Sir Harry Lauder

“ For the war was fought for them—fought to make it a better world for them. Men did not go out and suffer and die for the sake of any gain that they could make. They fought that the world might be a better one for children yet unborn to live in, and for the bairns they'd left behind to grow up in.
Was there, I wonder, any single thing that told more of the difference between the Germans and the allies than the way both treated women and children? The Germans looked on their women as inferior beings. ”

“ That's fine—oh, aye! But it's the thought that goes wi' the giving that makes it worth while—that makes it do real good. Thoughtless giving is almost worse than not giving at all— indeed, I think it's always really worse, not just almost worse.
When you just yield to requests without looking into them, without seeing what your siller is going to do, you may be ruining the one you're trying to help. There are times when a man must meet adversity and overcome it by his lane, if he's ever to amount to anything in this world. ”

“ There's one in Notting Hill, and Bayswater, and Fulham—aye, there a' ower the shop.
And it's an interesting thing, the way ye come to learn the sort o' thing each audience likes. I never grow tired of London music-hall audiences. A song that makes a great hit in one will get just the tamest sort of a hand in another. You get to know the folk in each hoose when you've played one or twa engagements in it; they're your friends. It's like having a new hame everywhere you go. ”

“ But still, it's no just the siller I was thinking of when I spoke of the rich rewards of a real success in the halls. An artist makes real friends there—warm-hearted, personal friends, who become interested in him and his career; who think of him, and as like as not, call him by his first name. Oh—aye, I've known artists who were offended by that! I mind a famous actor who was with me once when I was taking a walk in London, and a dozen costers, recognizing me, wished me good luck—it was just before I was tae mak' my first visit to America. ”

“ She begged for help—not for her sake alone, but for humanity. Humanity refused. And humanity paid for its refusal.
And there were other things that were wrang wi' Britain. Our cause was holy, once we began to ficht. Oh, aye—never did a nation take up the sword wi' a holier reason. We fought for humanity, for democracy, for the triumph of the plain man, frae the first. There are those will tell ye that Britain made war for selfish reasons. But it's no worth my while tae answer them. The facts speak for themselves. ”

“ We know that you can't alter human nature that way, and that when customs and institutions have grown up for thousands of years it's because most people have found them good and useful. But here's puir Jock! What interests him is how he's to buy shoes for Jean and Andy, and a new dress for the wife, and milk for the wean that's been ailing ever since she was born. He hears the bairns crying, after they're put to bed, because they're hungry. And he counts his siller wi' the gude wife, every pay day, and they try to see what can they do without themselves that the bairns may be better off. ”

“ I love my work. It's what I'd rather do, till I retire and tak' the rest I feel I've earned, than any work i' a' the world. It's brought me happiness, my work has, and friends, and my share o' siller. ”

“ Oh, aye, I've had my share of trouble. So when I'm tellin' ye this is a bonny world do not be thinkin' it's a man who's lived easily always and whose lines have been cast only in pleasant places who is talking with ye. I've as little patience as any man with those fat, sleek folk who fold their hands and roll their een and speak without knowledge of grief and pain when those who have known both rebel. But I know that God brings help and I know this much more—that he will not bring it to the man who has not begun to try to help himself, and never fails to bring it to the man who has. ”

“ There must aye be a story to be told, and a character to be portrayed, and studied, and interpreted. I always accept a song that appeals to me, even though I may not think I can use it for a long time to come. Good ideas for songs are the scarcest things in the world, I've found, and I never let one that may possibly suit me get away from me.
Often and often there'll be nae mair than just the bare idea left after we get through rebuilding and writing a new song. ”

“ We've come, of late years, we were doing it too much before the war, to give too great weight to things that were not of the spirit. Men have grown used to more luxury than it is good for man to have. Look at our clubs. Palaces, no less, some of them. What need has a man of a temple or a palace for a club. What should a club be? A comfortable place, is it no, whaur a man can go to meet his friends, and smoke a pipe, maybe—find a bit and a sup if the wife is not at hame, and he maun be eating dinner by his lane. Is there need of marble columns and rare woods?
And a man's own hoose. ”

