A MINSTREL IN FRANCE

BY

HARRY LAUDER

[ILLUSTRATION: _frontispiece_ Harry Lauder and his son, Captain JohnLauder. (see Lauder01. Jpg)]

TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED SONCAPTAIN JOHN LAUDER

First 8th, Argyle and Sutherland HighlandersKilled in France, December 28, 1916

Oh, there's sometimes I am lonelyAnd I'm weary a' the dayTo see the face and clasp the handOf him who is away. The only one God gave me, My one and only joy, My life and love were centered onMy one and only boy. 

I saw him in his infant daysGrow up from year to year, That he would some day be a manI never had a fear. His mother watched his every step, 'Twas our united joyTo think that he might be one dayMy one and only boy. 

When war broke out he buckled onHis sword, and said, "Good-bye. For I must do my duty, Dad;Tell Mother not to cry, Tell her that I'll come back again. "What happiness and joy!But no, he died for Liberty, My one and only boy. 

The days are long, the nights are drear, The anguish breaks my heart, But oh! I'm proud my one and onlyLaddie played his part. For God knows best, His will be done, His grace does me employ. I do believe I'll meet againMy one and only boy. 

by Harry Lauder

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONSHarry Lauder and His Son, Captain John Lauder

"I did not stop at sending out my recruiting band. I went out myself"

"'Carry On!' were the last words of my boy, Captain John Lauder, tohis men, but he would mean them for me, too"

"Bang! Went Sixpence"

"Harry Lauder preserves the bonnet of his son, brought to him fromwhere the lad fell, 'The memory of his boy, it is almost hisreligion. '--A tatter of plaid of the Black Watch. On a wire of aGerman entanglement barely suggests the hell the Scotch troops havegone through"

"Captain John Lauder and Comrades Before the Trenches in France"

"Make us laugh again, Harry!' Though I remember my son and want tojoin the ranks, I have obeyed"

"Harry Lauder, 'Laird of Dunoon. '"--Medal struck off by Germany when _Lusitania_ was sunk"

CHAPTER I

Yon days! Yon palmy, peaceful days! I go back to them, and they areas a dream. I go back to them again and again, and live them over. Yon days of another age, the age of peace, when no man dared even todream of such times as have come upon us. 

It was in November of 1913, and I was setting forth upon a greatjourney, that was to take me to the other side of the world before Icame back again to my wee hoose amang the heather at Dunoon. My wifewas going with me, and my brother-in-law, Tom Valiance, for they goeverywhere with me. But my son John was coming with us only toGlasgow, and then, when we set out for Liverpool and the steamer thatwas to bring us to America he was to go back to Cambridge. He wasnear done there, the bonnie laddie. He had taken his degree asBachelor of Arts, and was to set out soon upon a trip around theworld. 

Was that no a fine plan I had made for my son? That great voyage hewas to have, to see the world and all its peoples! It was proud I wasthat I could give it to him. He was--but it may be I'll tell you moreof John later in this book!

My pen runs awa' with me, and my tongue, too, when I think of my boyJohn. 

We came to the pier at Dunoon, and there she lay, the little ferrysteamer, the black smoke curling from her stack straight up to God. Ah, the braw day it was! There was a frosty sheen upon the heather, and the Clyde was calm as glass. The tops of the hills were coatedwith snow, and they stood out against the horizon like great bigsugar loaves. 

We were a' happy that day! There was a crowd to see us off. They hadcome to bid me farewell and godspeed, all my friends and myrelations, and I went among them, shaking them by the hand andthinking of the long whiles before I'd be seeing them again. And thenall my goodbys were said, and we went aboard, and my voyage had begun. 

I looked back at the hills and the heather, and I thought of all Iwas to do and see before I saw those hills again. I was going halfway round the world and back again. I was going to wonderful placesto see wonderful things and curious faces. But oftenest the thoughtcame to me, as I looked at my son, that him I would see again beforeI saw the heather and the hills and all the friends and the relationsI was leaving behind me. For on his trip around the world he was tomeet 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 andheard. But the most wonderful thing of all that I was to see or hearupon that voyage I did not dream of nor foresee. How was a mortal manto foresee? How was he to dream of it?

Could I guess that the very next time I set out from Dunoon pier thepeaceful Clyde would be dotted with patrol boats, dashing hither andthither! Could I guess that everywhere there would be boys in khaki, and women weeping, and that my boy, John----! Ah, but I'll not tellyou of that now. 

Peaceful the Clyde had been, and peaceful was the Mersey when wesailed from Liverpool for New York. I look back on yon voyage--thelast I took that way in days of peace. Next time! Destroyers to guardus from the Hun and his submarines, and to lay us a safe coursethrough the mines. And sailor boys, about their guns, watching, sweeping the sea every minute for the flash of a sneaking pirate'speriscope showing for a second above a wave!

But then! It was a quiet trip, with none but the ups and doons ofevery Atlantic crossing--more ups than doons, I'm telling you!

