CHAPTER ir 



The Raw Material 



WE shall win the war. Of course. It may be sooner or later ; but 

 though, as the Prime Minister once suggested, the road may be rough 

 and stony, the vista of peace be still obscured by thick mists, and the cHmb 

 to victory tortuous and anxious, we shall win. And when that greatest 

 day in history comes, and praise and honours and medals are being lavished 

 among the armies of the victorious nations, will a thought be spared, one 

 wonders, for the horse and the mule in their tens and hundreds of thousands 

 that have contributed to the victory ? Assuredly the vast and wonderful 

 burden they have borne will touch' the horse and animal lover. He will 

 reahze how indispensable they have been to victory, how vital to the Allies' 

 successful prosecution of the war. But the general pubhc in the land of the 

 pre-eminent thoroughbred may never quite realize, because they have never 

 understood, the importance of the horse for war purposes. "U'hen they begin 

 to reaUze how the horse and the mule have been as essential in their way to 

 defeating the Huns as " shells, shells, and more shells," they will begin to 

 understand something of the debt they owe. 



They will understand why in ^^ears gone by the horse-breeding societies 

 of the United Kingdom begged the State to aid the breeding of horses for the 

 Army. So, too, it will be accepted as evidence of Britain's unreadiness for 

 the World War, if such evidence be necessary, that the country's resources 

 for horsing the Expeditionary Forces, apart from the original Expeditionary 

 Force of " contemptibles," were hopelessly and ridiculously inadequate. 

 How, therefore, was the tremendous deficiency made good ? Whence did the 

 millions of horses and mules come ? And what has been the manner of their 

 coming and going to and from the United Kingdom ? My object is to convey 

 some idea to the reader of how the problem of the nation's horse supply for 

 the armies was solved ; to tell something of the conquest by the imported 

 horse and mule from North America ; and why it is that of all the breeds and 

 cross-breeds of horses in the world the one from the United States and Canada 

 has proved paramount and incomparably the best. 



What we should have done had not North America's vast contribution 

 to the world's war horse supply been a real fact, goodness knows. It is an 

 uncomfortable reflection which, fortunately, need not be dwelt on. What 

 we do know is that the amazing resources were known to exist— they were 

 known in the South African \\'ar— and that in the early days of this war 



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