Speaking of cavalry, the thing that I most wanted to see when I went to the war was a cavalry charge.  I had seen mounted troops in action, of course, both in Africa and in Asia, but they had brown skins and wore fantastic uniforms.  What I wanted to see was one of those charges such as Meissonier used to paint—­scarlet breeches and steel helmets and a sea of brandished sword-blades and all that sort of thing.  But when I confided my wish to an American army officer whom I met on the boat going over he promptly discouraged me.  “Cavalry charges are a thing of the past,” he asserted.  “There will never be one again.  The modern high-power rifle has made them impossible.  Henceforward cavalry will only be used for scouting purposes or as mounted infantry.”  He spoke with great positiveness, I remember, having been, you see, in both the Cuban and Philippine campaigns.  According to the textbooks and the military experts and the armchair tacticians he was perfectly right; I believe that all of the writers on military subjects agree in saying that cavalry charges are obsolete as a form of attack.  But the trouble with the Belgians was that they didn’t play the war-game according to the rules in the book.  They were very primitive in their conceptions of warfare.  Their idea was that whenever they got within sight of a German regiment to go after that regiment and exterminate it, and they didn’t care whether in doing it they used horse, foot, or guns.  It was owing, therefore, to this total disregard for the rules laid down in the textbooks that I saw my cavalry charge.  Let me tell you about it while I have the chance, for there is no doubt that cavalry charges are getting scarce and I may never see another.

It was in the region between Termonde and Alost.  This is a better country for cavalry to manoeuvre in than most parts of Flanders, for sometimes one can go almost a mile without being stopped by a canal.  A considerable force of Germans had pushed north from Alost and the Belgian commander ordered a brigade of cavalry, composed of the two regiments of guides and, if I remember rightly, two regiments of lancers, to go out and drive them back.  After a morning spent in skirmishing and manoeuvring for position, the Belgian cavalry commander got his Germans where he wanted them.  The Germans were in front of a wood, and between them and the Belgians lay as pretty a stretch of open country as a cavalryman could ask for.  Now the Germans occupied a strong position, mind you, and the proper thing to have done according to the books would have been to have demoralized them with shell-fire and then to have followed it up with an infantry attack.  But the grizzled old Belgian commander did nothing of the sort.  He had fifteen hundred troopers who were simply praying for a chance to go at the Germans with cold steel, and he gave them the chance they wanted.  Tossing away his cigarette and tightening the chin-strap of his busby, he trotted out in front of his men.  “Right