I was glad to be in America again, glad to see once more the friendsI'd made. They turned out to meet me and to greet me in New York, andas I travelled across the continent to San Francisco it was the same. Everywhere I had friends; everywhere they came crowding to shake meby the hand with a "How are you the day, Harry?"

It was a long trip, but it was a happy one. How long ago it seemsnow, as I write, in this new day of war! How far away are all thecommon, kindly things that then I did not notice, and that now Iwould give the world and a' to have back again!

Then, everywhere I went, they pressed their dainties upon me wheneverI sat down for a sup and a bite. The board groaned with plenty. I wasin a rich country, a country where there was enough for all, and tospare. And now, as I am writing I am travelling again across America. And there is not enough. When I sit down at table there is a card ofHerbert Hoover's, bidding me be careful how I eat and what I choose. Ay, but he has no need to warn me! Well I know the truth, and howAmerica is helping to feed her allies over there, and so must besparing herself. 

To think of it! In yon far day the world was all at peace. And nowthat great America, that gave so little thought to armies and tocannon, is fighting with my ain British against the Hun!

It was in March of 1914 that we sailed from San Francisco, on thetenth of the month. It was a glorious day as we stood on the deck ofthe old Pacific liner _Sonoma_. I was eager and glad to be off. To besure, America had been kinder to me than ever, and I was loath, in away, to be leaving her and all the friends of mine she held--oldfriends of years, and new ones made on that trip. But I was comingback. And then there was one great reason for my eagerness that fewfolk knew--that my son John was coming to meet me in Australia. I wasmissing him sore already. 

They came aboard the old tubby liner to see us off, friends by thescore. They kept me busy shaking hands. 

"Good-by, Harry, " they said. And "Good luck, Harry, " they cried. Andjust before the bugles sounded all ashore I heard a few of themcrooning an old Scots song:

"Will ye no come back again?"

"Aye, I'll come back again!" I told them when I heard them. 

"Good, Harry, good!" they cried back to me. "It's a promise! We'll bewaiting for you--waiting to welcome you!"

And so we sailed from San Francisco and from America, out through theGolden Gate, toward the sunset. Here was beauty for me, who loved itnew beauty, such as I had not seen before. They were quiet days, happy days, peaceful days. I was tired after my long tour, and thedays at sea rested me, with good talk when I craved it, and time tosleep, and no need to give thought to trains, or to think, when Iwent to bed, that in the night they'd rouse me from my sleep byswitching my car and giving me a bump. 

We came first to Hawaii, and I fell in love with the harbor ofHonolulu as we sailed in. Here, at last, I began to see the strangesights and hear the strange sounds I had been looking forward to eversince I left my wee hoose at Dunoon. Here was something that wasdifferent from anything that I had ever seen before. 

We did not stay so long. On the way home I was to stay over and givea performance in Honolulu, but not now. Our time was given up tosight seeing, and to meeting some of the folk of the islands. Theyken hospitality! We made many new friends there, short as the timewas. And, man! The lassies! You want to cuddle the first lassieyou meet when you step ashore at Honolulu. But you don't--if thewife is there!

It was only because I knew that we were to stop longer on the wayback that I was willing to leave Honolulu at all. So we sailed on, toward Australia. And now I knew that my boy was about setting out onhis great voyage around the world. Day by day I would get out the map, and try to prick the spot where he'd be. 

And I'd think: "Aye! When I'm here John'll be there! Will he benearer to me than now?"

Thinking of the braw laddie, setting out, so proud and happy, made methink of my ain young days. My father couldna' give me such a chanceas my boy was to have. I'd worked in the mines before I was John'sage. There'd been no Cambridge for me--no trip around the world as apart of my education. And I thanked God that he was letting me do somuch for my boy. 

Aye, and he deserved it, did John! He'd done well at Cambridge; hehad taken honors there. And soon he was to go up to London to readfor the Bar. He was to be a barrister, in wig and gown, my son, John!

It was of him, and of the meeting we were all to have in Australia, that I thought, more than anything else, in the long, long days uponthe sea. We sailed on from Honolulu until we came to Paga-Paga. So itis spelled, but all the natives call it Panga-Panga. 

Here I saw more and yet more of the strange and wonderful things Ihad thought upon so long back, in Dunoon. Here I saw mankind, for thefirst time, in a natural state. I saw men who wore only the figleafof old Father Adam, and a people who lived from day to day, and whomthe kindly earth sustained. 

They lived entirely from vegetables and from clear crystal streamsand upon marvelous fish from the sea. Ah, how I longed to stay inPaga-Paga and be a natural man. But I must go on. Work called me backto civilization and sorrow-fully I heeded its call and waved good-byto the natural folk of Paga-Paga!

It was before I came to Paga-Paga that I wrote a little verseinspired by Honolulu. Perhaps, if I had gone first to Paga-Paga--don't forget to put in the n and call it Panga-Panga when you say itto yourself!--I might have written it of that happy island of thenatural folk. But I did not, so here is the verse:

 I love you, Honolulu, Honolulu I love you! You are the Queen of the Sea! Your valleys and mountains Your palais and fountains Forever and ever will be dear to me!

