WAR HUMOUR.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 15218, 4 March 1915, Page 10

WAR HUMOUR.

JOKES IN THE PACE OF

DIATH.

(By Arthur Mason in the "Sydney Morning Herald.") LONDON, January 7.

It should not be supposed that even in Europe the gloom and tho anxiety and the sorrow of war are its only attribute*. Probably, and ' though they havy always been inseparable from it, they were never its only attributes. Tie clironicierß of those ancient times in which war was part of the customary normal life of nations use up, at all events, quite a great deal of their space in description of what was neither more nor less than frivolity as- an accessory before tho fact of even the greatest battles. v

In times not so ancient, in this realm of England, iind by grace of Shakespeare, inspired historian humour that wae';<iuite unbuttoned, pleasantries that often bordered on tho farcical, flit about the bloodiest pages for their relief and lightening. Towards our remembrance of that We recently had in London "Henry 1V.," and we now have "Henry V." It wae surely not the dramatist's thought of hi 3 audience merely that varied the quarrel of Percy and the King with the immortal figure of Falstaff .and the egregious clowning of which he is the centre and inspiration. Aβ to- "Henry V.," humour is such .a consistent.steady shining across its surface bravery, tho echo of near laughter so often breaks through its resounding collision of arms, merriment treads so close upon its blood and tears, that these elements of mirth are soon found to be essential and indispensable tones in the great picture of heroic England. Nym, and Bardolph, and Pistol are, no doubt unconsciously, humorous. The fiery Flnellen certainly is. But Harry the King can ealvo that most terrible hour of his on the ere of battle (and Shakespeare can interruiJt •. the gorgeous procession of his finest speeches—the nrayer, the discourse on ceremony, the noble patriotism of the St. Crispian's l)ay appeal) by the homely jest of tho gloves with a common soldier. And in tho light of to-day ■/. more clearly than ever we see Shakespeare the supreme artist justified in all this by far more than the artist's n<?ed of light* and shade. Wo see the historical plays, and all their contrasts of in the dubitablo presentment of their times. For wo have our own humour. It persists in despite" of bloody and disastrous war. Hj is never so drowned by the sound and fury of battle as to go unheard. It is vocal, as it was vocal in the ears of a Shakespeare translating mere history into magic, because it is part of us

The tronch fighting of the present I stage of the war offers as little appar- j ent scope for humour, as any stage. of ; any war could offer .__. .As a matter of fact, the trenches are almost as substantially filled with humour as with mud. The mud is, from all accounts, simply unbelievable. With one consent the men., confess they had nover imagined such mud to be possible. They stand frozen in it for hours, he in it, they are miserably 'stuck in it— • and they joke about it unendingly. The shot and shell, if not more uncomfortable, are certainly more serious than the mud. The shot and shell, indeed, account for all those tragedies of dead and shattered men,. concerning which little dare be said. But the shot and shell "are for ever the. inspiration of tho soldier's humour. That is story, for instance, of a French company in the tfenches. _. In Paris the underground railway stations are named after familiar landmarks on the surface of the city above them. The Frenchmen discovered that the ehejls bursting all round,their trench noise very liko the rumbling of thejr tube trains,' so they took .to naming them after their familiar" Paris stations. "Etoile!" called out one man as a shell roared above his head. "Alma," shouted another... A third shell was greeted with cries of "Champs Elysees!" The fourth'landed co close as to smother the company with mud. There was silence for a minnte, and then a boy called out to the officer, "I thought it was.' Pere Lachaise that time, sir!". Also French, and also delightful, is tho case of a Parisian author who is now in the trenches. With the ruling passion strong upon him he writes to M Donnay, who member of the French Academy. Not about the fighting, or any other terror of war. On the contrary, he is troubled lest the dictionary of the French language, which the Academy has been engaged in revising theso sixty years past, should bo oompleted up to the letter "I" before the war is over. He holds strong views about the spelling of. a word under letter ''I." In fact, and from the trenches, he implores M. .Donnay to bring all his influence to bear upon "the Academy that the word may be spelt "illasable , and not "inlassable." ' M. Donnay, one is glad to know, has replied saying that so. far tho Academy has reached letter "E" only, and that before it gets to ."I" the war will have long been over.

That is hardly humour, of course, from the trencn-graminarian'e standpoint. But its calm disregard of the prasent and actual makes it almost ac precious. It is Tommy Atkins, however, who will go down to posterity from tliis war as tic most cheerful soul alive—considering how precariously he is alive most of his time. At the outset his dubbing of the deadly missile which killed and maimed him by tho thousand as "Jack Johnson," and "Coal-box." and "Black Maria.' , and "Little Willie- , '■ immortalised Tommy as that rarest of-'humorists, tho joker in the very face of death. And never since then, or in whatever despite, has his sense of fun deserted him. His letters, -even-those from the midst of the horrors, are full of amiable nonsense. Out' in the dreariness of night on a sodden plain he shifts his position and crawls under a waggon einging writes homo "saying, "It's so awfully wet here that one can't do one's washing. But I did mine to-day—one handkerchief." The deadly sniper's last shot at night he calls' "the good-night kiss?' His favourite gibe at the enemy trenches near him is a combined, shout, of "Waiter!" —and we may be sure that the two presentations of Tommy in this week's "Punch" nro quite within, tho bounds of possibility—one that shows him sitting in the midst of bursting shells and saying to a comrade. "Showery,' ain't-it?" and one m which during a headlong bayonet charge he warns the brother Tommy running-at his side. "Xook. out! Your bootiace is undone!" May the humour of. war continue to I enliven us—and that of the lrrepressi|ble Atkins most of all.