Anecdotes of the great war, gathered from European sources — Story, Setting & Ideas

Diction and Dialect as Comic Devices

The anecdotes rely heavily on dialect and mispronunciation for humor. In "Has a Monopoly," a club member is mocked for being "the only fellow who knows how to pronounce the names" of war figures, suggesting that linguistic ineptitude is a social failing. More pointedly, "Not a Caruso" features an old lady whose son has enlisted; she pities the Germans because they will have to hear him sing "'It's a long way to Tipperary' on 'is lips." The dropped h's and colloquial phrasing ("P'r'aps you 'aven't 'eard of their cruelties?") mark her as working-class, and the punchline—"p'r'aps you 'aven't 'eard George sing!"—turns her pride into a weapon. The compiler preserves these speech patterns, letting the characters' own words generate the comedy rather than editorial commentary.

The Absurdity of Officialdom

Several anecdotes skewer bureaucratic rigidity. In "Blankety-Blank," a Mrs. Waring asks what language Belgians use, and her husband replies, "I know what language I'd use if I were a Belgian!"—a joke that relies on the unspoken profanity. More elaborate is the narrator in a later excerpt who, frustrated by a crowded train, addresses a German official with absurdly ornate language: "Thou transcendental Triton, is it thus that the confidential visitors... are rewarded?" The official's response—"Are you Suffer-gette?"—mishears "suffragette" and reduces the tirade to a category. The narrator is then placed in a horse-box, treated as a madwoman. The humor derives from the clash between inflated rhetoric and literal-minded authority, a theme that recurs in "Unintentional Limitation," where a vicar's patriotic fervor leads him to substitute "for three years or the duration of the war" for the marriage vow.

Trench Life and the Trivial as Survival

In "Permanently Postponed," Private Flynn complains not of being shot but of waiting "ten minutes for a smoke from Murtagh's pipe" that is shot out of his mouth. The anecdote elevates a minor inconvenience over mortal danger, suggesting that daily irritants matter more than bullets. Similarly, "Nothing New to Him" features a captain boasting about hunting breakfast in the jungle, only for a young soldier to retort, "Yes, sir, and also of Ananias and Baron Munchausen." The soldier's deadpan reference to famous liars punctures the captain's authority. These pieces, likely drawn from soldiers' own accounts, show how humor defuses hierarchy and fear. The compiler's note that such anecdotes are "trivial" yet necessary for sanity underscores their psychological function.

The Home Front and Gender Roles

Women appear primarily as wives, mothers, or observers, often the butt of jokes about ignorance. In "English Humor," Bill teases Nell by reporting that the Prince of Wales "had a fall" and was unconscious—only to reveal he "fell asleep in his bed." Nell's concern is played for laughs, but the joke also critiques the public's appetite for royal gossip. More complex is the narrator in the train anecdote, a woman who adopts a pompous, pseudo-intellectual voice ("I will endure no more obliquity") and is dismissed as a "Suffer-gette." The humor here cuts both ways: the narrator's pretension is absurd, but the official's misogyny is also exposed. Case includes these voices without overt moralizing, letting the reader gauge the social tensions beneath the laughter.

Readers should approach this collection as a historical artifact of wartime morale, not a comprehensive history. The anecdotes are brief and often rely on stereotypes or puns that may feel dated. Pay attention to who is speaking—soldiers, civilians, officials—and what their word choices reveal about class, nationality, and gender. The compiler's deliberate omission of bitter propaganda makes this a unique record of how Europeans chose to laugh during the Great War, even as the fighting continued.