War Horse by Michael Morpurgo

Michael Morpurgo's War Horse is a short novel written for children aged 8-13. It is presented as the autobiography of a horse called Joey, very much along the lines of Anna Sewell's ground-breaking Black Beauty, the first novel ever written as an animal's autobiography.
For me, it was inevitable that comparison of the two novels would spring to mind.
They are similar in that Black Beauty showed man's kindness to, sympathy for, understanding of and cruelty to horses and War Horse shows the same relationships between men and horses. It has less cruelty but does show similar kinds of suffering.
However, there are several major differences between the two novels.
1 Themes
Sewell's stated theme was "There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to other animals as well as humans, it is all a sham." She wanted to improve the way working horses were treated. A secondary theme was the hardship caused to horse-drawn cab drivers by various unjust regulations.
On the other hand, Morpurgo's avowed theme is that of war poet Wilfred Owen: "the pity of war." Morpurgo shows the pointlessness and wastefulness of horses and men suffering and dying during war. He shows horses running into barbed wire in a cavalry charge; pulling guns, ambulance carts and carts full of wounded horses; horses as prisoners of war; horses and men dying; and how British Army horses were sold to French butchers at the end of the war.
2 Impact
Although it became a children's classic, Black Beauty was not written for children so Sewell pulled no punches in portraying cruelty and suffering.
War Horse does not fill me with the same graphic horror. Morpurgo describes war far more gently than Sewell describes human cruelty. There are too many kind, generous, gentle people and not enough selfish, greedy, vicious ones in his novel to make it ring true. His war brings out the best in most characters whereas, in reality, war brings out the worst in many people.
Morpurgo seems to be keeping things light because the book is aimed at children and he doesn't want to scare them too much. In consequence, I feel that his message loses impact.
3 Moral ground
Sewell was deeply religious and overtly relates her concern for animal welfare to Christian behaviour. Morpurgo does not identify the moral ground, religious or humanist, behind his anti-war ideology and it is not even clear if the book contains a pacifist message or not.
4 Setting
Black Beauty is set in the time it was published, the late 19th century. The events Sewell described were things that were happening there and then so of immediate relevance to her readers.
War Horse is set in World War I. The book was first published in 1982 so the events it describes were already a long way back in the past. Even World War II was too far back for anyone under 40 to remember.
Wilfred Owen's poems were powerful because he fought and died in the war he wrote about and because being anti-war then was so totally politically incorrect. To be anti-war in 1982 was politically correct. Even CND was regarded as respectable by then. I think it would have been better to set the novel in a more recent war, such as Vietnam because when the book was written, animals were still being used for warfare and still dumped once their usefulness was considered over. For example, of the 5,000 dogs used in Vietnam, 4,850 were left behind when the US army pulled out.
5 Influence
Black Beauty caused a groundswell of opinion in favour of better animal welfare, some reforms in the way working horses were treated and changes in the regulations for horse-drawn cabs.
I don't know what influence War Horse has had. Probably not much because, although when the book was written we already had organisations such as the RSPCA, 27 years after the book's publication, we still mistreat animals that have served us in war.
For example, the former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone not so long ago advocated culling pigeons, calling them "flying rats" and I have heard that description of them from Londoners, who have chosen to forget that carrier pigeons saved millions of lives during both World Wars and that pigeons are still being used in current wars, to detect dangerous chemicals before they kill soldiers. Dogs are still used to detect landmines, dolphins are used in the Gulf to detect mines and sea lions to detect enemy frogmen. Horses are used in the war in Afghanistan, over terrain too tough for trucks.
At Porton Down near Salisbury, animals are used in chemical and biological warfare experiments. According to Animal Aid's website: "Sheep, goats, mice, rats, guinea pigs, monkeys, dogs and cats are currently used to test the killing power of biological and chemical weapons and the effectiveness of their antidotes. They have also been subjected to blast attacks and small arms fire. Pigs have been left with massive pendulous blisters after mustard gas experiments. Guinea pigs are driven to uncontrollable defecation and convulsions after being exposed to the poisonous gas soman."
It seems this book has not had much influence on man's inhumanity to animals and has not decreased the use of animals in wars and warfare research.
The play
I haven't seen the staged version of War Horse but have seen photos of the horses, which look impressive. I would imagine it has much greater impact as a play: it could be like Stanley Spencer's Travoys Arriving with the Wounded at a Dressing Station. Also, it can hit home harder on the cruelty and violence because it won't be aimed specifically at children.

An interesting read: thank you, Peter, for suggesting it. I hope others will add their reactions to this discussion.
NB: If you can't find the book, it's available in the children's section of public libraries, along with the numerous other books by Michael Morpurgo, who is a very prolific author.