Sir Harry Lauder

“ There were dour sights, dreadful sights in those hospitals. There were wounds the memory of which robbed me of sleep. There were men doomed to blindness for the rest of their lives.
But over all there was a spirit that never lagged or faltered, and that strengthened me when I thought some sight was more than I could bear. It was the spirit of the British soldier, triumphant over suffering and cruel disfigurement, with his inevitable answer to any question as to how he was getting on. I never heard that answer varied when a man could speak at all. ”

“ I love to sit behind the train, on the observation platform, while I'm travelling through America. It's grand scenery—and there's sae much of it. It's a wondrous sicht to see the sun rise in the desert. It puts me in mind o' the moors at home, wi' the rosy sheen of the dawn on the purple heather, but it's different.
There's no folk i' the world more hospitable than Americans. And there's no folk prouder of their hames, and more devoted to them. That's a thing to warm the cockles of a Scots heart. I like folk who aren't ashamed to let others know the way they feel. ”

“ It was as if a conductor were leading an orchestra, and as if it responded instantly to every suggestion of his baton.
There was not much variety to the food, but there was plenty of it, and it was good. There was bully beef, of course; that is the real staff of life for the British army. And there were potatoes, in plentiful supply, and bread and butter, and tea—there is always tea where Tommy or his officers are about! There was a lack of table ware; a dainty soul might not have liked the thought of spreading his butter on his bread with his thumb, as we had to do. ”

“ One evening I was going through the City in my motor car—the old City, that echoes to the tread of the business man by day, and at nicht is sae lane and quiet, wi' all the folk awa'. The country is quiet at nicht, tae, but it's quiet in a different way. For there the hum o' insects fills the air, and there's the music o' a brook, and the wind rustling in the tops o' the trees, wi' maybe a hare starting in the heather. It's the quiet o' life that's i' the glen at nicht, but i' the auld, auld City the quiet is the quiet o' death. ”

“ They cheered as they squatted down in a circle about us, me in my kilt, and Johnson tinkling away as if his very life depended upon it, at his wee piano! Ah, those wonderful, wonderful soldiers! The tears come into my eyes, and my heart is sore and heavy within me when I think that mine was the last voice many of them ever heard lifted in song! They were on their way to the trenches, so many of those laddies who stopped for a song along the road. And when men are going into the trenches they know, and all who see them passing know, that some there are who will never come out. ”

“ I felt—and I still feel—that I could tell her that all was well with him, and with all the other soldiers of Britain, who sleep, like him, in the land of the bleeding lily. They died for humanity, and God will not forget.
And I think there is something for me to say to all those who are to know a grief such as I knew. Every mother and father who loves a son in this war must have a strong, unbreakable faith in the future life, in the world beyond, where you will see your son again. Do not give way to grief. ”

“ We passed through a wee town called Doullens on our way from Tramecourt to Albert. And there, that morn, I saw an old French nun; an aged woman, a woman old beyond all belief or reckoning. I think she is still there, where I saw her that day. Indeed, it has seemed to me, often, as I have thought upon her, that she will always be there, gliding silently through the deserted streets of that wee toon, on through all the ages that are to come, and always a cowled, veiled figure of reproach and hatred for the German race. ”

“ I thought Fritz might have had manners enough to wait until I had finished my concert, at least! But the Hun has no manners, as all the world knows.
Along that embankment we had climbed to reach the trenches, and not very far from the bit of trench in which I was singing, there was a railroad bridge of some strategic importance. And now a shell hit that bridge—not a whizz bang, but a real, big shell. It exploded with a hideous screech, as if the bridge were some human thing being struck, and screaming out its agony. The soldiers looked at me, and I saw some of them winking. ”

“ CHAPTER VII John's mother, his sweetheart and I all saw him off at Glasgow. The fear was in all our hearts, and I think it must have been in all our eyes, as well—the fear that every father and mother and sweetheart in Britain shared with us in these days whenever they saw a boy off for France and the trenches. Was it for the last time? Were we seeing him now so strong and hale and hearty, only to have to go the rest of our lives with no more than a memory of him to keep?
Aweel, we could not be telling that! We could only hope and pray! And we had learned again to pray, long since. ”

“ How many of that old British army still survive?
They gave themselves utterly. They were the pick and the flower of our trained manhood. They should have trained the millions who were to rise at Kitchener's call. But they could not be held back. They are gone. Others have risen up to take their places—ten for one—a hundred for one! But had they been ready at the start! The bonnie laddies who would be living now, instead of lying in an unmarked grave in France or Flanders! The women whose eyes would never have been reddened by their weeping as they mourned a son or a brother or a husband! ”

“ But they seemed to be as well pleased as though I had had the orchestra of a big theater to support me, and all the accompaniments and trappings of the stage. They were very loath to let me go, and I don't know how much time we really saved by not giving our full and regular programme. For, before I had done, they had me telling stories, too. Captain Godfrey was smiling, but he was glancing at his watch too, and he nudged me, at last, and made me realize that it was time for us to go on, no matter how interesting it might be to stay.
"I'll be good," I promised, with a grin, as we drove on. ”

