The Dominion. SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1916. THE MILITARY VALUE OF HUMOUR

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2747, 15 April 1916, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1916. THE MILITARY VALUE OF HUMOUR

To most people humour-and philoophy are separated by a great gulf, but when we come to think of it, the sense of humour is just as worthy of the attention of tne scientist and philosopher as other human emotions. Comedy and tragedy are continually rubbing shoulders. ■ Life is a strange mixture of tears and laughter.. Yet to subject the sense of the ridiculous to serious philosophical analysis seems at first sight to be quite a wicked thing—nearly as bad as vivisection; but a perusal of an articlo by Dr. Mercer in -the Nineteenth (JenS-ury oh "Humour and , War" leads one to take a more lenient view of the offence. Dr. Mercer (formerly Bishop of Tasmania), is a broadminded and keen-witted man. He is a remarkably free and independent thinker, whose occasional excursions into the realms of philosophy are delightfully unconventional, and at times ratherf daring. Some time ago he gave expression to decidedly interesting' opinions on the existence and oharacter of the sense of humour in the Divine Mind. He was on delicate ground, but he. handled his subject in a manner that could give no reasonable ground of offence. Some people may be inclined tothink that war is altogether too terrible a matter to joke about—and yet the. British soldier is continually reminding us that it has its humorous side. In spite of his first-hand knowledge of the horrors of war, he can still laugh and make others laugh. Strangely enough, some scientists connect laughter in its origin with the fighting instinct. "When a primitive warrior came off victor he was wont to relievo his muscular and mental tension by venturing a whoop of triumph. This whoop, we are assured, was an embryo laugh." This sort of laughter may be more akin to fury than fun, and yet. it does not icquiro much exercise of the imagination to establish a connection between this primitive satisfaction at the discomfiture of a foe, with that "combination of grim humour with the serious business of warfare"' of v which so many examples have been in letters from thfi front written during the present'- war.'

Tragedy and comedy are-so closely related that they sometimes seem to be merely different sides of the same thing. A great deal depends upon the point of view. A recent English paper tells us, for instance, that a Mn. Kaiser has five sons at tho front fighting for our Empire. To British-, ers it is laughable that our army should include no less than five Kaisers ; but our enemies can hardly be expected to appreciate the joke. The fact that the Ivaiser family may feel that their name is an embarrassment to them in the present crisis dtfes not stifle our amusement. W'e sympathise and still \ye laugh simply because the humour of the situation is irresistible. These facts support Dn. Mercer in his rejection of the theory that the laugh is intended always to humiliate. The incident referred to amuses us not because it may cause humiliation to a fellow man, but because wo see in it an illustration of the "cusscdness" of things. _ This mirth without bitterness is, in the opinion of Dr. Mercer/ one of the finest characteristics of the British soldier. As an example of this disinterested sense of the comic, Dr. Mercer gives this anecdote: "A testy individual, enraged by some boys who were teasing him, m'ade a pounce and captured one of the group. He strenuously belaboured the luckless wight ; but, to his astonishment, the harder he whacked the more the boy laughed. At' last he stopped for want' xof breath, and asked the' reason for this misplaced mirth. The victim replied, 'You've got the wrong boy.'" The German, who is sadly lacking in the capacity to see tho funny sido of things, is said" to be scandalised at the frivolity of our soldiers. Their irrepressible mirth seems to him to bo incompatible with the dignity of serious warfare. It is like mixing the sublime and the ridiculous. Dr. Mercer contends that the idea t-h.it unbroken seriousness befits the business of war is the main cause of the inhumanity of the Germans, and tho prolific source of their crucitics and barb&j'ism. Tl§ ill-effects of this brooding intensity are discernible in peacc as well as in war, "for a nation which lacks a faculty for laughir.g lightly, irresponsibly, and impressibly when occasion presents itself misses much of the fulness of which human life is capablc, and narrows the range of its intellectual as well as of its emotional activities." There can be no 1 doubt that cheerfulness is a great asset in warfare. Tho sense of humour that enables Tommy Atkins to make free use of the Gorman "Hymn of Ilatc"- as a comic song may be repugnant to tho enemy's idea of military propriety, but in the long run it makes for victory. Under tho headline "Tommy the Invincible," an. English paper relates the following conversation which took place in a Y.M.C.A. hut:—

"But aren't the trenches (dreadfully wetp"' "We drain our trenches very well now." "B«l won't the rnt« very awful P" "Not a bit." "I suppose! you have for. a»1 Unrlora to help get tid oi

them?" "Oh 110, we don't. AVe lamed tho little beggars, and thcy'ro bo friendly now they come and sit round us when we're'having a meal, and hold out their little pink hands for food."

Men who face the hardships and discomforts of war ill this chccrful spirit are invincible. This little story affords a striking illustration of what Dr. Mercer means when ho says that the British soldier possesses "a human, healthy, elastic mind, irrepressibly gay, which can rise above the toils and perils that surround him, and 'can keep its balance in spite of all that might drag him to despair or goad him to savagery.)" The soldier who, by a happy thought, called his muddy and weatherbattered shelter the Hotel Cecil, helped to keep his mates in good spirits and to make his own lot more tolerable. Such a man must be. as Dr. Mercer says, "a philosopher of no meau order."