WASTE OF HORSES.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 242, 16 November 1914, Page 8

WASTE OF HORSES.

ONE OF THE LESSONS OF THE WAR.

Among the lessons of the great war which -has now been raging for two months one worthy of note is the uselessness of such organisations as the so-called Purple Cross Society, which aims at doing in times of war for horses, mules, and even for dogs, what the Red Cross Society does for human beings. The Purple Cross Society claims to have come into existence some time ago under the auspices of the Eoyal Society, and is only one of a number of similar undertakings which cropped up during the last few weeks, many of them of a bogus character, and . devised merely for the purpose of swindling people who are fond of horses and dogs. Object an Excellent One.

; The object of the Purple Cross So- ! ciety is an excellent one, and formed a subject of discussion at the eighth annual Peace Congress, held in London in May, 1912, when at the instance of the Humanitarian League of England a resolution passed to the effect that "the merciful provisions of the Geneva Convention at present extend only to \ human combatants, and the Red Cross affords no protection to those who would visit the battlefields to relieve or put an end to the sufferings of wounded horses and other animals employed in warfare," and that "the British Government be therefore respectfully requested to invite the other Powers to widen the terms of the Geneva Convenvention so as to protect the veterinary surgeon, the'horse ambulance, and such Voluntary aid societies as may be duly recognised and authorised by the Governments." The fact of the matter is that everything that can be done to relieve the sufferings of horses in war time is accomplished by the riders and drivers of the horses and by the veterinary surgeons. Horses Indispensable in War. The success of an army in war depends to a great extent upon its mobility. This being the case, it naturally follows that not only the veterinary surgeons, but all the other officers and men of the various mounted corps now in the field, give all the attention in their power to the care of the horses, attending to their injuries, if curable, and putting them out of their sufferings if the cases are hopeless. Despite the care of officers and men, and, above all, the unremitting and devoted attention of the vets, the wastage of horses in times of war is something frightful. According to the official reports made to Parliament at Westminster, in the form of Blue Books, over 400,000 horses lost their lives in one way or another during the, Boer War. Equine Eace in Peril.

The shortage of horses is already being felt to a very serious degree by the armies of the various belligerents in Europe, particularly in Germany, among whose horses in France an alarming epidemic of glanders is said to have broken out, and the Kaiser's Government has its-' agents busily at work abroad, buying up all the horses that they can obtain. It is on the cards even that the shortage of horses may contribute to bring about an earlier* termination of hostilities than would otherwise be the case, since it would be impossible to continue the operations in the field if there were no horses for the cavalry and no horses to drag the guns, ammunition waggons, etc., over broken ground and fields that are impracticable to automobiles.