“ I've my bit siller the noo. I've my wee hoose amang the heather at Dunoon. I've my war loan stock, and my Liberty and Victory bonds. But what I've got I've worked for and I've earned, and you've done the same for what you've got, man, and so can any other man if he but wull.
I do not believe God ever intended men to get too rich and prosperous. When they do lots of little things that go to make up the real man have to be left out, or be dropped out. And men think too much of things. For a lang time now things have been riding over men, and mankind has ceased riding over things. ”

“ Men went aboot their business, you in Australia, underneath the world, wi' no thought of trouble brewing. But other men, in Europe, thousands of miles way, were laying plans that meant death and the loss of hands and een for those braw laddies o' Australia and New Zealand that I saw—those we came to ken sae weel as the gallant Anzacs.
It makes you realize, seeing countries so far awa' frae a' the war, and yet suffering so there from, how dependent we all are upon one another. Distance makes no matter; differences make none. We cannot escape the consequences of what others do. ”

“ When I come upon the idea for a new song 'tis less often a bit of verse or a comic idea I think of first—mair like it's some odd bit of humanity, some man a wee bit different from others. He'll be a bit saft, perhaps, or mean, or generous—I'm not carin', so long as he's but different.
And there, in the pit, men showed themselves to one another, and my een and my ears were aye open in those days. I'd try to be imitating this queer character or that, sometimes, but I'd do it only for my ain pleasure. I was no thinkin', in yon days, of ever singing on the stage. ”

“ We should all be charitable—surely all men are agreed on that! We should think weel of others, and believe, sae lang as they wull let us, that they mean to do what's right and kind. We should not be bitter and suspicious and cynical. God hates a cynic.
But charity is a word that's as little understood as virtue. You'll hear folk speak of a woman as virtuous when she may be as evil and as wretched a creature as walks this earth. They mean that she's never sinned the one sin men mean when they say a lassie's not virtuous! As if just abstaining frae that ane sin could mak' her virtuous! ”

“ For me, d'ye ken, a Scots comic, to think o' London was like an ordinary man thinkin' o' takin' a trip to the North Pole. "My time's no come for that, Mac."
"Maybe no," said Mac. "But it will come—mark my words, Harry. Ye've got what London'll be as mad to hear as these folk here. Ye've a way wi' ye, Harry, my wee man!"
'Deed, and I did believe that mysel'! It's hard for a man like me to know what he can do, and say so when the time comes, wi'oot making thoughtless folk think he's conceited. An artist's feeling aboot such things is a curious one, and hard for any but artists to understand. ”

“ There's fewer quarrels among folk that speak the same tongue. Britain and America dwelt at peace for mair than a hundred years before they took the field together against a common enemy. America and Canada stand side by side—a great strong nation and a small one. ”

“ It's ane way of setting the man who works wi' his hands against him who works wi' his brain. It's no the way a man works that ought to count—it's that he works at all. Both sorts of work are needful; we canna get along without either sort.
Is no humanity a greater thing than any class? We are all human. We maun all be born, and we maun all die in the end. That much we ken, and there's nae sae much more we can be siccar of. And I've often thought that the trouble with most of our hatreds an' our envy and malice is that folk do not know one another well enough. ”

“ But now, why should we be thinking that, when the war's over, women will be wanting tae go on just as they did while it was on? Would it not be just as sensible to suppose that all the men who crossed the sea to fight for Britain would prefer to stay in uniform the rest of their lives?
Of coorse there'll be cases where women wall be thinking it a fine thing to stay at work and support themselves. A lassie that's earned her siller in the works won't feel like going back to washing dishes and taking orders about the sweeping and the polishing frae a cranky mistress. ”

“ But what have such folk to say to you and me, plain folk that we are, with our work to do, and the wife and the bairns to be thinkin' of when it comes time to tak' our ease and rest? Nothin', I say, and I'll e'en say it again and again before I'm done.
The day of the plain man has come again. The world belongs to us. We made it. It was plain men who fought the war—who deed and bled and suffered in France, and Gallipoli and everywhere where men went about the business of the war. ”

