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The joke here is that a mental condition is going to be treated as a physical condition.
By the way there is a factual error here. The bust of Freud on top of the bookcase shows that the psychiatrist is a Freudian. However Freudians always referred to the unconscious. It was the Jungians who called it the subconscious.
The gardener naturally chats with the children of the big house. He could hardly refuse to talk to them. He refers quite reverentially to their grandfather who kept his distance from the ‘lower orders’.
The war has now started but we are now looking at the ‘phoney war’. Not much had changed … yet. Some businesses located out of the cities to avoid the bombing that was expected. It came, but much later. There was some action in the air and at sea but during this stage evacuation and relocation was the big story.
A lot of people would continue to compare the current state of affairs with what had happened 25 years earlier.
There is some class content in this joke. The private being addressed has a double-barrelled surname. This makes him fair game for the sergeant’s sarcasm. It isn’t just a tradition in one regiment. It is the way that the army functions.
Anton is making a little joke about the technology of war. It is a form of humour quite at home with the phoney war. It would not be thought appropriate when the ‘shooting war’ took over.
These changes were meant to deal with the challenges that had not yet materialised. When they did jokes like this ceased to appear.
The civilians are carrying a gasmask in a box draped over their shoulders. I can’t remember when we stopped carrying them but I think it was fairly early in 1940.