is better fitted than the 

 German for distance riding, and has, as a pattern, the 

 steppes man and horse, who are unexcelled in this very 

 thing. In Algeria, while the horse of the Nineteenth 

 Corps d'Armee is all mounted on Arabians, there is apt to 

 be no call for excessive marches, and there is no prepara- 

 tion for them. The Spahis, or light cavalrymen of native 

 birth, are in constant movement all over the country, but 

 they have the true Oriental trick of not overworking 

 themselves ; and so far as wonderful individual distance 



