Good-humour at the Front is by no means an exclusively Irish possession. Happily the soldiers of all the nationalities within the United Kingdom are so light-hearted as to find even in the most dismal situation cause for raillery, pleasantry and laughter, and to derive from their mirth a more enduring patience of discomfort and trouble. The Irish form of humour, however, differs entirely from the English, Scottish or Welsh variety not only in quality but in the type of mind and character it expresses. In most things that the Irish soldier says or does there is something racially individual. Perhaps its chief peculiarity, apart from its quaintness, is that usually there is an absence of any conscious aim or end behind it. The English soldier, and the Cockney especially, is a wag and a jester. He is very prone to satire and irony, deliberate and purposeful. Even his "grousing"--a word, by the way, unheard in the Irish regiments, unless it is somewhat incomprehensibly used by an English non-commissioned officer--is a form of caustic wit. Irish humour has neither subtlety nor seriousness. It is just the light and spontaneous whim, caprice or fancy of the moment. It is humour in the original sense of the word, that is the expression of character, habit and disposition. The Munstermen have contributed to the vocabulary at the Front the expressive phrase, "Gone west," for death; the bourne whence no traveller returns. In Kerry and Cork the word "west" or "wesht," as it is locally pronounced, expresses not only the mysterious and unknown, but is used colloquially for "behind," "at the back," or "out of the way." So it is also at the Front. A lost article is gone west as well as a dead comrade. "When I tould the Colonel," said an Irish orderly, "that the bottle of brandy was gone wesht, he was that mad that I thought he would have me ate." As food and drink are sent west, perhaps the Colonel had his suspicions. The saying, "Put it wesht, Larry, an' come along on with you," may be heard in French estaminets as well as in Kerry public-houses. At parade a subaltern noticed that one of his men had anything but a clean shave on the left side of his jaw. "'Twas too far wesht for me to get at, sir," was the excuse. "Well," said the dentist to a Munster Fusilier, "where's this bad tooth that's troubling you?" "'Tis here, sir," said the soldier, "in the wesht of me jaw." Another Irish soldier told his Quartermaster that he was in a very unpleasant predicament for want of a new pair of trousers. "The one I've on me is all broken wesht," said he. It is fairly obvious what part of the trousers the west of it was.