I wedded a simple melody to those simple, heart-felt lines, and sincethen I have sung the song in pretty nearly every part of the world--and in Honolulu itself. 

Our journey was drawing to its end. We were coming to a strange landindeed. And yet I knew there were Scots folk there--where in theworld are there not? I thought they would be glad to see me, but howcould I be sure? It was a far, far cry from Dunoon and the Clyde andthe frost upon the heather on the day I had set out. 

We were to land at Sydney. I was a wee bit impatient after we hadmade our landfall, while the old _Sonoma_ poked her way along. Butshe would not be hurried by my impatience. And at last we came to theSydney Heads--the famous Harbor Heads. If you have never seen it I donot know how better to tell you of it than to say that it makes methink of the entrance to a great cave that has no roof. In we went--and were within that great, nearly landlocked harbor. 

And what goings on there were! The harbor was full of craft, bothgreat and sma'. And each had all her bunting flying. Oh, they werebraw in the sunlight, with the gay colors and the bits of flags, allfluttering and waving in the breeze!

And what a din there was, with the shrieking of the whistle and thefoghorns and the sirens and the clamor of bells. It took my breathaway, and I wondered what was afoot. And on the shore I could seethat thousands of people waited, all crowded together by the waterside. There were flags flying, too, from all the buildings. 

"It must be that the King is coming in on a visit--and I never tohave heard of it!" I thought. 

And then they made me understand that it was all for me!

If there were tears in my eyes when they made me believe that, willyou blame me? There was that great harbor, all alive with the welcomethey made for me. And on the shore, they told me, a hundred thousandwere waiting to greet me and bid me:

"Welcome, Harry!"

The tramways had stopped running until they had done with theirwelcome to inc. And all over the city, as we drove to our hotel, theyroared their welcome, and there were flags along the way. 

That was the proudest day I ha d ever known. But one thing made mewistful and wishful. I wanted my boy to be there with us. I wished hehad seen how they had greeted his Dad. Nothing pleased him more thanan honor that came to me. And here was an honor indeed--a receptionthe like of which I had never seen. 

CHAPTER II

It was on the twenty-ninth day of March, in that year of 1914 thatdawned in peace and happiness and set in blood and death and bittersorrow, that we landed in Sydney. Soon I went to work. Everywhere myaudiences showed me that that great and wonderful reception that hadbeen given to me on the day we landed had been only an earnest ofwhat was to come. They greeted me everywhere with cheers and tears, and everywhere we made new friends, and sometimes found old ones ofwhom we had not heard for years. 

And I was thinking all the time, now, of my boy. He was on his way. He was on the Pacific. He was coming to me, across the ocean, and Icould smile as I thought of how this thing and that would strikehim, and of the smile that would light up his face now and the lookof joy that would come into his eyes at the sudden sighting of somebeautiful spot. Oh, aye--those were happy days When each one broughtmy boy nearer to me. 

One day, I mind, the newspapers were full of the tale of a crime illan odd spot in Europe that none of us had ever heard of before. Youmind the place? Serajevo! Aye--we all mind it now! But then we read, and wondered how that outlandish name might be pronounced. Aforeigner was murdered--what if he was a prince, the Archduke ofAustria? Need we lash ourselves about him?

And so we read, and were sorry, a little, for the puir lady who satbeside the Archduke and was killed with him. And then we forgot it. All Australia did. There was no more in the newspapers. And my sonJohn was coming--coming. Each day he was so many hundred miles nearerto me. And at last he came. We were in Melbourne then, it was near tothe end of July. 

We had much to talk about--son, and his mother and I. It was longmonths since we had seen him, and we had seen and done so much. Thetime flew by. Maybe we did not read the papers so carefully as wemight have done. They tell me, they have told me, since then, that inEurope and even in America, there was some warning after Austriamoved on Serbia. But I believe that down there in Australia they didnot dream of danger; that they were far from understanding themeaning of the news the papers did print. They were so far away!

And then, you ken, it came upon us like a clap of thunder. One nightit began. There was war in Europe--real war. Germany had attackedFrance and Russia. She was moving troops through Belgium. And everyBriton knew what that must mean. Would Britain be drawn in? There wasthe question that was on every man's tongue. 

"What do you think, son?" I asked John. 

"I think we'll go in, " he said. "And if we do, you know, Dad--they'llsend for me to come home at once. I'm on leave from the summertraining camp now to make this trip. "

My boy, two years before, had joined the Territorial army. He was asecond lieutenant in a Territorial battalion of the Argyle andSutherland Highlanders. It was much as if he had been an officer in aNational Guard regiment in the United States. The territorial armywas not bound to serve abroad--but who could doubt that it would, andgladly. As it did--to a man, to a man. 

But it was a shock to me when John said that. I had not thought thatwar, even if it came, could come home to us so close--and so soon. 

