Stronger than fiction

I think it was a Frenchman — it usually is — who observed that the English love their animals more than their children. At first glance, General Jack Seely’s Warrior: The Amazing Story of a Real War Horse — originally published as My Horse Warrior in 1934 — is striking proof of this. In an entire book devoted to the exploits of his horse, the author’s final mention of his son Frank is stunning in its brevity:

We had a last gallop together along the sands, Warrior and [Frank’s charger] Akbar racing each other; then I drove him in a motor-car to rejoin his regiment .… He asked me to take care of Akbar, and I replied that Warrior would take care of that. He was killed not long afterwards while leading his company.

I don’t believe that the General — Lord Mottistone as he became, Minister for War as he had been — was quite as inhumane as this might indicate. In fact, I think there is a vast well of emotion under those words which, when read properly, can bring a choke to the throat. However, what is so very English is his feeling that it is fine to express emotion about animals, but to do so about our fellow men is much more questionable. To say that this is psychologically and ethically limiting is to understate. Witness its reductio ad absurdum: the self-serving, tasteless mawkishness of the ‘Animals in War’ memorial. Who among the living does it move? Certainly not the animals. And who among the dead would it have comforted? Being remembered is no consolation to those with no conception of time.

However, as I have already said, Seely’s version of it, the old-fashioned version, has more to it than this.