CAUSES OF WASTAGE. 59 



Chapter III. 

 CAUSES OF WASTAGE AND INEFFICIENCY. 



War pre-supposes that casualties relate chiefly to the effect of 

 gunfire. This is not so with animals. Though, as I will 

 presently show, a considerable number of actual battle casual- 

 ties occurred in France, the majority of casualties were from 

 other causes. It is the same in all theatres of war. Incapacity, 

 the result of hard work and insufficiency of food, together with 

 a long list of diseases of a communicable or specific nature, 

 usually go to form the Veterinary wastage of war. 



In my recital of them I shall have to quote a few statistics. 

 and some of them are sorry reading : but it is necessary to see 

 the black cloud to appreciate the silver lining, and precept must 

 be pointed by example, whether good or bad, if progress towards 

 the goal of efficiency is to be achieved. 



I will group remarks of this chapter under the following 

 headings : — 



Debility and Exhaustion : Accidental Injuries : 



Battle Casualties: Contagious and Specific Diseases : 



reserving a special chapter for diseases that by reason of the 

 classes of animals employed are more or less peculiar to India. 



Debility and Exhaustion. 



The history of every campaign unfortunately teems with the 

 impoverished and exhausted condition to which animals are at 

 times reduced. Much of it is inseparable from the hard work, 

 exposure and other issues of war, but it is a regrettable fact 

 that a 'good deal of it is avoidable, and it represents an 

 accompaniment of war that is discreditable, and is open on 

 occasion to storms of criticism as acts of cruelty. Poverty and 

 its accompanying exhaustion is the hall-mark or evidence of 

 indifferent supervision and care of animals, or a bad system in 

 respect to their management. It is always in inverse ratio to 

 the standard of animal management attained. There is no 

 getting away from this fact, and until this result is realised to 

 the full, this class of wastage will always figure very largely in 



