British Soldiers Overwhelmed by
the Hun at Amiens August, 29, 1914
England should realise and should realise at once that she must send
reinforcements, and still send them. Is an army of exhaustless valour to be
borne down by the sheer weight of numbers, while young Englishmen at
home play golf and cricket? We want men, and we want them now!
Source A
Source B
HORRIBLE STORIES OF GERMAN FIENDISHNESS
British war correspondents in Belgium have seen little murdered children with roasted
feet. The tiny mites were hung over a fire before they were slain. This was done by
German troops – men with children of their own at home, or with little brothers and
sisters of the same age as the innocents they torture before killing.
At Tiremont the Special Correspondent to the Times met a peasant woman who told
him that her babes had been trampled to death under the hoofs of the horses of the
Uhlans. As the Englishman was considering that he only had the woman’s word for this
atrocity, he saw a little girl come staggering along the road, as if she were blind. He
found that her eye and cheek were laid open. This had been done, not by a chance bullet,
but by a deliberate thrust of an Uhlan’s lance, who charged upon the innocent child in
sheer devilish sport.
The things done to Belgian girls and women, before their tortured, lifeless bodies with
battered faces were thrown into a ditch, are so unspeakably dreadful that details cannot be
printed.
The War Illustrated1914
Source C
Little girls and little boys, never
play with German toys;
Poison coated toys will make ~
Little baby’s tummy ache.
Parents you should always try,
only British toys to buy. With
British toys you can’t go wrong
and keep your children safe
and strong.
Christmas 1914
1. What does the newspaper headline and
article in Source A tells us about what the
British feel is important to the war effort?
2. What do the stories in Source B tell us
about British attitudes towards (a) Germany
and (b) Belgium in 1914?
3. Do you think the poem in Source C is
true or made up? Explain your answer. Do
you think people stopped buying toys made
in Germany in 1914? Why?
Source D
Look at the 2 images in Source D.
4. How do they portray the Germans?
5. What kind of emotions do such images create?
Source E
6. Come up with 6 descriptive words/phrases that describe the soldiers in Source E
7. Examine Source F. Describe the three different things these posters
are attempting to get women to do to help in the war effort
Source F
Source G
8. Look at the three posters in Source G. How are they using
children to help in the war effort?
9. Look at all the posters: (a) What do all these sources tell us about
propaganda? (b) Do they encourage men to fight? (c) Do they make appeals
to end the war? (d) Do they encourage problem solving and talking by both
sides?
Political Cartoons
WW I Cartoon
THE ZEPPELIN TRIUMPH ?
"But Mother had done nothing wrong
had she Daddy?"
In this cartoon a young British girl cries at the bedside of her dead mother, killed in a zeppelin air raid
on London. The cartoonist very effectively turns the "triumph" of the successful German bombing raid
into a lament for all innocent civilians killed in the war. The answer to the little girl's question is, of
course not, her mother had done nothing wrong and did not deserve her fate.
Assignment: Find a current political cartoon and answer the following questions
1. What is the comic/cartoon about or trying to say?
2. Is it affective in getting it’s point across? Explain