END OF THE TROOP HORSE.

Taihape Daily Times, 10 April 1919, Page 5

END OF THE TROOP HORSE.

SHOT IN PALESTINE.

AVOIDANCE Cm- CRUEL SLAVERY.

One of the minor tragedies of war is described in a leter received" by an Auckland resident from a New Zealand soldier in Palestiue. The

writer says: "I was sent out with a party with 500 poor old horses, who, being unfit for further service, had to be destroyed, 300 having been shot the previous day_ It seemed awfully sad to think that these poor old faithful creatures after suffering from thirst, hunger, and fatigue, and carrying heavy loads for hundreds of miles, should have to end their days by being shot down by the-very people they had so faithfully served. Thank God, they had not the intelligence to realise what seemed like man's ingratitude! Some of the poor old beggars had landed here with the iluiU Body, -and if there is a Heaven for animals, they have earned their peace in it!

"After all, it was the most merciful end, for it is far better for tiicm to be dead than to fall into the hands of some of these people, efffier here or in Egypt, who are the cruellest people I have ever seen with animals. Better dead than to lead a life of misery at the hands of some gharry driver in Cairo, to be thrashed, starved, and worked to death! But how nice it. would have been to have been able to turn them all out on some boundless priarie to live out the rest of their lives in peace and comfort", when one could say, with perfect truth, "Well done, thou good and faithful servants." Of course, one has to harden one's heart to these sorts of "things in warfare, but I can tel! you, it made some of us rather miserable for some time."