Humour is probably the largest component part of the spirit of the British soldier, a paradoxical, phlegmatic sense of humour that comes out strongest when the danger is the most threatening. A Jack Johnson bursts close beside a British soldier who is lighting his pipe with one of those odious French sulphur matches. The shell blows a foul whiff of chemicals right across the man’s face. “Oh dear! oh dear!” he exclaims with a perfectly genuine sigh, “these ’ere French matches will be the death o’ me!” A reply which is equally characteristic of the state of mind of the British soldier who goes forth to war is that given by the irate driver of a Staff car to a sentry in the early days of the war. The sentry, in the dead of night, had levelled his rifle at the chauffeur because the car had not stopped instantly on challenge. The driver backed his car towards where the sentry was standing. “I’ll ’ave a word with you, young feller,” he said. “Allow me to inform you that this car can’t be stopped in less than twenty yards. If you go shoving that rifle of yours in people’s faces someone will get shot before this war’s over!” There is a great strain of tenderness in the British soldier, a great readiness to serve. Hear him, on a wet night in the trenches, begrimed, red-eyed with fatigue, chilled to the bone, just about to lie down for a rest, offer to make his officer, tired as he is, “a drop of ’ot tea!” Watch him with German prisoners! His attitude is paternal, patronizing, rather that of a friendly London policeman guiding homeward the errant footsteps of a drunkard. Under influence of nameless German atrocities of all descriptions the attitude of the British soldier in the fighting-line is becoming fierce and embittered. Nothing will induce him, however, to vent his spite on prisoners, though few Germans understand anything else but force as the expression of power. They look upon our men as miserable mercenaries whose friendliness is simply an attempt to curry favour with the noble German _Krieger_; our men regard them as misguided individuals who don’t know any better. The great strain of tenderness in the British soldier comes out most strongly in his attitude of mind towards the wounded and the dead. No British soldier will rest quiet in his trench whilst there are wounded lying out in front, and the deeds of heroism performed by men in rescuing the wounded have been so numerous in this war that it has been found necessary to restrict the number of Victoria Crosses awarded for this class of gallant action. No British soldier will lie quiet while our dead are unburied. Men will expose themselves fearlessly to recover the body of a comrade and give it decent burial.