Yet so it was. The next day was the fourth of August--my birthday. And it was that day that Britain declared war upon Germany. We sat atlunch in the hotel at Melbourne when the newsboys began to cry theextras. And we were still at lunch when the hall porter came in fromoutside. 

"Leftenant Lauder!" he called, over and over. John beckoned to him, and he handed my laddie a cablegram. 

Just two words there were, that had come singing along the wires halfway around the world. 

"Mobilize. Return. "

John's eyes were bright. They were shining. He was looking at us, buthe was not seeing us. Those eyes of his were seeing distant things. My heart way sore within me, but I was proud and happy that it wassuch a son I had to give my country. 

"What do you think, Dad?" he asked me, when I had read the order. 

I think I was gruff because I dared not let him see how I felt. Hismother was very pale. 

"This is no time for thinking, son, " I said. "It is the time foraction. You know your duty. "

He rose from the table, quickly. 

"I'm off!" he said. 

"Where?" I asked him. 

"To the ticket office to see about changing my berth. There's asteamer this week--maybe I can still find room aboard her. "

He was not long gone. He and his chum went down together and comeback smiling triumphantly. 

"It's all right, Dad, " he told me. "I go to Adelaide by train and getthe steamer there. I'll have time to see you and mother off--yoursteamer goes two hours before my train. "

We were going to New Zealand. And my boy was was going home to fightfor his country. They would call me too old, I knew--I was forty-fourthe day Britain declared war. 

What a turmoil there was about us! So fast were things moving thatthere seemed no time for thought, John's mother and I could notrealize the full meaning of all that was happening. But we knew thatJohn was snatched away from us just after he had come, and it washard--it was cruelly hard. 

But such thoughts were drowned in the great surging excitement thatwas all about us. In Melbourne, and I believe it must have been muchthe same elsewhere in Australia, folks didn't know what they were todo, how they were to take this war that had come so suddenly uponthem. And rumors and questions flew in all directions. 

Suppose the Germans came to Australia? Was there a chance of that?They had islands, naval bases, not so far away. They were Australia'sneighbors. What of the German navy? Was it out? Were there scatteredships, here and there, that might swoop down upon Australia's shoresand bring death and destruction with them?

But even before we sailed, next day, I could see that order wascoming out of that chaos. Everywhere recruiting offices were opening, and men were flocking to them. No one dreamed, really, of a longwar--though John laughed, sadly, when someone said it would be over infour months. But these Australians took no chances; they would offerthemselves first, and let it be decided later whether they were needed. 

So we sailed away. And when I took John's hand, and kissed him good-by, I saw him for the last time in his civilian clothes. 

"Well, son, " I said, "you're going home to be a soldier, a fightingsoldier. You will soon be commanding men. Remember that you can neverask a man to do something you would no dare to do yourself!"

And, oh, the braw look in the eyes of the bonnie laddie as he tiltedhis chin up to me!

"I will remember, Dad!" he said. 

And so long as a bit of the dock was in sight we could see him wavingto us. We were not to see him again until the next January, at Bedford, in England, where he was training the raw men of his company. 

Those were the first days of war. The British navy was on guard. Fromevery quarter the whimpering wireless brought news of this Germanwarship and that. They were scattered far and wide, over the SevenSeas, you ken, when the war broke out. There was no time for them tomake a home port. They had their choice, most of them, between beinginterned in some neutral port and setting out to do as much mischiefas they could to British commerce before they were caught. Caughtthey were sure to be. They must have known it. And some there were tobrave the issue and match themselves against England's great naval power. 

Perhaps they knew that few ports would long be neutral! Maybe theyknew of the abominable war the Hun was to wage. But I think it wasnot such men as those who chose to take their one chance in athousand who were sent out, later, in their submarines, to send womenand babies a to their deaths with their torpedoes!

Be that as it may, we sailed away from Melbourne. But it was inSydney Harbor that we anchored next--not in Wellington, as we, on theship, all thought it would be! And the reason was that the navy, getting word that the German cruiser _Emden_ was loose and raiding, had ordered our captain to hug the shore, and to put in at Sydneyuntil he was told it was safe to proceed. 

We were not much delayed, and came to Wellington safely. New Zealandwas all ablaze with the war spirit. There was no hesitation there. The New Zealand troops were mobilizing when we arrived, and everyrecruiting office was besieged with men. Splendid laddies they were, who looked as if they would give a great account of themselves. Asthey did--as they did. Their deeds at Gallipoli speak for them andwill forever speak for them--the men of Australia and New Zealand. 

There the word Anzac was made--made from the first letters of thesewords: Australian New Zealand Army Corps. It is a word that willnever die. 

Even in the midst of war they had time to give me a welcome thatwarmed my heart. And there were pipers with them, too, skirling atune as I stepped ashore. There were tears in my eyes again, as therehad been at Sydney. Every laddie in uniform made me think of my ownboy, well off, by now, on his way home to Britain and the duty thathad called him. 

