On a certain morning, therefore, behold the platoon drawn up on
parade, accoutred with meticulous care, aligned in the most precise
formation--each man wearing his "identity disc" in his eye! For the
benefit of any reader who has never seen an identity disc, it may be
mentioned that the latter is the small plate of metal on which is
stamped certain information concerning the wearer which enable his
body, if necessary, to be identified. Being of the same shape, and
about the same size, as an eyeglass, and, moreover, suspended from a
cord worn round the neck, it can be made to form an admirable travesty
of a monocle.
Not a twitch of a single muscle in the face of the young subaltern, not
a flicker of his unmonocled eye, betrayed that he was aware of anything
unusual in the appearance of his men. He took the situation in coolly,
and when, in answer to routine questions, the sergeants answered
smartly and respectfully but with a pointed imitation of his own
"haw-haw" accent, he ignored the studied insult with equal nonchalance.
It was a good start, for an attempt at sarcasm when quietly ignored
falls flatter even than when it is wholly unperceived. In the present
case there was no possibility of an insult having been missed, and the
platoon began to feel that things were not going quite as had been
anticipated. Each man kept his identity disc firmly screwed in one eye,
however, and stared fixedly out of the other in expectation of the
officer's present discomfort. The latter could never afford to dismiss
the parade without taking cognizance of what had occurred, and the
platoon awaited the crux with interest.
But the moment of dismissal arrived and nothing had been said. Some of
the men were covertly smiling.
As he gave the order, the subaltern let the monocle drop from his
eye, and while the command was being obeyed, swung the glass round
and round, with the cord between finger and thumb, in a rapid circle.
Scanning the line narrowly and noting every glance upon him, he jerked
the twirling glass suddenly into the air and with the neatness of
a juggler caught it in his eye as it fell. Then he glared fiercely
through it.
"See if you can do _that_!" he observed. "Dis-MISS!"
Thereafter no officer ever had men under him more ready to do whatever
he asked them. And it was by a sure instinct that the latter "gave him
best." As one of them remarked, "I've seen men take risks in my time,
but that beat everything. _Suppose he'd missed catchin' that glass?_"
If wit is a Gallic prerogative, humor belongs to the British, and not
a few comedies of the war pivot on that uniquely humorous character
Thomas Atkins. Humor is an elusive and baffling quantity, as the
wit discovered who mixed up all the boots in an hotel corridor one
evening and learned the next morning that his friend (a humorist) had
sorted them out again as soon as his back was turned. The humorist can
sometimes understand the wit, but the compliment is seldom, if ever,
returned; which is the reason why Mr. Atkins and his idiosyncrasies
remain an inscrutable enigma to our French allies.
And if the British soldier appears incomprehensible to the
nimble-minded French, one can readily perceive that to the slow and
methodically-thinking German he must seem merely mad. The French marvel
that he is never "serious"; the Boche is perplexed to find that Hymns
of Hate and other laborious insults afford him the keenest possible
enjoyment. The secret lies in Mr. Atkins's sense of humor, which is
another way of saying his sense of proportion. He may be guilty of
little aberrations such as dribbling a football in front of him as he
advances with cold steel to the charge, but _au fond_ he has a pretty
just sense of values.