Yet, while the car and the aircraft have been foreseen by everybody who took the trouble to think, we have to deal in fact with present needs for troops transported by horses, for whom the word mobility means rapid and sustained haulage and carriage of weight. It is not the art of jumping hedges, because they do not exist in any probable terrain of war.
What then, are the factors for mobility?
The pleasure horse
BREEDING. In the throes of war for our existence, while every luxury must be dispensed with and every available man called to the colours, the British Government is solicitous to preserve hunting and racing. The authorities would preserve the trade of horse-breeding lest there be scarcity of army remounts. Let us breed pleasure-horses, they tell us, in order to secure a stock of working horses. So let us encourage yachting to give us ships for cargo. Let us breed guinea-pigs as material to coin guineas. "If a yard of soap will make a flannel waistcoat for a pig, how far is it from the dome of St. Paul's to Christmas Day?" So mental confusion verge upon madness.
The mettle of our pastures, and perfect artistry in selective breeding, have given to the British Isles the leadership of nations with almost every type of domestic livestock. But the high specialization of each type for a single function disables it for every other use. We have never bred a horse specialized for that single purpose of rapid and sustained marching, which is mobility. Our pleasure horses, excellent for sport, are expensive, delicate, unsound—lacking in endurance when we put them to serious work. As yeast is to dough, blood is to any livestock, and there must be thoroughbred blood in any working horse who has to face the terrors of modern war; but if there is any guidance in the origin and natural history of horses, the one type to give mobility to an army must be bred away from all green grasses and soft ground, on those arid plains which alone can make sound limbs, hard hoofs, strong teeth and high endurance. It would be most reasonable to breed from Duns.
Breeding the war horse
As the Royal North-West Mounted Police of Canada have double the mobility of any regular troops in the world, their system of getting horses may be worth considering. Certain ranches of Western Canada have imported British thoroughbred studs, and bred from range mares a strain known as the Broncho. Averaging fifteen hands two inches, and 1,025 pounds in weight, these gelded horses and mares are raised on range grass under range conditions, broken at the ranches and bought for the Mounted Police at contract rates.
Ranches in any arid lands of the Empire such as Southern Alberta, South Central British Columbia, Western South Africa, or Australia, would supply a stock for the army much sounder, and more enduring than any horses which can possibly be bred on soft ground or green grass.
Management
MANAGEMENT. Our analysis of the stable showed the closed shed as a forcing house for disease germs, and the metalled floor as preventing a horse from resting on his feet. To copy the natural conditions of healthy range life the building needs the dry floor which involves a roof, earth standings on which a horse can rest, and a wind screen to keep out bad weather. In practice this open earth-floored shed kills out the germs of disease, rests the horse, and so prevents or cures the maladies of the feet and legs which disable indoor stock. But, while the horse is fairly sound so soon as one adapts his home to the conditions required for his health; no indoor life trains either horses or horsemen for the mobility needed in campaigns.