The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-09-24 00:00:00

DOGS OF WAR.

Tbe idea lately taken up in earnest in the German
and Russian armies of using dogs for military pur-
poses has been gsnerally talked of as an innovation.
This, however, as M. Meunier shows in a learned
article in the Revue Scientifique, is a mistake. Dogs
of war, is appears, were well known to the great
nations of ancient times, and Greeks and Romans and
Jews and Gentiles made use of the fearless, intelli-
gent animal, whose valour is new once again to be
put to the test. The Greeks had dogs in every one
of their fortresses; and E. Blaze, one of M.
Meunier's authorities, tells a good story of an outpost
occupied by strong watch-dogs only. Opposite
Corinth, facing the sea, such an outpost was situated,
guarded by fifty dogs. One night the enemy began
to disembark. The garrison was drunk and the
dogs had to keep back the aggressors. They
fought like lions, and forty-nine of them were
killed. The only survivor, Soter, rushed away in hot
haste, gave the alarm in the camp, and the enemy
was driven back. The Romans, as every one knows,
were less fortunate on a similar occasion, where the
geese performed the task of the dogs in calling the
attention of the soldiers to the Gauls scaling the
walla of the :Capitol, while the dogs were fat
asleep. As a punishment for the unfaithful ser-
vants a religious ceremony, at which even Plutarch
had E till occasion to laugh on beholding it,
was .hereafter annually performed at Rome.
Its chief feature was that some dogs were taken
throue i the streets with great pomp, whipped at
every cross-road and in every public place, and finally
hanged on a cross of the wood of the elder tree, near
the Temple of Youth. Even in the 16th century two
Turks performed a similar ceremony in memory of
the dogs which had devoured the corpse of Mahom-
med. In Dalmatian and Croatian garrisons dogs of
war were kept, in the 17th century, whose duty it was
to reveal by their barking the presence of the Turkish
soldiers; to run to their masters and make them ac-
quainted not only with the fact of the approach of the
enemy, but also to point out in the forest the place
where the aggressors were hidden.
But, asks M. Meunier, is it possible for a dog to
distinguish different nationalities? It is impossible
to give a certain answer to this question, but so
much is certain, that the ancients had very well noted
that the dog had this peculiar facult, Minerva's
temple at Daulia was gaurded by dogs which were
trained with such care that they could distinguish
Greeks and barbarians, lavishing caresses on the former
and barking continually if any of the latter arrived.
And not only were dogs made use of in ordinary war-
fare, but from the time of the Roman Empire down-
wards almost to our own day the slave-hunters have
had invaluable assistants in their cruel, gigantic blood-
hounds. To the Spaniards belongs the doubtful honour
of having trained their dogs most perfectly
for the pursuit of slaves and under the pretence
of bringing religion in the dark places of the earth they
sent their bloodthirsty dogs after the harmless natives.
Their method of training, which they had learned
from the Romans, was as follows: While still very
young, the dog was incessantly teased by children.
Later on he was worried till he got excited, and was
then attacked with the sword and allowed to fight till,
tired out and bleeding, he withdrew from the battle,
leaving his adversary, a serf charged with the dog's
education, in rags and tatters. After the fight the
dog was carefully chained, and only after he had
oecorne an excellent defender was he allowed to go
free. Then his master was attacked with the sword:
tbe dog defended him, and then, in the course of
lime, becan..e accustomed to defending his master
against all attacks.
The curious notion held in ancient Egypt that the
licking of a dog was a sure cure for ophtbalteia was
based on the principle that nuppies are born blind,
and are only cured of that infirmity by the mother
licking their eyes. In Greece, again, a certain race
of dogs was believed to be able to distinguish between
a real and apparent corpse, by which faculty they
became particularly useful in time of plagues and on
the battlefield.
In conclusion M. Meunier describes fforace Ver-
net's touching picture of the chien du regiment, whin
creeps up with bleeding head and shattered feet to
his two friends the drummers; but he forgets to
mention the most famous of all recent dogs of w sr,
the faithful Regimentshund who went through the
whole of the last Franco-German war, and has now
his well-earned place on one of the magnificent bad-
reliefs round the Sieges Saute at Berlin.