54 British War Dogs 



required, at all events for our country, where no prepara- 

 tions were being made in peace-time in this branch. 



When the thunderbolt of war fell in this country, the first 

 shock seemed to bring to the surface, among other things, 

 the fact that we had been harbouring quantities of bitterly 

 hostile, treacherous aliens, about whom only one thing was 

 certain, which was that we could not trust them in any 

 direction whatever. Our whole nation began to be im- 

 mensely on the alert within a few days, and I saw at once 

 that a properly organized system of sentinels and guard 

 dogs all over the country would be of enormous service 

 in guarding bridgeheads, magazines, factories, and valuable 

 property of all kinds. I judged from my experience of 

 years in the same sort of work for civilians how immensely 

 valuable an adaptation of the same idea would be for the 

 Army. I very urgently represented this, and offered to 

 present my whole kennel of trained dogs that experiments 

 might immediately be made. My ideas were, however, not 

 in any way understood at the time, and I could make no 

 headway. 



When my offer of sentry dogs was rejected in the first 

 days of the war, I turned to another branch of work in which 

 I had frequently experimented in previous years — tracing 

 the wounded on the battlefield. These dogs were, of course, 

 used with ambulance sections. At this period a war of 

 movement was the only method conceived, and also we in 

 this country were convinced of the inviolability of the 

 sacred symbol of the Red Cross, whether on man or beast, 

 hospital or ship. Had these conditions obtained in this 

 war, ambulance dogs would have been of great assistance. 

 As it was, however, when the French army hurriedly sent 

 some of their ambulance dogs with their keepers to the 

 front in the earliest feverish days, the first thing that hap- 



