MILITAEY HYGIENE 935 



of the soldier, it is seen in civil life where nothing but 

 payment by results insures the animal being looked after ; 

 and for this indifference, dislike, and sometimes actual 

 hatred of men for horses, there is only one creature to 

 blame, and that is the animal itself. 



The equine appreciates but is utterly incapable of recipro- 

 cating kindness, care, and attention ; affection has no centre 

 in his cerebral organization, he has no love for man, and 

 only occasionally for his own species. He is slavishly 

 obedient, and is in consequence abused ; most forgiving, 

 cheerfully forgetting an act of violence in the pleasures 

 of the nosebag, and is therefore imposed upon. If he paid 

 back every unwarrantable attack by immediate retaliation, 

 men would no longer kick their horses in the belly for 

 trivial faults. 



Yet the same men who hate the slave that willingly 

 carries them until it drops, will shower affection on a dog. 

 No dog will ever leave soldiers of its own free-will, and no 

 dog that joins a regiment will starve, be rations ever so 

 short. The man who will not take the trouble to lead his 

 horse 100 yards to water, or to feed him unless supervised, 

 will share his rations with a dog ; yet from a practical 

 point of view the one is nothing to him and the other 

 everything. 



The only explanation of this is that the dog is full of 

 sense and affection, the horse possesses neither, and there 

 are few people who can show liking for an animal when 

 it is not reciprocated. 



As a rule, neither in military nor civil life can we depend 

 upon men looking after horses as the result of a friendship 

 established between the two, though we are perfectly aware 

 there are exceptions. Not even a man's care for his own 

 safety will cause him to think of his horse ; apart from 

 the absence of sentiment, this is due to lack of foresight 

 and improvidence, the latter being the most universal 

 feature in everything pertaining to the poorer classes. 



Going back to the main point, the care of horses in war, 

 we have stated that much of the neglect is due to a want of 



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