The Dogs of War Map Activity 1914

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, July/August 2013In the autumn of 1914, it was still fashionable in Britain to make excruciatingly elaborate jokes about the Great War. Walter Emanuel, a columnist for the magazine Punch, wrote a satirical column about it which initiated the doggy theme exploited in this map. Johnson & Riddle, the lithographic printers behind many of the early London tube maps, created the images in a style familiar to British audiences for half a century, with a range of German dachshunds and French Poodles. This particular piece was sold as a poster.

The brave British sailor stands offshore, holding the strings of his dreadnoughts, while only the bulldog’s front paws are planted on the continent. It was a major delusion among British politicians in August 1914 that their country could do most of its fighting at sea. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, wrote to the wavering chancellor, Lloyd George, arguing: "the naval war will be cheap." The foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, told the House of Commons on August 3rd that, since Britain was a naval power, by entering the war "we shall suffer but little more than we shall suffer even if we stand aside." 

In the event, a British Expeditionary Force was dispatched to France, but this initially numbered just 52 infantry battalions, while Germany and France deployed over 1,000 apiece. British troop strength on the continent increased later, but in the early months the bulldog’s back legs remained firmly planted on English soil, which is where most of King George V’s subjects thought they belonged.

The allies pinned many military hopes upon the vaunted Russian steamroller which is being driven by Tsar Nicholas II. The tsar’s empire was thought capable of fielding at least 8 million soldiers. It never did so, for lack of arms and equipment.

This map does a military injustice to Germany, however, ignoring its 1914 conquests. Germany’s armies had overrun almost all Belgium and a quarter of France, and held most of that until 1918. Likewise on the Eastern Front, German victories had frustrated Russian hopes of seizing East Prussia. Tsar Nicholas II had always feared that fighting in this war would precipitate disaster for his own power, and so it proved in 1917 when he was overthrown by the Russian people. The steamroller never rolled.

Every nation grossly miscalculated the consequences of war. The proximate reality was that the Germans’ mistake was worst, because they lost. But the victors found little to celebrate. By the day the war finally ended, it is hard to imagine that a British audience would have found a map such as this one as funny.

Questions:

1. Next to each of the following types of dogs depicted, write the name of the country the artist had them represent. Bulldog Poodle Dachshund

2. What is the Bulldog doing? Why is only the Bulldog’s front paws planted on the European continent?

3. How does the artist commit an injustice to Germany in this map? Do you think a dachshund is an appropriate symbol for their military power?

4. Which country is represented by the Steamroller? What are three reasons it did not “roll” over Germany and Austria?

5. What country do you think the artist of this map is from? Why? What evidence specifically in the map leads you to this conclusion?

6. Why do you think that this elaborate joke would not have been “funny” after the war was over?