New Additions August 2011

1914

HARK ! / HARK ! / THE DOGS / DO BARK ! / WITH NOTE BY WALTER EMANUEL.

Map size : 71 x 49 cms (without letterpress). Sheet size : 76 x 56 cms.Traces of old folds. Originally folded down into paper covers, now lacking but traces of which are still visible on one of verso panels at upper left corner, with slight paper thinning in this area. Backed with fine tissue for extra strength and protection. Couple of short  clean tears in blank margins at sheet edges and two or three almost invisible pinholes at old fold junctures, otherwise fine example.

The Map of Europe receives a symbolic canine makeover, shortly following the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914.

The commentary by Walter Emanuel begins with the words, The Dogs of War are loose in Europe and a nice noise they are making!

In the map which accompanies Emanuel’s commentary, Germany is the pickelhauber-helmeted Dachshund, "mated for better or worse" to an Austrian Mongrel. Belgium is a game little Griffon, France a large Poodle, "a smart dandified fellow" and Britain, the ever-watchful Bulldog, sleeping with one eye open, and with a ferocious bite and a habit of never letting go, in this case, of he Dachshund’s nose. 

Other European countries are identified by figures which are equally amusing - a Spanish bullfighter; a smiling Dutchman; a knife-wielding Greek ready to stab his neighbours in the back; an Italian carabinieri with pistol in hand; a cold-footed Swiss mountaineer; a Russian bear at whose side a massive steamroller moves westward, the Tsar at its steering wheel; a kneeling Turk with French lapdog in tow; and Britain, be-straddled by the figure of a giant sailor, fully armed with rifle and ammunition belts, whose features closely resemble those of the First Sea Lord, Winston Churchill, who had been at the Admiralty since 1911. It was Churchill  and had personally supervised the rapid build-up and war preparedness of Britain's naval forces prior to 1914. Indeed from his hands flow strings to which are attached numerous Dreadnoughts & battleships, a clear reference to Britain’s by now impressive naval strength.

Walter Emmanuel [1869-1915] was a long-time contributor to Punch Magazine, and in the early years of the 20th Century had become more widely known as the author of a series of charming anthropomorphic dog books, illustrated by the famous artist Cecil Aldin. Emmanuel's dog books still remain immensely popular today as do Aldin's captivating illustrations. They included most notably A Dog Day [William Heinemann, London, 1902] and The Dogs of War(Wherein the hero- worshipper portrays the hero and incidentally gives an account of the greatest dogs’ club in the world) [Bradbury, Agnew & Co, London, 1906]. The reference to Emmanuel's earlier book The Dogs of War would not have been lost on the well-informed Edwardian readers of this cleverly constructed cartoon map. As far as we known the evident connection between Walter Emanuel's famous anthropomorphic dog books and his important contribution to this unusual 1914 anthropomorphic political cartoon map has until now never been clearly drawn or established.

A directly copied German edition of the map was published shortly afterwards in anglophobic riposte, probably in early 1915, with Emanuel's commentary translated and criitiqued in seemingly one of the earliest and most unusual examples of German cartographic counter-propaganda using the medium of such humorous cartoon maps. 

In all a fascinating and increasingly uncommon item.

R V Tooley Geographical Oddities, MCC 1, #85