One of the pleaders for the horse is John Galsworthy, the English novelist, who gives in the London Westminster Gazette this moral aspect of the use of the horse in warfare, with the attendant obligation:
“Man has only a certain capacity for feeling, and that has been strained almost to breaking-point by human needs. But now that the wants of our wounded are being seen to with hundreds of motor ambulances and hospitals fully equipped, now that the situation is more in hand, we can surely turn a little to the companions of man. They, poor things, have no option in this business; they had no responsibility, however remote and indirect, for its inception; get no benefit out of it of any kind whatever; know none of the sustaining sentiments of heroism; feel no satisfaction in duty done. They do not even—as the prayer for them untruly says—‘offer their guileless lives for the well-being of their countries.’ They know nothing of countries; they do not offer themselves. Nothing so little pitiable as that. They are pressed into this service, which cuts them down before their time.”
PART PLAYED BY HORSE IN WAR
The horse still plays an important part in war, as every army service corps officer who has had anything to do with them well knows. The men love their mettlesome beasts, and much trouble and worry is pardoned and lost sight of in the comradeship which arises between man and beast. The great part played by motors and motor-driven vehicles in the present war has tended to draw attention away from the work of horses at the front, yet motor cavalry has not been evolved. While recognizing that for moving big guns along a well-made road motor power is very valuable, it is still equally true that once the roads are left it is found in practice of little use.
A remarkable feature of the European war, new, so far as we know, to military experience, has been the use upon an extensive scale of the heavy draught horse, whose stately pace admits of no hurrying, but whose great strength permits of his hauling very heavy weights where the nature of the road does not admit of the use of the motor.
AMERICAN STOCK DEPLETED
That the European war threatened to deplete the stock of horses even in the United States is emphasized by a careful computation which fixed at 185,023 the number of horses shipped to the warring nations from July 1, 1914, to March 31, 1915. The value of the animals, according to an inventory compiled from the manifests of ships transporting the horses is placed at $40,695,057. During that same period 26,976 mules, valued at $5,143,270, were sent abroad.
Buyers representing the British, French and Russian governments were reported as searching the country for more, and, according to estimates made by shippers, at least 120,000 animals were to be shipped to Europe during the summer of 1915.
Frank L. Neall, statistician, asserted that few persons realized the extent of the raid made by European buyers on the horse market. “Shipments,” he said, “have been made from New Orleans, Newport News, Portland, Boston and New York. During the month of March, 33,694 horses were shipped, representing a value of $8,088,974.”