“ Folkestone had made me think of the mouth of a great funnel, into which all broad Britain had been pouring men and guns and all the manifold supplies and stores of modern war. And the trip across the narrow, well guarded lane in the Channel had been like the pouring of water through the neck of that same funnel. Here in Boulogne was the opening. Here the stream of men and sup-plies spread out to begin its orderly, irresistible flow to the front. All of northern France and Belgium lay before that stream; it had to cover all the great length of the British front. ”

“ Every breath of wind that comes sets it to swaying, gently. When the wind rises to a storm it must rock perilously indeed. But still it stays there, hanging like an inspiration straight from Heaven to all who see it. The peasants who gaze upon it each day in reverent awe whisper to you, if you ask them, that when it falls at last the war will be over, and France will be victorious.
That is rank superstition, you say? Aye, it may be! But in the region of the front everyone you meet has become superstitious, if that is the word you choose. That is especially true of the soldiers. ”

“ It was then he learned that Britain had had time, after all, to train troops who, man for man, outmatched his best.
Here war had passed like a consuming flame, leaving no living thing in its path. The trees were mown down, clean to the ground. The very earth was blasted out of all semblance to its normal kindly look. The scene was like a picture of Hell from Dante's Inferno; there is nothing upon this earth that may be compared with it. Death and pain and agony had ruled this whole countryside, once so smiling and fair to see. ”

“ Boulogne had ceased to be French, indeed. The port was like a bit of Britain picked up, carried across the Channel and transplanted successfully to a new resting-place.
English was spoken everywhere—and much of it was the English of the cockney, innocent of the aitch, and redolent of that strange tongue. But it is no for me, a Scot, to speak of how any other man uses the King's English! Well I ken it! It was good to hear it—had there been a thought in my mind of being homesick, it would quickly have been dispelled. The streets rang to the tread of British soldiers; our uniform was everywhere. ”

“ They think that he wants to forget about the war and the trenches and the mud, and they are right. And so, after he has eaten his fill, he lights his pipe again, and sits about. And maybe, as it grows dark, he takes a bit walk into town. He walks slowly, as if he is glad that for once he need not be in a hurry, and he stops to look into shop windows as if he had never seen their stocks before, though you may be sure that, in a Scottish village, he has seen everything they have to offer hundreds of times. ”

“ They have established themselves as the masters of all time in brutality and in destruction. There is no need to call them anything but Germans. The Cloth Hall was almost human in its pitiful appeal to the senses and the imagination. The German fire had picked it to pieces, so that it stood in a stark outline, like some carcase picked bare by a vulture.
Our soldiers who were quartered nearby lived outside the town in huts. They were the men of the Highland Brigade, and the ones I had hoped and wished, above all others, to meet when I came to France. ”

“ So I conceived the idea of raising a great fund to be used for giving the maimed Scots soldiers a fresh start in life. They would be pensioned by the government. I knew that. But I knew, too, that a pension is rarely more than enough to keep body and soul together. What these crippled men would need, I felt, was enough money to set them up in some little business of their own, that they could see to despite their wounds, or to enable them to make a new start in some old business or trade, if they could do so. ”

“ I do not claim that Scotland takes the war more seriously than the rest of Britain. But I do think that she has set an example by the way she has flung herself, tooth and nail, into the mighty task that confronts us all—all of us allies who are leagued against the Hun and his plan to conquer the world and make it bow its neck in submission under his iron heel.
Let me tell you how Scotland takes this war. Let me show you the homecoming of a Scottish soldier, back from the trenches on leave. ”

“ I think it must be because all the best men in the world are in France that they feel so. But it is true, I know, because I have not heard it once, but a dozen times.
Men will dream of home and Blighty for weeks and months. They will grouse because they cannot get leave—though, half the time, they have not even asked for it, because they feel that their place is where the fighting is! And then, when they do get that longed-for leave, they are half sorry to go—and they come back like boys coming home from school! ”

“ And yet they were as brave and careless of themselves as if their wounds had been but trifles. I think the greatest exhibition of courage and nerve the world has ever seen was to be found in those hospitals in London and, indeed, all over Britain, where those wonderful lads kept up their spirits always, though they knew they could never again be sound in body.
Many and many of them there were who knew that they could never walk again the shady lanes of their hameland or the little streets of their hame towns! ”

“ For on his trip around the world he was to meet us in Australia! It was easier to leave him, easier to set out, knowing that, thinking of that!
Wonderful places I went to, surely. And wonderful things I saw and heard. But the most wonderful thing of all that I was to see or hear upon that voyage I did not dream of nor foresee. How was a mortal man to foresee? How was he to dream of it?
Could I guess that the very next time I set out from Dunoon pier the peaceful Clyde would be dotted with patrol boats, dashing hither and thither! ”

“ Some of those old, famous regiments have been wiped out half a dozen times, almost literally annihilated, since Mons. New drafts, and the addition of territorial battalions, have replenished them and kept up their strength, and the continuity of their tradition has never been broken. The men who compose a regiment may be wiped out, but the regiment survives. It is an organization, an entity, a creature with a soul as well as a body. And the Germans have no discovered a way yet of killing the soul! ”