MOBILITY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7294, 6 January 1902, Page 1

MOBILITY.

• ; > . <» • Lieutenant-Colonel Maude, late of the Royal Engineers, has been writing to a London contemporary on the subject; of the "Want of Mobility in the Boer War." The article is in defence of the Government for its failure to provide ar± adequate eupply of mounted men for South Africa, the fault being, he avers, not with the Government, but owing to the existing condition, of tilings in England. His contention is that the authorities did. the oest they could under the circumstances, and that it was an impossibility for them to secure the number of mounted men iequired. He points out that in former days, before the advent of railways^ — which is taking us rather far back — riding men were comparatively common, "because the real yeomtn of tne country were often in the saddle from sunrise to sunset, and the majority of hunting men actually lived on their estates and kept the same stud of hunters together year after year. Consequently, the standard of equitation from a military point of view was far hignerthan nowadays, as a reference to the old 1 hunting prints will suffice to show." Now, however, "in proportion as roads or railway facilities have increased, the yeoman drives or goes by train to his market, and the hunting man ' rails ' his horses to the meet. . . . and it is a fair statement of facts to say that of men in England of suitable age for the rank-and-file of the Yeomanry, or for subaltern officers, not one in a hundred has ever ridden a properly broken horse, or knows what the animal should feel like under Mm." All this; says a, London writer, is nothing new, and little to the purpose. It has long been known, but it was also known before the wax with the Boers, which was inevitable, broke out, that the Boer army consisted almost entirely of mounted men, provided with suitable mounts, and with even a double supply of them, and that unless our mobility was at least made equal to theirs the difficulty of subduing them would become, as events have proved, an enormous undertaking. This fact was never realised by the authorities. If there were " not sufficient mounted men ready-made forthcoming, they should have at once proceeded to make them. It is necessary once more, in face of such an article as that of Lieu-tenant-Colonel Maude's, to remember the notorious message, "Dismounted men preferred." The want of grasp of the subject, the want of foresight, the amateur, happy-go-lucky methods of the authorities, cannot be palliated by the plea put forward •that, owing to bicycles and railways, and improvements in roads, the supply of mounted men could nob be forthcoming. How many of the men in our cavalry regiments have been astride a horse before enlisting? Very few, indeed; yet it does not take very long to make them into good riders. Directly the war broke out every effort should have been made, not only to obtain an adequate supply of horseflesh (we have reverted to that subject only too often), bub to commence the training of mounted men. Had this been done, things would have gone very differently. We must take exception to., another remark of the writer. He talks about young officers no longer joining "with that instinctive knowledge of horses, and all Mat belongs to them, which formerly every boy picked up on a large estate." " We have seen this curious ca.teh phrase of "instinctive knowledge of the horse repeated by several writers. What in the name of common-sense does it mean? One might as well have an instinctive knowledge of rowing or boxing, or of anything else which requires "-a mm?. There is no doubt that the man who joins a mounted corps with even a very limited knowledge c.f horses, has an immense advantage over the man who has not, but we have never yet come across that ex-' traordinaxy person who could sit a without any previous instruction by " takt ing thought unto himself." The remark of the. writer tlhat Englishmen do net get

the mo?t out- of their horses may be accepted without question. Some .one — an observant foreigner — has raid that "we talk more about horse-flesh, and know less about it, than a»ny one else," which is a sorry fact from the point- of view of studying the capabilities and staying power of the animal, and giving proper attention to such an important military detail. All -test competitions to encourage the study of the «ndurance •■~ftl horses under severe- conditions have wi^/' coimpletely killed out," to use Colonfe3^Hsjude's sarcastic phrase, "by the outcry^fliumanitarians and the backwardness of our racing element to enter for anything out of which no money- could be made."