Let it not be supposed for a moment that in urging the merits of small
horses the writer seeks to asperse the value of heavy cavalry. Weight in
men and size in horses are indispensable for such work as our heavy
cavalry are called upon to perform; even the civilian mind can
appreciate the mysteries of tactics so far as to recognise that a charge
of heavy cavalry can effect infinitely greater results upon an enemy
than men mounted on ponies of fourteen hands or fourteen hands two
inches.
Authorities on military affairs seem agreed that the great improvements
made in small arms of precision since the Crimean War have done much to
impair the former value of heavy cavalry for direct attack; it needs no
trained intelligence to recognise that cavalry advancing in close rank
might well be shot down to a man in attempting to charge a foe, not
necessarily under cover, over a thousand yards of fairly open ground on
which such a manoeuvre is possible to cavalry. For artillery and
transport, however, we shall always need powerful horses, and the
draught power required is only to be obtained with height.
When it was made evident that very much larger numbers of mounted
infantry were required for the South African campaign than had been
anticipated, the remount agents were instructed to purchase cobs, and to
obtain these in quantity it was necessary to go to foreign countries,
the United States, Argentina, and Hungary, where they could be procured.
Had the demand been made for ponies, a very large proportion of our
Army's need could have been bought cheaply and quickly in this country.
For in the ponies of Exmoor, Wales, the New Forest and other districts,
we possess large numbers of animals whose small size bears no relation
to their weight carrying power, and whose mode of life is the best
possible preparation for "roughing it" in South Africa. Very different
is the case with the animals shipped from England.
For generations, now, horses for the saddle and lighter draught work
have been very largely bred less as necessaries than luxuries; the
conditions of their lives are artificial in a high degree, and the
constitution which could formerly withstand exposure, hard and
continuous work and scanty feed, has been softened by pampering. To take
such horses out of their stables where the temperature is regulated,
where they are warmly clothed and regularly fed, and despatch them to
endure the hardships of campaigning in countries where hay and oats are
unknown or unprocurable, and the forage obtainable is unsuited to
English chargers--in short, to most severely tax their powers under a
set of conditions entirely opposed to those to which they are
accustomed--is to invite heavy mortality.
The sacrifice of useful qualities to the "god of inches" is deplored
only in so far as it applies to horses for mounted infantry and light
cavalry. The utility of large and powerful horses is not, and never has
been, questioned. In point of fact it is their value for the work in
which they are employed that has done something to blind us to the very
real value--for special tasks--of ponies: and if the foregoing pages do
anything to prove that there is in modern warfare a place of the highest
importance which can only be filled by the small horse of 14.2 or
thereabouts, their object has been fulfilled.