to them that dash and independence of action which made them the terror of the battlefields of the past.
The following extract from an article in The Times newspaper of August 23rd, 1905, by their special correspondent with the Japanese Army in Manchuria, shows the necessity for machine guns by emphasising the danger of training cavalry to fight as infantry.
"The prime value of cavalry lies in its mobility. As an actual fighting unit in battle a body of cavalry is much inferior to an equal body of infantry. The discrepancy is less marked if the cavalryman carries a rifle, but there is always the encumbrance of the horses, which require the attention of one man in every four when the rifle is employed. It being postulated that tactics evolve themselves into the effort to obtain a superiority of rifle fire, it is evident that the necessity of dispensing with one quarter of a body of mounted riflemen before their weapons can be brought to bear greatly lessens the value of that body. On the other hand, the mobility of the mounted rifleman compensates for his comparative ineffectiveness to such a degree, it is believed in the British Army, that elaborate arrangements have been made for the provision and training of what is known as mounted infantry. Granted the value of mounted and mobile men as an auxiliary to infantry, the question arises, What is the weapon with which they shall be armed, and