They were gathering, all over the Empire, those of British blood. They were answering the call old Britain had sent across the sevenseas to the far corners of the earth. Even as the Scottish clansgathered of old the greater British clans were gathering now. It wasa great thing to see that in the beginning; it has comforted me manya time since, in a black hour, when news was bad and the Hun wasthundering at the line that was so thinly held in France. 

Here were free peoples, not held, not bound, free to choose theirway. Britain could not make their sons come to her aid. If they camethey must come freely, joyously, knowing that it was a right cause, aholy cause, a good cause, that called them. I think of the way theycame--of the way I saw them rising to the summons, in New Zealand, inAustralia, later in Canada. Aye, and I saw more--I saw Americansslipping across the border, putting on Britain's khaki there inCanada, because they knew that it was the fight of humanity, offreedom, that they were entering. And that, too, gave me comfortlater in dark times, for it made me know that when the right timecame America would take her place beside old Britain and brave France. 

New Zealand is a bonnie land. It made me think, sometimes, of theHielands of Scotland. A bonnie land, and braw are its people. Theymade me happy there, and they made much of me. 

At Christchurch they did a strange thing. They were selling off, atauction, a Union Jack--the flag of Britain. Such a thing had neverbeen done before, or thought of. But here was a reason and a goodone. Money was needed for the laddies who were going--needed for allsorts of things. To buy them small comforts, and tobacco, and suchthings as the government might not be supplying them. And so theyasked me to be their auctioneer. 

I played a fine trick upon them there in Christchurch. But I was notashamed of myself, and I think they have forgi'en me--those goodbodies at Christchurch!

Here was the way of it. I was auctioneer, you ken--but that was notenough to keep me from bidding myself. And so I worked them up andon--and then I bid in the flag for myself for a hundred pounds--fivehundred dollars of American money. 

I had my doots about how they'd be taking it to have a stranger carrytheir flag away. And so I bided a wee. I stayed that night inChristchurch, and was to stay longer. I could wait. Above yon town ofChristchurch stretch the Merino Hills. On them graze sheep by thethousand--and it is from those sheep that the true Merino wool comes. And in the gutters of Christchurch there flows, all day long, astream of water as clear and pure as ever you might hope to see. Andit should be so, for it is from artesian wells that it is pumped. 

Aweel, I bided that night and by next day they were murmuring in thetown, and their murmurs came to me. They thought it wasna richt for aScotsman to be carrying off their flag--though he'd bought it andpaid for it. And so at last they came to me, and wanted to be buyingback the flag. And I was agreeable. 

"Aye-I'll sell it back to ye!" I told them. "But at a price, ye ken--at a price! Pay me twice what I paid for it and it shall be yours!"

There was a Scots bargain for you! They must have thought me mean andgrasping that day. But out they went. They worked for the money. Itwas but just a month after war had been declared, and money was stillscarce and shy of peeping out and showing itself. But, bit by bit, theygot the siller. A shilling at a time they raised, by subscription. Butthey got it all, and brought it to me, smiling the while. 

"Here, Harry--here's your money!" they said. "Now give us back our flag!"

Back to them I gave it--and with it the money they had brought, to beadded to the fund for the soldier boys. And so that one flag broughtthree hundred pounds sterling to the soldiers. I wonder did thosefolk at Christchurch think I would keep the money and make a profiton that flag?

Had it been another time I'd have stayed in New Zealand gladly a longtime. It was a friendly place, and it gave us many a new friend. Buthome was calling me. There was more than the homebound tour that hadbeen planned and laid out for me. I did not know how soon my boymight be going to France. And his mother and I wanted to see himagain before he went, and to be as near him as might be. 

So I was glad as well as sorry to sail away from New Zealand'sfriendly shores, to the strains of pipers softly skirling:

"Will ye no come back again?"

We sailed for Sydney on the _Minnehaha_, a fast boat. We were glad ofher speed a day or so out, for there was smoke on the horizon thatgave some anxious hours to our officers. Some thought the Germanraider _Emden_ was under that smoke. And it would not have beensurprising had a raider turned up in our path. For just before wesailed it had been discovered that the man in charge of the principalwireless station in New Zealand was a German, and he had beeninterned. Had he sent word to German warships of the plans andmovements of British ships? No one could prove it, so he was onlyinterned. 

Back we went to Sydney. A great change had come since our departure. The war ruled all deed and thought. Australia was bound now to do herpart. No less faithfully and splendidly than New Zealand was sheengaged upon the enterprise the Hun had thrust upon the world. Everyone was eager for news, but it was woefully scarce. Those werethe black, early days, when the German rush upon Paris was beingstayed, after the disasters of the first fortnight of the war, at theMarne. 

Everywhere, though there was no lack of determination to see the warthrough to a finish, no matter how remote that might be, the feelingwas that this war was too huge, too vast, to last long. Exhaustionwould end it. War upon the modern scale could not last. So they said--in September, 1914! So many of us believed--and this is the springof the fourth year of the war, and the end is not yet, is not insight, I fear. 

