It was soon after this limit had been arrived at that the era of the new and armourless cavalry-man mounted on a light and active horse set in unexpectedly.
Coming to more recent years, what would Marlborough or any other of the great and successful military leaders have done had they been deprived of even a portion of their cavalry?
With the outbreak of the Boer War the wise-acres shook their heads, declaring that in such a country as South Africa the mounted soldier must prove useless; that the “punitive expedition,” as the campaign was termed when first war was declared, would be conducted almost solely by infantry; while reasons innumerable were advanced to prove the “accuracy” of such wild forecasts.
And now when we look back upon it all we see that the war would most likely still be dragging its way along had only infantry been employed.
To-day it seems likely, indeed almost certain, that the horse's influence upon the world's progress—influence that we have traced back into the dim ages—has actually come to a close.
Evidence that this is so is observable on every side. The discovery of the strength of steam left the horse still in power, so to speak, for the locomotive engine drove only coach horses out of existence.
The utility of the electrically driven motor, and of the motor driven by petrol power, has been proved to be almost ubiquitous, and the rapidity with which the motor has already ousted horses in almost every direction is little short of phenomenal.
For the ultra-conservative little body of the community to maintain that this is not so because it hates to speak or think of automobiles comes near to being grotesque. We are confronted by hard facts that cannot be avoided, and whether we like them or not they nevertheless must force us to realise what is happening.