86 PINK AND SCARLET 



The moral is therefore — Be often with your 

 horse, talk to him, make much of him. Get to 

 know his character and expression, and, from these, 

 the state of his health. Train him to obedience, 

 such obedience that with the soldier is called dis- 

 cipline, i. e. the long-continued habit of obedience 

 by which the very muscles of the soldier obey the 

 word of command. The ordinary horse cannot be 

 expected to obey the zvord of command like a man, 

 but he can be made to obey the tone of it and the 

 pressure of the legs which accompany it, and these 

 he can be taught to take as orders, in the same way 

 as Prince Kraft zu Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen says 

 that the soldier takes his orders — " Each soldier 

 takes it for granted that any such orders will be the 

 best. Such is the order the magic word."^ 



Taught thus — " disciplined " in fact — the horse 

 will not fail you when, with encouraging voice and 

 steady pressure of the legs, you " send him at " 

 some more than usually forbidding-looking fence, 

 any more than your men, if treated in the same 

 way and as well disciplined, will fail you when with 

 a cheery " Come along, lads!" you spring out and 

 lead them forward in the face of an unusually heavy 

 fire. 



Men are like horses in more ways than this, and 

 like them have tender mouths, therefore, " hands," 

 tact, temper, justice, confidence in them, boldness, 

 judgment, and self-reliance are required to lead 



^ Letters on Infantry^ by Prince Kraft zu Hohenlohe-Ingel- 

 finaren. 



