The Failure of the Horse.
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Ever since August last we, as a nation, have been subjected ton succession of mental shocks. We have been forced, especially during the first period of strain, to revise many of our long-cherished opinions, hosts of our stereotyped impressions. And, of course, we are not yet at the end of this period of national regeneration.
Five months of this horrible war have already done much to stiffen our backs as well as to render us less susceptible to "nerves," and to the effects of rumours or actual disasters. We have arrived at a state of alert placidity.
For months now we have been forced suddenly to encounter sets of new circumstances which clearly indicate that preconceived ideas, which we have held ever since we were entitled to possess opinions at all, have been based on misconceptions. Indeed, we raise little protest here, at the beginning of the New Year, when we find that we are forced to some conclusion entirely foreign to that which we have held, shall we say, for the past decade.
This great war has been full of remarkable surprises, for the civilian at least, and it is by no means impossible that the military, naval and diplomatic experts have also been forced to execute volte-/aces of little less importance. Who could have foreseen the accepted discrediting of the modern fortress, the wonderful defensive brilliance of the French troops, hitherto only famed for dlan in attack ; or, again, the rapidity of mobilization which was effected by Russia, a country hitherto regarded as vast, and immobile in its vastness? What surprises have been sprung upon us as the result of the effective checkmating possibilities of modern field entrenchments. Then, again, the Navy has yielded its share of revelations. The submarine and the torpedo have proved more deadly than was even anticipated. The naval gun and the naval brigade have again demonstrated that marines and their equipment have wonderful possibilities for land .Operktions. There are a dozen other examples.
The 'change by which we in this industry stand most to gain is that revealed in the wholesale supersession of the horse. Modern ta:eties, at any rate on such a vast scale as those which govern the operations, of the great Continental armies, render cavalry more or less useless once the armies have come to grips. The aeroplane has effectively checkmated the Cavalryman in his role as "the eye and the ear of an army corps." The use of mounted troops as a screen to moving infantry divisions behind them is nowadays futile when aircraft. can effectively gather intelligence of all such developments with the minimum of delay.
The cavalry have lost much of their value as the result of this five months of war, and to-day the wastage of horses in the field is not serious. Excellent veterinary service assists this last result. Even the divisional horsed supply trains have, in many cases, been abolished and the horses transferred to cavalry reserves. The motor vehicle now earries its stores straight from railhead not to rendezvous only, but up to bivouac and to trench. There, again, has the horse been superseded. Field artillery still employs horses in large numbers, but it is divulging no secret when we hint that the heavier units, at any rate, -will shortly, in large measure, be hauled by other than animal horse-power.
In the early stages of the war, we, who perforce stay at home, became accustomed to the sight of long strings of unsuspecting-looking horses, always in good fettle, being led by troopers through the streets to concentration yards. The impressment of horses was mtire quickly carried out, on account of the familiarity of its procedure, than the similar operation in regard to motor vehicles. Every day we saw, often with tears near our eyes, these lines of doomed animals, each with its label tied to its muzzle, going to swell the huge reserves which it was anticipated it would be
D26 necessary to assemble. And what is the position today ? The remount department is having a comparatively easy time. Large numbers of horses have been, and indeed are, still being purchased in Canada and other parts of the New World, and thousands are being boarded out in the grazing lands of this country. It is no secret that hundreds of horses which were impressed in the first few weeks of the war have been sold back to civilians.
The course of events may at any moment take such a turn in either the eastern or western field of operations, that some use may again be found, even if only a limited one, for the employment ctf cavalry in large numbers. But this does not appear likely. The horse is no longer so important a factor in modern warfare as he has hitherto been from the earliest days when troops fought each other with the aid, amongst other things, of two-wheeled, horsedrawn chariots. The reputation of the horse as an intrinsic part of our equipment for war has indeed received already a very severe setback, which will never be recovered. And who that loves horse-flesh for its own sake can be other than happy at such a result ? May the day of final supersession be hastened. There is, however, another and more important aspect of the failure of the horse which the present situation has brought about, although indirectly. In France not a single lorry remains still to be impressed. In England we are steadily, although more slowly, approaching a. similar state of affairs. The result is that in both countries, and presumably, too, in those of our enemies, traders and business men of all kinds have been forced back to the use of horse transport in great quantities. As we have pointed out in the first part of this article, there is ample su,pply of horse-flesh at •the moment, although this will inevitably become scarcer, for there s wastage, although on nothing like the anticipated scale.
The owner of horsed transport has often in the past obstinately refused in many eases to entertain the suggestion that he can more effectively do such work with the use of motor vehicles. Once persuaded to try the experiment, he has, as often as not, reserved the retort that he is not so sure that he would not have done as well with the horses which he has superseded. But press him back -from sheer hard neces• sity to the older method, and he, like so many others, cannot hesitate to admit that he was wrong. The very fact that thousands of owners of motor lorries have thus been forced to realize how much it was they tolerated for so many years, after having once benefited, even although they would not acknowledge it, by the employment of motor vehicles, more effectively guarantees the ultimate failure of the horse as a sufficient alternative for more modern methods than could any other set of circumstances.
We, therefore, see good in the very inconvenience to which so many traders have been put by the impressment of their motor vehicles. That circumstance, in combination with the steady, although comparatively slow, wastage of horses which is taking place as the result of military operations, will press the commercial-motor vehicle ahead even more quickly and to a greater extent than the most sanguine of us •had hoped. There will be more " whole-hoggers." After the war, when factory deliveries can and will be resumed on an enlarged scale, we shall not encounter the man who, again owning efficient motor-transport equipment, will grumblingly complain that he is not at all sure that he could not have done as well by sticking to his horses. The failure of the horse to make good at. the pace which has been set by the motor vehicles which superseded him, and which have been temporarily removed from competition with him, is one of the . most effective stimulants which the industry has as yet had administered to it. A.W.W.