ii6 THE HORSE AND THE WAR 



him ? He can no longer carry a man because his poor old forelegs have " gone, " 

 and there is not enough of him to make a draught horse. And yet any old 

 job in the shafts must mark his rapid descent in the equine social scale. 

 Few want to buy the cast mule. The average Englishman does not understand 

 the mule ; neither does he seem to wish for any better appreciation of the 

 gallant old slave. Certainly it is a mystery to one who has seen him do so 

 splendidly in this war and can gladly concede the undoubted virtues he 

 possesses. Their small feet are not adapted to work on heavy land, but 

 that may be more apparent than real. The real test is how the mule acquits 

 himself, and there seem to be no conditions to which he cannot adapt himself. 

 Still, as' I have said, no one wants to pay much for the cast mule. It may be 

 because there is practically no chance of curing a mule suffering from pro- 

 nounced bone lameness, or that one cast for vice is regarded as being altogether 

 past praying for as a possible convert to better and less heathen-like ways. 



^luch of the mule's so-called vice is merely its way of demonstrating fear 

 and suspicion rather than an aggressive desire to open an ugly offensive with- 

 out the slightest provocation. The miscellaneous collection of British trades- 

 men, who may have dealt in rare books or had practised as undertakers or 

 greengrocers, and who seemed to be posted to Remount Depots more by design 

 than accident, were not ideally suited to winning the confidence of the appre- 

 hensive and suspicious mule. I am reminded in this connection of a good 

 story told in the course of a lecture on the management of horses in the war 

 by ^lajor C. D. Miller, a most efficient and successful Remount officer, to the 

 Cavalry School in France. He was referring to the class of men remaining for 

 service in the Remount Depots after the transfer from time to time of all men 

 placed in category " A," and he went on to say: " When censoring letters 

 one day I came across one written by one of my men to his girl at home. 

 In civil life he had been a traveller — in piece goods or ladies' lingerie, or some- 

 thing equally ' horsey.' He told her that he was enchanted with every- 

 thing in Remounts except the horses and mules. The horse he considered a 

 very dangerous animal at both ends and damnably uncomfortable in the middle. 

 The mule, he found, generally took great pains to make friends with you so 

 as to make quite sure of being able to kick you on exactly the right spot when 

 the opportunity should arise. When I saw the writer of the letter riding 

 I knew he had told his girl the truth, and when I saw him in the stable I 

 longed to be a mule ! " 



To return to the disposal of cast Army horses, the reader will understand 

 that a local auctioneer is requested to hold a sale, which is duly ad\-ertised 

 so that prospective buyers may attend on the day. x\s a preliminary to their 

 leave-taking of the Army each " caster " is branded on the near slioulder 

 with a " C " indicating that he has absolutely and finally been given his 

 re-entry into civil life. Then the rather doleful procession of a score or so, 

 a man riding one and leading another, sets off in charge of an officer, who is 

 carrying with him to the place of sale his authority and all other documents. 

 For, of course, you never do anything in the Army without the assistance of 

 many documents ! It follows that the party is one to arrest the attention of 

 the passer-by, who may not realize that the animals are the outcasts of the 