“ It's a great trick to get an audience to singing a chorus wi' ye. Not in Britain—it's no difficult there, or in a colony where there are many Britons in the hoose. But in America I must ha' been one o' the first to get an audience to singing. American audiences are the friendliest in the world, and the most liberal wi' applause ye could want to find. But they've always been a bit shy aboot singin' wi ye. ”

“ And the noo, when the wife and I gang aboot the world, there's good folk in almost every toon we come to to mak' us feel at hame. I've ne'er been one to stand off and refuse to have ought to do wi' the public that made me and keeps me. They're a' my friends, that clap me in an audience, till they prove that they're no'—and sometimes it's my best friends that seem to be unkindest to me! ”

“ There's no great wealth in Scotland. Her greatest riches are her braw sons and daughters, the Scots folk who've gone o'er a' the world. The land is full o' rocks and hills. The man who'd win a crop o' rye or oats maun e'en work for the same. And what a man works hard for he's like to value more than what comes easy to his hand. Sae it's aye been with the Scots, I'm thinking. We've had little, we Scottish folk, that's no cost us sweat and labor, o' one sort or anither. We've had to help ourselves, syne there was no one else had the time to gie us help. ”

“ But—unless she works hard, unless she has talent, she'll no keep her success. After the first excitement aboot her is worn off, she's judged by what she can do—not by what the papers once said aboot her. ”

“ Wull it sound as if I were boastin' if I talk o' what Scots did i' the war? What British city was it led the way, in proportion to its population, in subscribing to the war loans? Glasga, I'm tellin' ye, should ye no ken for yersel'. And ye'll no be needing me to tell ye hoo Scotland poured out her richest treasure, the blood of her sons, when the call came. The land that will spend lives, when the need arises, as though they were water, is the land that men ha' called mean and close! God pity the man who canna tell the difference between closeness and common sense! ”

“ It was no land where it was easy to mak' a living, wi' bread growing on one tree, and milk in a cocoanut on another, and fruits and berries enow on all sides to keep life in the body of ye, whether ye worked or no. ”

“ But it's the bairns that have aye been closest to our hearts—Mrs. Lauder's and mine. Charity can never hurt a child—can only help and improve it, when help is needed. And we've seen them, all about our hoose at Dunoon. We've known what their needs were, and the way to supply them. What we could do we've done.
Oh, it's not the siller that counts! If I could but mak' those who have it understand that! It's not charity to sit doon and write a check, no matter what the figures upon it may be. It's not charity, even when giving the siller is hard—even when it means doing without something yourself. ”

“ The workingman maun mak' more money; everyone understands that. But the only way he can safely get more siller is to earn more—to increase production as fast as he knows how.
It's the only way oot—and it's true o' both Britain and America. The more we mak' the more we'll sell. There's a market the noo for all we English speaking folk can produce. Germany is barred, for a while at least; France, using her best efforts and brains to get back upon her puir, bruised feet, canna gae in avily for manufactures for a while yet. We, in Britain, have only just begun to realize that the war is over. ”

“ But I'm no the only man i' the world feels sae aboot it; that I'm sure of. And I'll no hand oot siller to whoever comes asking. Aye, I'll never do that, and I'd think shame to masel' if I did. The only siller that's gude for a man to have, the only siller that helps him, i' the end, is that which he's worked hard to earn and get.
Oh, gi'e'n a body's sick, or in trouble o' some sair sort, that's different; he deserves help then, and it's nae the same thing. But what should I or any other man gie money to an able bodied laddie that can e'en work for what he needs, the same as you and me? ”

“ I'd no be unfair to any man. But I think that when I said hard things to the folk of a toon they were well served, as a rule, and I know that it's so that often and often folk turned to doing the things I'd blamed them for not doing even while they were most bitter against me, and most eager to see me ridden oot o' toon upon a rail, wi' a coat o' tar and feathers to cover me! ”