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.
III—THE GERMANS WHO SANG "RULE BRITTANIA"
At all events, his humor has the dry quality which connotes an even mind and temper, as the following incident will show. In the earlier days of the war, before the opposing armies in the West had burrowed into the soil and some freedom of movement was still possible, a patrol of three British soldiers under a sergeant were prowling abroad one night. Within disputed territory they espied a lighted window in a lonely farmhouse which they knew had been deserted by its owners. They approached it stealthily. The house was surrounded without challenge, and having posted his men at points which commanded the exits the sergeant crept forward to reconnoitre. Music and sounds of revelry were audible within, and the sergeant had no difficulty in discovering the presence of four German soldiers in the farmer's best sitting-room. The cellar had been looted, the piano commandeered, and four Teutonic voices were upraised in melody.
The sergeant beckoned to the waiting figures outside, and four large but softly-treading men tiptoed delicately to the scene of the carousal. At a given signal the door was flung open and four rifles were levelled.