Sydney turned out, almost as magnificently as when I had first landedupon Australian soil, to bid me farewell. And we embarked again uponthat same old _Sonoma_ that had brought us to Australia. Again I sawPaga-Paga and the natural folk, who had no need to toil nor spin tolive upon the fat of the land and be arrayed in the garments thatwere always up to the minute in style. 

Again I saw Honolulu, and, this time, stayed longer, and gave aperformance. But, though we were there longer, it was not long enoughto make me yield to that temptation to cuddle one of the brownlassies! Aweel, I was not so young as I had been, and Mrs. Lauder--you ken that she was travelling with me?

In the harbor of Honolulu there was a German gunboat, the _Geier_, that had run there for shelter not long since, and had still left aday or two, under the orders from Washington, to decide whether shewould let herself be interned or not. And outside, beyond the threemile limit that marked the end of American territorial waters, weretwo good reasons to make the German think well of being interned. They were two cruisers, squat and ugly and vicious in their gray warpaint, that watched the entrance to the harbor as you have seen a catwatching a rat hole. 

It was not Britain's white ensign that they flew, those cruisers. Itwas the red sun flag of Japan, one of Britain's allies against theHun. They had their vigil in vain, did those two cruisers. It wasvalor's better part, discretion, that the German captain chose. Aweel, you could no blame him! He and his ship would have been blownout of the water so soon as she poked her nose beyond Americanwaters, had he chosen to go out and fight. 

I was glad indeed when we came in sight of the Golden Gate once more, and when we were safe ashore in San Francisco. It had been anerve-racking voyage in many ways. My wife and I were torn withanxiety about our boy. And there were German raiders loose; one or twohad, so far, eluded the cordon the British fleet had flung about theworld. One night, soon after we left Honolulu, we were stopped. Wethought it was a British cruiser that stopped us, but she would onlyask questions--answering those we asked was not for her!

But we were ashore at last. There remained only the trip across theUnited States to New York and the voyage across the Atlantic home. 

CHAPTER III

Now indeed we began to get real news of the war. We heard of how thatlittle British army had flung itself into the maw of the Hun. I cameto know something of the glories of the retreat from Mons, and of howFrench and British had turned together at the Marne and had savedParis. But, alas, I heard too of how many brave men had died--hadbeen sacrificed, many and many a man of them, to the failure ofBritain to prepare. 

That was past and done. What had been wrong was being mended now. Better, indeed--ah, a thousand times better!--had Britain given heedto Lord Roberts, when he preached the gospel of readiness and prayedhis countrymen to prepare for the war that he in his wisdom hadforeseen. But it was easier now to look into the future. 

I could see, as all the world was beginning to see, that this war wasnot like other wars. Lord Kitchener had said that Britain must makeready for a three year war, and I, for one, believed him when othersscoffed, and said he was talking so to make the recruits for hisarmies come faster to the colors. I could see that this war mightlast for years. And it was then, back in 1914, in the first winter ofthe war, that I began to warn my friends in America that they mightwell expect the Hun to drag them into the war before its end. And Imade up my mind that I must beg Americans who would listen to me toprepare. 

So, all the way across the continent, I spoke, in every town wevisited, on that subject of preparedness. I had seen Britain, livingin just such a blissful anticipation of eternal peace as America thendreamed of. I had heard, for years, every attempt that was made toinduce Britain to increase her army met with the one, unvarying reply. 

"We have our fleet!" That was the answer that was made. And, be itremembered, that at sea, Britain _was_ prepared! "We have our fleet. We need no army. If there is a Continental war, we may not be drawnin at all. Even if we are, they can't reach us. The fleet is betweenus and invasion. "

"But, " said the advocates of preparedness, "we might have to send anexpeditionary force. If France were attacked, we should have to helpher on land as well as at sea. And we have sent armies to thecontinent before. "

"Yes, " the other would reply. "We have an expeditionary force. We cansend more than a hundred thousand men across the channel at shortnotice--the shortest. And we can train more men here, at home, incase of need. The fleet makes that possible. "

Aye, the fleet made that possible. The world may well thank God forthe British fleet. I do not know, and I do not like to think, whatmight have come about save for the British fleet. But I do know whatcame to that expeditionary force that we sent across the channelquickly, to the help of our sore stricken ally, France. How many ofthat old British army still survive?

They gave themselves utterly. They were the pick and the flower ofour trained manhood. They should have trained the millions who wereto rise at Kitchener's call. But they could not be held back. Theyare gone. Others have risen up to take their places--ten for one--ahundred for one! But had they been ready at the start! The bonnieladdies who would be living now, instead of lying in an unmarkedgrave in France or Flanders! The women whose eyes would never havebeen reddened by their weeping as they mourned a son or a brother ora husband!

So I was thinking as I set out to talk to my American friends and begthem to prepare--prepare! I did not want to see this country sharethe experience of Britain. If she needs must be drawn into the war--and so I believed, profoundly, from the time when I first learned thetrue measure of the Hun--I hoped that she might be ready when shedrew her mighty sword. 

