The Timaru Herald. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1914. HUMOUR AND THE WAR.

Timaru Herald, Volume CI, Issue 15504, 14 November 1914, Page 8

The Timaru Herald. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1914. HUMOUR AND THE WAR.

While the shadow of Avar hangs _o\er tlie world like ail. eclipse, and in buttles dimmer and more temble than all the earlier conflicts known and fabled, modern men destroy each other in a slaughter which makes the Mogul conqueror's tower of eighty thousand skulls appear a puny monument, Mr Stephen Leacock has the courage to write in the "Nineteenth Century'' of American humour. We thank him for the departure. The magazines contain too little besides war at the present time, and it is well to have an antidote. Mr Leacocli's article is less cheerful than it might be, sintie he thinks that humour is declining, at least in America, where it used to be a hardy plant. But, when civilisation shows so much of failure, we refuse to believe in the decline of humour. Mr Leacock's entertaining volumes are a refutation of his view that it is declining- in America, and if it has been wilting anywhere we look to the present war to strengthen it, and make it once again a healthy, sanity-protecting influence. Since Samson's riddle was provoked by his struggle with a lion the best, jokes have always been produced by serious men, and not a few of them have been inspired by tragedy. Mr Leacock himself stresses the remarkable relationship which exists between comedy and' .grief. The basis of the humorous, he finds. '' lies in the incongruity, the unfittihgness, the ; want of harmony among thing-s." _ The crudest kind of incongruity is found when so;mething is "smashed, broken., ~dc-.

feated, knocked out of its original shape and purpose." As often as that clash, occurs it produces humour. The emotion, lias gained something iii refinement since it was*first expressed, according to a great philosopher, by the primeval savage laughing exultantly over his fallen foe whose head he had smashed with a club, but'it is': still true, as Swift observed, that a man fallinc through his chair provides a better joko for most people than any; other that can bo imagined. . Mr Leacock argues that American humour rioted fifty years ago, because a great part of America was then in a primitive stage of civilisation, in which collisions and catastrophes similar to the falling from a chair or having one ? s head smashed by a club were frequent. Mark Twaiu and Bret Harte both got a lot of humour out of the vicissitudes of pioneering days, in which to "get the drop " on an opponent was u great help in an 'argument, and the collision of. a lump of granite with a speaker's abdomen broke up the Society upon the Stanislaus, but not all American humour has been of such a strenuous type. The humour which Swift described, and much of tlie early American humour, was antisocial like that of the early savage. It derived its merriment from the discomfiture of others." The great humourists, as Mr Leacock illustrates by the example of Cervantes, can, sympathise with human' griefs and follies while they laugh at them. His complaint is that this'secoUd stage has not been reached in America, and that the environment having altered which suggested anti-social humour, no other kind has properly succeeded it. If this was a just verdict and not a mistaken one, as we believe it to be, the war has revived for America the incongruities and collisions of its earlier history on o. colossal scale. The spectacle of the" most Christian Powers expressing their profound grief that they must go to war, and vying with each other in un-Christian preparations, has impressed.manv writers in America as it would have impressed Thackeray or Cervantes. There has been nothing anti-social, but much shrewd criticism and wisdom in their comments republished by us from time to time. "We approve of the proposal to hold a universal day of prayer on September 10th," remarks one journal, "but why wait till September 10th to pray?" The statement that "Mexico appears to be >Tibout the only country which is not now at war" should cause civilised people to " think furiously," as well as laugh. As humour presents the form of criticism most likely to be listened to in periods of stress and excitement, so also it is" the best protector against •folly and depression and the best guardian of wise, reasonable courage. Cervantes was not a worse soldier because he saw the humourous side of things.. The British soldier, we were told recently. often meets death with a joke. _ If we wanted to convince a foreigner in the shortest time that Britain is a great nation, able to wage her present war successfully and confident of doing so, we should show him the numbers of " Punchthat have been issued since the war began. "Punch" is ,the greatest humourous paper in the British Empire; it has never ceased to joke about the war, and its jests have never been boastful or malevolent, If he was in the mood if or joking the Kaiser miclit enjoy them ;.s heartily as British readers. Onlv a great nation, sure of its strength, could face a supreme ordeal in such a spirit.