END OF THE TROOP HORSE.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8178, 3 May 1919, Page 4 (Supplement)

END OF THE TROOP HORSE.

SHOT IN PALESTINE. AVOIDANCE OF CRUEL SLAVERY. One of the minor tragedies of war ,'s described in a letter received by an Auckland resident from a New Zealand soldier in Palestine. lie writer says : “I was sent out with a party with 500 poor old horses, who, being unfit for furthe rservice, had to be destroyed, 300 having been shot the previous day. It seemed awfully sad to think that these poor old faithful creatures, after suffering from thirst, hunger, and fatigue, and carrying heavy loads for hundreds of miles, shoul dhave to end their days by being shot by the very people they had so faithfully served. Thank Gcd, they had not the intelligence to realise what seemed like man’s ingratitude ! Some of the poor old beggars had landed here with the Main Body, and if there is a Heaven for animals, they have earned their peace in it!

“After all, it was the most merciful end, for it is far better for them to he dead than to fall into the hands ' f some of these people, either here or in Egypt, who are the cruellest people L have ever seen with animals. Better dead than to lead a life of misery at the hands of some gharry driver in Cairo, to I;e thrashed, starved, and worked to death! But how nice it would have been to have been able to turn them all out on some boundless prairie to live cut the rest of their lives in peace and comfort, when one could say, with perfect truth, “ Well done, thou good and faithful servants.” O'f course, one has to harden one's heart to these sort of things in warfare, but I can tell you it made some of 11s rather miserable for some time.”

One of the most striking developments in industrial Britain during the war lias been the enormous development in electricity supply, and with it a corresponding development in electrical manufactures as relating to the industrial applications of electricity, whether for lighting, heating or power. Between 50 and 100 electricity stations might be cited in which ’the plant capacity lias been more than doubled during the past four years. The output of electrical energy has been increased to nearly the same extent. Unparalleled demands have been made upon manufacturers of lamps and lighting fittings, of motors and power auxiliaries, of electric furnaces and welding equipment, for munition purposes.