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OPPOSED TO HOSTILE LEGISLATION Remount Board Agreed to a Han Against Any Interference with Racing. WASHINGTON, 1, 0., December 15. The new army remount board, which has undertaken the task of providing the forces of national defense with horses of the proper sort, has established headquarters in Washington and begun functioning. Already this board, which is made up of a mixed military and civilian iersoiiuel, has distributed through the country, in districts suited to the quick production of half-bred horses of robust types, the fifty odd thoroughbred stallions, most of them gifts to the government of horsemen and persons interested in racing and thoroughMed production, that had previously liecn acquired by the war department through the remount, hoard that was called into lieing during the progress of the great war. The military memlers of the permanent remount board are Major General Williams G. Snow and Jesse MeL. Carter, Colonels F. S. Armstrong, John S. Fair, Bruce Palmer anil Geo. II. Cameron, Lieutenant Colonel John F. Tuulbee and Major Hay-den banning. Major "banning will not bo. classed as a military representative on tlie board long. When he leaves the service, which lie entered for the term of tlie war, he will become one of New Englands civilian representatives. The civilian members of the remount board are Major August Belmont, chairman of the Jockey Club of New York, and one of the foremost thoroughbred producers of the United States; Dr. John H. Mohler, Washington; Arthur R. Hnncock, proprietor of tlie Ellerslie Stnd of Virginia, and the Claiborne Stud of Kentucky,- and another great thoroughbred breeder, whose produce brought lnrge Minis at the Saratoga sales last summer, F. Ambrose Clark, New York; Algernon Daingerf ield, the assistant secretary of the Jockey Club; Major Robert E. Strawbridgc, Pennsylvania; Thomas Hitchcock. New York, and Captain Philip M. Walker. Virginia. Captain Walker, a retired officer of the regular service of the United States army, is a breeder of thoroughbreds in Clarke County, Virginia. Tlie military personnel of this board is not to be permanent. Instead of picking the men best fitted by knowledge and experience for the work of directing, in conjunction yith the civilian membership, jhe " production, "of horses for the -three great combat branches of the "military service cavalry, artillery and transport and giving them permanent billets, the War Department has intimated that it must, for fear of violating a century-old tradition, shift tlie military members of the board from time to time, so as to give other officers their opportunities. This sort of rotation is calculated to prove wasteful and ineffective, hut war departments the world over are sticklers for traditional routine, and there is no help for it. CIVILIAN MEMBERS ARE HORSEMEN. The situation as regards the work of the United States Army Remount Board may be saved by the permanent civilian membership. There can heno question of tlie .sound sense and practical knowledge of breeds of horres and of their general and specific usefulness of the civilian riiembers of tlie board. To the success of Major Belmont, whose Nursery Stnd has been represented on American tracks tUi year by Luctillite. a splendid type of the thoroughbred; by Man o War, the outstanding champion among the two-year-ojds, and by Mad Hatter, the winner of the Iitonia Championship Stakes and other races, and of Mr. Hancock reference has already been made. Major Hitchcock has won distinction these twenty-five voars as a developer of cross-country performers. Mr. Clark, like Mr. Hitchcock, has lieen associated with steeplechasing in the east, and he has in the course of the last two years rendered signal service and without compensation" to the army as a civilian member of the war-time remount board. Major Strawbridge and Major dimming have spent the better part of a quarter of a century developing horses of the so-called hunter type, which are the sort that have rendered the most efficient service to tlie armies of Franse and England in the world struggle for lilerty. Since tlie civilian membership. ,s to be permanent, it is inevitable that the influence of tlie civilian members will be powerful, if it is not controlling, in the shaping of the policy of the Remount Board. Today the Remount Board, as regards both its military and civilian elements, is a unit on the proposition that the association between effective national defense and the two types of horses that have not. succumbed to the overwhelming competition of the automobile and the motor truck, which Americans eall thoroughbreds the runner and the trotter is of sovereign importance. The board is agreed to a man that not only must there be no further interference through tlie agency of legislation hostile to horse racing, state or national, with the continuous production of runners and trotters, but that the government must find a means, as was suggested by the Bureau of Animal Industry as far back as 1911, of stimulating the production of running and trotting types.
