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OUR ARMY HORSES MUST BE BRED Cannot Be Ordered in a Hurry Breeding Under 5 Government Control Urged. "Preparedness," says the Chicago Tribune, "in-" volves- maintaining a permanent supply of good army horses. They cannot be ordered in a hurry. They must be bred for the purpose and syste- maticallv and under government oversight and control. This is in line with the suggestions of August Belmont and other prominent breeders. The editorial is as follows: "Cavalry has mainly vanished from modern warfare, lorries supplant horse drawn trucks, heavy guns go by rail, dispatch, riders use motorcycles, scouts use aeroplanes, ambulances use gasoline, and yet America has sent nearly 1,000,000 horses to the war zone during the last thirty-four months, and in addition more than a quarter of a million mules. That the United States should ltd applied to for horses is not remarkable r -we have- a fifth of the worlds 100.0Q0.000; only Russia lias more; but Americans keep asking, naturally enough, why mechanized warfare requires such quantities of horseflesh. Light artillery explains. Field guns are still drawn by horses and eacli gun much have at least six. Some have eight horses apiece. And -this is to an enormous extent a war -of light artillery. . "We have our own problem now. How to provide horses for the American expeditionary force. How to provide them in sufficient numbers and of the right quality. Before the war each of the allied -countries had about 3,000,000, but they had fifty good horses for ever good horse in America good, that is, according to army standards. Bush-Brown, the Ameriean sculptor of equestrian statues, has looked into the, matter, with commendable thorough-ness and concludes tliat a selective draft may be necessary. Take the best horses that are to he : found lie writes, they are none too good to save i the lives of our sons, who have leen commandeered to go to the front". But there is a further point. Preparedness uud America will go in for preparedness as a permanent thing after this war involves 1 maintaining a. permanent supply of good army horses. They cannot be ordered up in a hurry. They must be bred for the purpose, and systematically, and under government oversight and control."
