Something that is noticed by all who have served at the front is the drollery of the men in dangerous or uncomfortable surroundings. Sometimes it is good-natured, sometimes ill-tempered and critical, but it is ever present. One cannot but believe that the wag of the company is better than a tonic to the men, in fact is almost as good a pick-me-up as the rum ration. Who has not felt the benefit of a good laugh? Who has not seen a well-developed sense of humor save a difficult situation, or at least alleviate it?

With Tommy the humor crops out in the most unexpected situations. Under circumstances in which the ordinary man would turn ghastly pale, Tommy cracks a joke. Crossing an open space toward a railway embankment I was fifty yards or so from a culvert through which I had intended passing, when a soldier reached it. He was carrying a load on his back, and was sucking on a pipe, his head bowed in thought. A whizz bang shrieked by me, and struck just at the entrance to the culvert, missing him only by inches. Fortunately it banged into the earth four or five feet beyond his position at the moment, so that the fragments spread from him, not towards him. He had escaped death by a hairbreadth. He stopped in his path, took his pipe from his mouth, raised his head and looked with a surprised air at the hole in the ground made by the bursting shell. His only comment was uttered in a slow voice:

"Well, I\'ll—be—jiggered!" And putting his pipe back into his mouth, he coolly resumed his walk and his meditation, without altering his course by one inch. Thus do men come to accept narrow escapes from death as a matter of course, where such escapes are as common as is plum jam in the rations.

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The men are plodding along in thick tenacious mud, carrying sixty-pound trench mortars, each foot with its accumulated mud weighing at least twenty pounds, and feeling as if it weighed a ton. They are sweating, and blowing, and tired. They halt for a rest and lean up against the wet, muddy wall of the trench, carelessly chucking the heavy mortars into the mud. Then the wag begins by cursing the bally war, consigning the officers to perdition, condemning the food as unfit for "villyuns," and wishing the Kaiser "wuz in \'ell." "And the blighters hexpect hus to stand an\' face the henemy. An\' ye betcher life we\'ll do it too, coz we couldn\'t run if we want to: we\'re stuck in the mud!" A smile passes along the tired faces; their rest is over, and more or less rejuvenated, they take up their burdens and pass on.

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Coming out of the front lines one day when we were relieved by another battalion, my corporal and I were going along a support trench when we came up with some officers of our battalion who were leaning against the parapet, waiting for the Germans to let up shelling the trench twenty-five yards in advance of us. We joined the other officers, and were soon joined by about sixty men who were trying to get out the same way. The Germans were persistent, so we all finally turned back to go out by another trench. The shells followed us along the trench, for which reason none of us slackened our pace. As we hurried along a rich Scotch voice said loudly enough for all to hear:

"By G——, these Hun shells are better than the pipes to make us march."

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Passing along a muddy support trench, returning from a tour of inspection, we came upon a fatigue or working party of soldiers digging an ammunition dump. They were working on a ridge, and as it was a bright day they could be seen much of the time by the German snipers and might at any moment get some shells or bullets thrown into their midst. It was hard, dirty and dangerous work, but bantering voices reached us:

"What did you do in the great war, papa?" asks one.

"I dug \'oles, m\'son," replies another.

"But that\'s not as bad as \'avin\' \'oles dug in ye," adds a third.

"You\'re bally-well right, it\'s not," says a fourth. And the work proceeds.

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Humor, of course, is not limited to the ordinary ranks, O.R.\'s as they are called officially. Our battalion was putting on a big raid, "a show." In the end it was carried out very successfully, but owing to the fact that it was a daylight raid, and that a smoke barrage was to be employed, the wind had to be taken into account, and the raid was put off from time to time. Code words had to be arranged to be telephoned by brigade to the battalion. Codes are employed because of the danger of the Germans picking up the messages by a special apparatus for that purpose. An English officer present at the meeting to discuss plans suggested the following code which was employed:

If the raid was to be indefinitely postponed the word Asquith was to be used, meaning, wait and see. The word Haldane was employed with the signification, put off until tomorrow. And when it was finally decided to be put on, Lloyd George was the code word which meant, to be carried out at once.

Anyone familiar with British politics during the war will agree that it was rather a neat code.

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And it is said that a French Canadian commanding officer, in whose battalion a murder had been committed, had inserted in his orders of the day the following bit of unconscious humor:

"It is to be regretted that a murder has been committed in this battalion. This is the second murder in our Canadian forces. It is to be distinctly understood that this pernicious habit must cease forthwith."

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Many amusing stories are told of the contents of letters censored at the front. Usually all the letters of a company or section are censored by the officers of the company or section. One of the best stories was told me by an English officer. A Tommy of his section wrote to his beloved:

"Dear Maggie: I\'d a bally sight rather be in your arms than in this trench with a dead German!"

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I sat one evening smoking a cigar with a Canadian Colonel who was much incensed at the fact that he had served at Gallipoli where he caught an infectious diarrhea of which he nearly died, while in the meantime his other officers who served no better than he were decorated and promoted.

"Manion," he said to me in an angry voice, "I was promised that if I went to the Mediterranean I would get promotion and any decoration they could get for me, and the only d—— thing I got was dysentery, and I wouldn\'t have got that if my superior officers had had the giving of it."

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A rather good story with a touch of dry humor provoked by a desire for justice is that of the lonesome soldier. One of our Tommies sent an advertisement to an English daily in which he hinted, rather than said, that he was a duty-loving Briton, honorably doing his bit, and being without friends in the world he would welcome a correspondence with some English girl. He implied that, as the diet was rough, a few comforts would not go amiss, signing his advertisement, "H.H., a lonesome soldier." He was rewarded by a mail large enough for Horatio Bottomley, accompanied by so many parcels that our mail department had to add another man to its staff to handle his portion. Instead of imitating the generosity of these English girls, and sharing his ill-gotten gains with his companions, he chose the selfish part, keeping most of the good things for himself, giving away only what he had no possible use for. And what was still worse, he started a correspondence with each of the priceless young things who had offered him their goods and their friendship. Had this been a fair and square correspondence it might have had nothing to condemn it. But though uneducated, he was sly enough to suit his letters to their recipients. To one he implied the possibility of a strong attachment; to another he was more reserved, speaking only of friendship; while to a third he would send a warm, date-making epistle, hinting at cozy hotels; all according to what he thought their letters to him showe............