They thought I was mad, at first, many of those to whom I talked. They were so far away from the war. And already the propaganda of theGermans was at work. Aye, they thought I was raving when I told themI'd stake my word on it. America would never be able to stay outuntil the end. They listened to me. They were willing to do that. Butthey listened, doubtingly. I think I convinced few of ought save thatI believed myself what I was saying. 

I could tell them, do you ken, that I'd thought, at first, as theydid! Why, over yon, in Australia, when I'd first heard that theGermans were attacking France, I was sorry, for France is a bonnieland. But the idea that Britain might go in I, even then, had laughedat. And then Britain _had_ gone in! My own boy had gone to the war. For all I knew I might be reading of him, any day, when I read of acharge or a fight over there in France! Anything was possible--aye, probable!

I have never called myself a prophet. But then, I think, I hadsomething of a prophet's vision. And all the time I was strugglingwith my growing belief that this was to be a long war, and amerciless war. I did not want to believe some of the things I knew Imust believe. But every day came news that made conviction sink indeeper and yet deeper. 

It was not a happy trip, that one across the United States. Ourfriends did all they could to make it so, but we were consumed by toomany anxieties and cares. How different was it from my journeywestward--only nine months earlier! The world had changed forever inthose nine months. 

Everywhere I spoke for preparedness. I addressed the Rotary Clubs, and great audiences turned out to listen to me. I am a Rotarianmyself, and I am proud indeed that I may so proclaim myself. It is agreat organization. Those who came to hear me were cordial, nearlyalways. But once or twice I met hostility, veiled but not to bemistaken. And it was easy to trace it to its source. Germans, wholoved the country they had left behind them to come to a New Worldthat offered them a better home and a richer life than they couldever have aspired to at home, were often at the bottom of theopposition to what I had to say. 

They did not want America to prepare, lest her weight be flung intothe scale against Germany. And there were those who hated Britain. Some of these remembered old wars and grudges that sensible folk hadforgotten long since; others, it may be, had other motives. But therewas little real opposition to what I had to say. It was more a goodnatured scoffing, and a feeling that I was cracked a wee bit, perhaps, about the war. 

I was not sorry to see New York again. We stayed there but one day, and then sailed for home on the Cunarder _Orduna_--which has sincebeen sunk, like many another good ship, by the Hun submarines. 

But those were the days just before the Hun began his career of realfrightfulness upon the sea--and under it. Even the Hun came graduallyto the height of his powers in this war. It was not until some weekslater that he startled the world by proclaiming that every ship thatdared to cross a certain zone of the sea would be sunk without warning. 

When we sailed upon the old _Orduna_ we had anxieties, to be sure. The danger of striking a mine was never absent, once we neared theBritish coasts. There was always the chance, we knew, that someGerman raider might have slipped through the cordon in the North Sea. But the terrors that were to follow the crime of the _Lusitania_ stilllay in the future. They were among the things no man could foresee. 

The _Orduna_ brought us safe to the Mersey and we landed at Liverpool. Even had there been no thought of danger to the ship, that voyage wouldhave been a hard one for us to endure. We never ceased thinking of John, longing for him and news of him. It was near Christmas, but we had smallhope that we should be able to see him on that day. 

All through the voyage we were shut away from all news. The wirelessis silenced in time of war, save for such work as the governmentallows. There is none of the free sending, from shore to ship, andship to ship, of all the news of the world, such as one grows towelcome in time of peace. And so, from New York until we neared theBritish coast, we brooded, all of us. How fared it with Britain inthe war? Had the Hun launched some new and terrible attack?

[ILLUSTRATION: "I did not stop at sending out my recruiting band. Iwent out myself. ". (See Lauder02. Jpg)]

But two days out from home we saw a sight to make us glad and end ourbrooding for a space. 

"Eh, Harry--come and look you!" someone called to me. It was early inthe morning, and there was a mist about us. 

I went to the rail and looked in the direction I was told. And there, rising suddenly out of the mist, shattering it, I saw great, grayships--warships--British battleships and cruisers. There they were, some of the great ships that are the steel wall around Britain thatholds her safe. My heart leaped with joy and pride at the sight ofthem, those great, gray guardians of the British shores, bulwarks ofsteel that fend all foemen from the rugged coast and the fair landthat lies behind it. 

Now we were safe, ourselves! Who would not trust the British navy, after the great deeds it has done in this war? For there, mind you, is the one force that has never failed. The British navy has donewhat it set out to do. It has kept command of the seas. Thesubmarines? The tin fish? They do not command the sea! Have they keptCanada's men, and America's, from reaching France?

When we landed my first inquiry was for my son John. He was well, andhe was still in England, in training at Bedford with his regiment, the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders. But it was as we had feared. Our Christmas must be kept apart. And so the day before Christmasfound us back in our wee hoose on the Clyde, at Dunoon. But wethought of little else but the laddie who was making ready to fightfor us, and of the day, that was coming soon, when we should see him. 

