52 WASTAGE OF ANIMALS IN WAR. 



the more reason therefore that the wants of the latter should 

 receive the utmost consideration. 



No animal can perform hard work, and the severest of all 

 work which war necessitates, without the most particular 

 attention is paid to his food and feeding in all its details of 

 quantity, quality, periods and appliances. The records of 

 Debility and Exhaustion, which I will presently show, bring 

 home to us most forcibly the necessity that the most profound 

 care should be given to the provision of food for our animals 

 and its administration to them. Though there are contributory 

 and concomitant causes of Exhaustion and Debility, such as 

 lack of or insufficiency of water, climatic influences, excessive 

 work or undue exertion, the chief factor is insufficiency of food.. 

 Starvation is an ugly word to read in reports. 



Food supply in war, and its transport, is a difficult proposition. 

 The pound of meat and pound of bread or biscuit for the man 

 is an easier matter than the ten or twelve pounds of grain and 

 ten pounds of forage for the horse ; and these latter bulky 

 amounts are opposed to successful ventures of offensive warfare. 

 It is not always possible to tap the resources of a country or 

 area through which troops operate. There comes a time when 

 even that is exhausted, and everything has to be sent up from 

 the Base or from the Lines of Communication Depots. Long 

 Lines of Communication by road — such as we have experienced 

 in India, in Somaliland, in the Sudan — represent a tough 

 problem to the Military Authorities, much more so than in 

 countries well endowed with railways. Hence it is that animals, 

 may suffer by failure of supply. 



War is always costly in food supply. The pre-war cost of a 

 daily horse ration in the Army was from 1/3 to 1/6. In the last 

 year of the war in France it was 5/2, and at the very end, if my 

 memory serves me right, it either reached or was likely to reach 

 T- per ration. Substitution diets and equivalents had constantly 

 to be thought of and adopted. The foresight shewn, and the 

 manner in which the supply of foodstuffs to our animals was 

 effected during the late World's War, was nothing short of 

 wonderful. 



I mention the above to point the necessity for economy, which 

 has a great bearing on wastage of animal life— Waste not, want. 



