In Ireland domestic servants are noted for their forward manners and liberty of speech with the family, and the same trait is rather general in the relations between different social grades. An illustration of what it leads to in the Army was afforded at a camp concert attended by a large assembly of officers and men of a certain Division, into which, at a solemn moment, an unsophisticated Irish soldier made a wild incursion. Lord Kitchener had been there that day and had inspected the Division, and the General in command announced from the platform how greatly pleased the Secretary for War was with the soldierly fitness of the men. "I told Lord Kitchener," continued the General, speaking in grave and impressive tones, "that the Division would see the thing through to the bitter end." In the midst of a loud burst of cheering an Irish private rushed forward, and sweeping aside the attempt of a subaltern to stop him, jumped on to the platform, and seizing the aged General by the hand, exclaimed, "Glory to you, me vinerable friend! The ould Division will stick to it to the last, and it's you that's the gran' man to lade us to victory and everlasting fame." The General, greatly embarrassed, could only say, "Yes, yes, to be sure, my good fellow; yes, yes"; and the staff turned aside to hide their grins at this comic encounter between incongruities. The Colonel of an Irish battalion, after a harassing day in the trenches, got a pleasant surprise in the shape of a roast fowl served for dinner by his orderly. After he had eaten it and found it tender he recalled that complaints were rather rife among the inhabitants about the plundering of hen-roosts, and his conscience smote him. "I hope you got that fowl honestly," he said. "Don't you be troubling your head about that, sir," replied the orderly, in a fine burst of evasion and equivocation. "Faith, 'twas quite ready for the killing, so it was, and that's the main thing." Then, as if to improve the occasion by a homily, he added, in a tone of religious fervour, "Ah, sure, if we wor all as ready to die as that hin, sir, we needn't mind a bit when the bullet came." The Colonel was almost "fit to die" with quiet laughter.