FEWER CADETS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 71, 25 March 1938, Page 12

FEWER CADETS

CAVALRY UNITS

Comparatively few cadets at the Royal Military College, Camberley, have elected to join the cavalry (writes a "Daily Telegraph" correspondent). j The Army Council decision to reduce I the number of officers' chargers is largely, if not wholly, responsible for the decline in the number of candidates for commissions in that branch of the Service. Artillery officers whose units have been mechanised have suffered the withdrawal of their chargers. The cavalry has remained unaffected so far, but the original decision to reduce the establishment of horses in defiance of the recommendations of the committee appointed to consider the cuestion still, stands. One of the arguments for retaining chargers is that the average subaltern in a cavalry regiment or the Royal Artillery joined because he knew that in addition to his pay he would receive his chargers, forage, stabling, and a groom. A senior cavalry officer (old me that the subaltern rightly regarded these as part of his emoluments. If they were curtailed or withdrawn he was entitled to some form of compensation. I My informant held the view that fathers who had served in the cavalry |or Royal Artillery would no longer encourage their sons to join the Army if they were denied facilities for hunting, polo, and racing.

The point generally made is that while officers appreciate the value of the machine in war, they do not think the motor vehicle affords them the exercise essential for the maintenance of physical fitness.

The argument is also advanced that in the French and German armies officers are given every 'encouragement to continue horse-riding exercises in the belief that in no other way can they keep fit in this age of mechanisation,