WAR DOGS.
THE December number of the Journal of the Royal United Service Institution contains a report of a lecture on the "Employment of War Dogs," delivered at the Institution by Major C. H. Richardson, which will be read with curiosity by all who follow the development of methods of modern warfare. Major Richardson's purpose is to point out what has actually been accomplished by the use of dogs in a campaign, and also to make suggestions as to the further possibilities of dogs attached to armies, and it is clear, from the lecture and the debate which followed it, that -we are only at the beginning of a movement which is likely to be widely developed. Major Richardson, of course, has had a long experience of dogs of different kinds. His bloodhounds have often been used in attempts to track down criminals who have escaped without leaving traces. For purposes of war, however, he has selected Airedales as the most suitable breed, and be divides the duties, to which he considers these dogs better than others can be trained, into three sections. First, they can be employed as scouts or sentries; next, as aids to the ambulance in looking for the wounded ; and thirdly, as messengers and carriers of ammunition. Dogs have already been tested in the performance of some of these duties in actual warfare—a fact which seems to have been familiar to foreign war officers for a longer period than to our own. France, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Russia, and Bulgaria all employ dogs for various military purposes : we in England, who probably pay more attention to dogs than any other people in the world, have hitherto neglected a curiously obvious point of utility.
A dog in some ways is naturally a better sentry than a man. His hearing is far more acute ; he has a larger ear tympanum, his bead is nearer the ground, and it has been proved by experiment that he can hear sounds from two to four hundred
yards further than a man, which means, of course, that he can give warning so many minutes earlier. Besides his power of hearing he possesses a faculty which civilized human beings have almost entirely lost, the power of scent. A dog can wind a man where his presence would otherwise be entirely undetected, and for that reason dogs are particularly valuable in collecting the wounded after an engagement, when it may easily happen that men badly hurt and unable to cry out would be passed over by the ambulance. To show from experience how easily this may happen, Major Richardson quotes Czernicki, the Medical Inspector of the French Army in the war with Prussia, who wrote of his ambulance work on August 19th, 1870, that he "found in searching the battle- field of Rezonville, Gravelotte, two of the Lepasset Mixed Brigade who had fallen wounded on August 16th, that is three days previously—hidden at about a distance of three hundred metres from each other in some excavations at the edge of the wood in the Gone ravine. They had not seen a living person from the moment they fell, though the field had been overrun by the belligerents and searched by ambulance men." The same thing happened in the Russo-Japanese war. In a modern campaign, indeed, the collection of the wounded is a far more difficult business than it used to be. Actions take place over many miles of front, and may last for days together, so that it is only possible to get in the wounded under cover of night. In the Manchurian campaign the few dogs which were presented to the Russian Red Cross from Germany and England were of the greatest possible service. Count Persidsky, of Count Keller's staff, wrote that "in finding the missing and wounded, with which the millet fields are strewn, nothing succeeded like our pack of seven dogs. The English ones are especially intelligent. In our last engagement twenty-three men were found in unsuspected places." But in the Russo.Japanese war dogs were used not so much for ambulance as for sentries. The whole length of the trans-Siberian railway was guarded by dogs, and it is a remarkable fact that the railway was never cut. In other modern campaigns dogs have been equally useful. Major Wilson had two dogs with him on the Abor expedition last 'winter, and found that they were of the greatest assistance to his Ghurka scouts. "My dogs," he wrote to Major Richardson, from whom Mrs. Wilson had bought the dogs for her husband, "never once failed to give notice of an enemy on the path, with the result that the advance guard or main body were never atubuscaded." Even more recently, the Italians in Africa employed dogs both for tracking out Arabs hidden in the oasis, and as aids to the guards over the wire entanglements and the outposts set by night in advance of the trenches. The dogs used were those which belong to the Customs House officers, who keep them for prevent- ing smuggling on the Austrian frontier. They are of what is known as the Ristone or Spinone breed; they have "a good deal of cross in them," and are described by Major Richardson as "of medium size, of black or brown colour, and with silky hair, and are very intelligent and have excellent noses." In at least one engagement, or rather before it, they proved themselves extremely valuable as sentries. On the evening of February 11th, the Turks under cover of darkness advanced in two columns against the Italian position at Derna. "The whole of the country," we read in a report of the engagement, "is difficult in the extreme, without roads, and crossed by a series of tracks for the most part known to the natives only, running on the edges of precipices." The attacking force "took every advantage of the sinuosities of the ground, and practically crawled undisturbed to the Italian position. The alarm, however, was given by the dogs chained to the entanglements, and at 1.30 began an engagement at this point, which lasted the whole night." If it had not been for the dogs, the Italian force would evidently have been surprised and rushed, as our own columns were on more than one occasion in South Africa.
The idea of attaching dogs to our own Army still remains new to our authorities, and it is therefore interesting to read the report made by Captain Temperley, of the Norfolk Regiment, on the behaviour of an Airedale terrier which was presented by Major Richardson to Captain Temperley's company, and was used during brigade training. Captain Temperley took the dog out on three occasions on outpost duty at night, and he found that it invariably let the sentry know of the approach of a human being two or three minutes
before the sentry could tell that there was anyone about. The dog's method of indicating the approach of a human being, Captain Teniperley reported, "consists of a low growl and a stiffening of his body, almost like a pointer," and be stated at the United Service Institution that he believed that with such a dog at his side no sentry could ever possibly be rushed. With that testimony and with the experience of modern campaigns before us, it is impossible to ignore the poten- tialities of an organized supply of dogs for military purposes. And as more than one speaker urged at the United Service Institution, it would be impossible to raise such a supply at a moment's notice. Large numbers of highly trained animals cannot be obtained in the same way as you can purchase an extra supply of ammunition. The training means individual care and attention; no dog who is worth training will work properly for anyone except his master, and his master, in a sense, would be the regiment. But dogs in this country cannot be used throughout the year for the purposes for which they would be useful in war or on manceuvres, and for that reason there is an added force in the suggestion made by- one of Major Richardson's friendly critics, that dogs might be attached to St. John Ambulance and Red Cross detachments, which exist and are at work all over the country. That is a valuable and practical recommendation which does not even need to wait on the approval of official.. dom. There is nothing to hinder a Voluntary Aid Detachment from keeping and training a dog ; and if war broke out, and a supply of trained animals were needed, the ambulance detachments would be able to step into the breach at once. All would be able to do their work ; a detachment which was not actually needed at the front could fulfil one of its duties at a distance, by offering what would never be refused, the services of its trained Airedale terrier.
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