THE WAR HORSE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVII, Issue 12850, 24 June 1902, Page 4

THE WAR HORSE.

There is no need to from Mr Chamberlain's announcement that'the War Office has no present intention of establishing remount depots in the colonies, that the Imperial Government is already in danger of forgetting one of the most painful lessons of the long, weary struggle in South Africa. It may have some better plan for ensuring an adequate supply of suitable horses for the Army. We hope, however, that the Minister in charge of the War Department will nob be content to rely upon the recommendations of the officers who so grossly misled him during the progress of the hostilities- They are respon- ' sible for the waste of millions of pounds and of hundreds of valuable lives z and ought to be for ever excluded from work for which they have shown themselves utterly incompetent. What the War Office should do is to gather up the experience of practical men who have been through at least some part of the campaign and who could speak with authority as to the character, value and treatment of the horses employed in the field. There are probably numbers of such men among the colonial troops who, could supply invaluable information on these points. Our own correspondent with

number of hints which ought to help the colonial authorities if they should ever be required to send l horses away for active service again, and several other observant New Zealanders have considerably increased our store of knowledge. One of these, writing to his relatives, without any expectation, of of his remarks getting into print, sums up the position in a'few striking sentences. ■ " The Stock Depart.ment," he says, "or whatever Department selected our mounts, loaded us up with a lot of clumsy, useless brutes. They fell down without any provocation at all, and knocked up with less than half a decent day's work. The Boer ponies are a hundred times better; kindly, active, tractable little things, worth twice as much as the soft, trotting-bred brutes we have brought over. And yet the British Army has destroyed thousands and thousands of them without,.ever thinking of making-use of them itself. The ignorance of those in authority is simply sickening." The'writer probably did not understand the necessity of cutting off the enemy's supplies, but his opinion of the Boer ponies is 'borne out by the fact- that nearly all the horses brought in by the surrenderors were reported to be in good condition. This suggests that before the War Office does anything towards establishing remount depots anywhere, it ought to make a radical change in the class of horses it employs. The bitter experience of the past two or three years shows that a long term of peace had! developed animals of quite the wrong type.