to keep in some sort of touch with the chaps
to your right and left. If you do this--and I dare say you Americans
will have as much trouble as ourselves in remembering to--then a great
deal of distress to yourselves and all hands will be obviated.

"Now here we have a triangular wood. There is to be an attack, and the
objective is this line beyond the wood. So on this side of the wood at
the hour of attack the Welsh Guards go forward--and on this side,
here, the Inniskilling Fusiliers, and a tremendous battle ensues.
Well, after an hour or two, with not much progress, it is discovered
that the Welsh Guards have been firing into the Inniskilling
Fusiliers, and the Fusiliers have been firing into the Welsh. This is
thought a bit thick, you know, even in the confusion of battle. So
eventually it is stopped."

Some of the experts warn the lecturer who is only a beginner against
the use of humor, commenting that if a joke is unlaughed at, it is
disconcerting to all concerned. The only intelligent answer to that
is: "Well, what of it?" The speaker who is going to cringe every time
one of his passages falls a little flat had best not start. This
happens at times to every lecturer; there are good days and bad days,
live audiences and sour ones. If a man takes his work seriously, it is
hardly within nature for him to harden his emotions against an
unexpectedly dull reaction. But he can keep from ever showing that he
is upset if as a speaker he consciously forms the habit of rapidly
driving on from one point to another.

Thus as to the use of humor in public address, it is not only an asset
but almost a necessity. It is better to try with it, and to fall flat
occasionally, thereby sharpening one's own wit through better
understanding of what goes and what does not, than to attempt to go
along humorlessly. Said William Pitt: "Don't tell me of a man's being
able to talk sense. Everyone can talk sense. Can he talk a little
nonsense?" Even more to the point is the remark of Thomas Hardy that
men thin away to insignificance quite as often by not making the most
of good spirits when they have them as by lacking good spirits when
they are indispensable. Fighting is much too serious a trade to have a
large place for men who are dry as dust.

One of the spellbinders of ancient Greece, we are told, orated on the
sands with his mouth filled with pebbles. In World War I, it was the
custom of many higher commanders to take their officers