Haselden as Pioneer: Reflecting or Constructing Home Front Opinion?

Abstract

In January 1915 the highest-selling daily newspaper in Britain, the Daily Mirror, carried the headline ‘Germany and the Big and Little Willies, who represent Germany, face […] imminent disaster’.¹ The Mirror could be confident that its readership would recognise the epithets of the German Kaiser and his son bestowed upon them by the paper’s popular staff cartoonist, William Kerridge Haselden. Haselden’s comic episodes featuring the Kaiser and the Crown Prince eventually reached 159 in total. These were so popular with the Mirror’s audience that they were collected into book form as The Sad Adventures of Big and Little Willie in 1915; such compilations were published by the Mirror during and immediately after the war years. These cartoons found popularity both at home and abroad, and were, said the German Kaiser when interviewed by the Mirror post-war, ‘damnably effective’ when compared to the less subtle forms of German propaganda (Horn: 1976, 306). Indeed their names permeated even the British military. The first tank prototype was nicknamed ‘Little Willie’ in tribute to Haselden’s character, and its successor ‘Big Willie’ saw active service on the front lines.²