don music-hall and brought down the house with jokes and songs made
up in dugouts and front--line trenches.

At first the audience sat silent, with glazed eyes. It was difficult to
get a laugh out of them. The mud of the trenches was still on them. They
stank of the trenches, and the stench was in their souls. Presently they
began to brighten up. Life came back into their eyes. They laughed!...
Later, from this audience of soldiers there were yells of laughter,
though the effect of shells arriving at unexpected moments, in untoward
circumstances, was a favorite theme of the jesters. Many of the men were
going into the trenches that night again, and there would be no fun
in the noise of the shells, but they went more gaily and with stronger
hearts, I am sure, because of the laughter which had roared through the
old sugar--factory.

A night or two later I went to another concert and heard the same gaiety
of men who had been through a year of war. It was in an open field,
under a velvety sky studded with innumerable stars. Nearly a thousand
soldiers trooped through the gates and massed before the little canvas
theater. In front a small crowd of Flemish children squatted on the
grass, not understanding a word of the jokes, but laughing in shrill
delight at the antics of soldier-Pierrots. The corner-man was a funny
fellow, and his by-play with a stout Flemish woman round the flap of the
canvas screen, to whom he made amorous advances while his comrades were
singing sentimental ballads, was truly comic. The hit of the evening was
when an Australian behind the stage gave an unexpected imitation of a
laughing-jackass.

There was something indescribably weird and wild and grotesque in that
prolonged cry of cackling, unnatural mirth. An Australian by my side
said: "Well done! Exactly right!" and the Flemish children shrieked
with joy, without understanding the meaning of the noise. Old, old songs
belonging to the early Victorian age were given by the soldiers, who had
great emotion and broke down sometimes in the middle of a verse. There
were funny men dressed in the Widow Twankey style, or in burlesque
uniforms, who were greeted with yells of laughter by their comrades. An
Australian giant played some clever card tricks, and another Australian
recited Kipling's "Gunga Din" with splendid fire. And between every
"turn" the soldiers in the field roared out a chorus:

"Jolly good song, Jolly well sung. If you can think of a bette