CHAPTER IV

It was a fitting place to train men for war, Bedford, where John waswith his regiment, and where his mother and I went to see him so soonas we could after Christmas. It is in the British midlands, butbefore the factory towns begin. It is a pleasant, smiling country, farming country, mostly, with good roads, and fields that gave theboys chances to learn the work of digging trenches--aye, and livingin them afterward. 

Bedford is one of the great school towns of England. Low, rollinghills lie about it; the river Ouse, a wee, quiet stream, runs throughit. Schooling must be in the air of Bedford! Three great schools forboys are there, and two for girls. And Liberty is in the air ofBedford, too, I think! John Bunyan was born two miles from Bedford, and his old house still stands in Elstow, a little village of oldhouses and great oaks. And it was in Bedford Jail that Bunyan wasimprisoned because he would fight for the freedom of his own soul. 

John was waiting to greet us, and he looked great. He had two starsnow where he had one before--he had been promoted to firstlieutenant. There were curious changes in the laddie I remembered. Hewas bigger, I thought, and he looked older, and graver. But that Icould not wonder at. He had a great responsibility. The lives ofother men had been entrusted to him, and John was not the man to takea responsibility like that lightly. 

I saw him the first day I was at Bedford, leading some of his men ina practice charge. Big, braw laddies they were--all in their kilts. He ran ahead of them, smiling as he saw me watching them, but turningback to cheer them on if he thought they were not fast enough. Icould see as I watched him that he had caught the habit of command. He was going to be a good officer. It was a proud thought for me, andagain I was rejoiced that it was such a son that I was able to offerto my country. 

They were kept busy at that training camp. Men were needed sore inFrance. Recruits were going over every day. What the retreat fromMons and the Battle of the Marne had left of that first heroicexpeditionary force the first battle of Ypres had come close towiping out. In the Ypres salient our men out there were hanging onlike grim death. There was no time to spare at Bedford, where menwere being made ready as quickly as might be to take their turn inthe trenches. 

But there was a little time when John and I could talk. 

"What do you need most, son?" I asked him. 

"Men!" he cried. "Men, Dad, men! They're coming in quickly. Oh, Britain has answered nobly to the call. But they're not coming infast enough. We must have more men--more men!"

I had thought, when I asked my question, of something John might beneeding for himself, or for his men, mayhap. But when he answered meso I said nothing. I only began to think. I wanted to go myself. ButI knew they would not have me--yet awhile, at any rate. And still Ifelt that I must do something. I could not rest idle while all aroundme men were giving themselves and all they had and were. 

Everywhere I heard the same cry that John had raised:

"Men! Give us men!"

It came from Lord Kitchener. It came from the men in command inFrance and Belgium--that little strip of Belgium the Hun had not beenable to conquer. It came from every broken, maimed man who came backhome to Britain to be patched up that he might go out again. Therewere scores of thousands of men in Britain who needed only the lastquick shove to send them across the line of enlistment. And after Ihad thought a while I hit upon a plan. 

"What stirs a man's fighting spirit quicker or better than the rightsort of music?" I asked myself. "And what sort of music does it bestof all?"

There can be only one answer to that last question! And so Iorganized my recruiting band, that was to be famous all over Britainbefore so very long. I gathered fourteen of the best pipers anddrummers I could find in all Scotland. I equipped them, gave them theHighland uniform, and sent them out, to travel over Britain skirlingand drumming the wail of war through the length and breadth of theland. They were to go everywhere, carrying the shrieking of the pipesinto the highways and the byways, and so they did. And I paid the bills. 

That was the first of many recruiting bands that toured Britain. Because it was the first, and because of the way the pipers skirledout the old hill melodies and songs of Scotland, enormous crowdsfollowed my band. And it led them straight to the recruitingstations. There was a swing and a sway about those old tunes that theyoung fellows couldn't resist. 

The pipers would begin to skirl and the drums to beat in a square, maybe, or near the railway station. And every time the skirling ofthe pipes would bring the crowd. Then the pipers would march, whenthe crowd was big enough, and lead the way always to the recruitingplace. And once they were there the young fellows who weren't "quiteready to decide" and the others who were just plain slackers, willingto let better men die for them, found it mighty hard to keep from goingon the wee rest of the way that the pipers had left them to make alone!

It was wonderful work my band did, and when the returns came to me Ifelt like the Pied Piper! Yes I did, indeed!

I did not travel with my band. That would have been a waste ofeffort. There was work for both of us to do, separately. I was bookedfor a tour of Britain, and everywhere I went I spoke, and urged theyoung men to enlist. I made as many speeches as I could, in everytown and city that I visited, and I made special trips to many. Ithought, and there were those who agreed with me, that I could, itmight be, reach audiences another speaker, better trained than I, nodoubt, in this sort of work, would not touch. 

So there was I, without official standing, going about, urging everyman who could to don khaki. I talked wherever and whenever I couldget an audience together, and I began then the habit of makingspeeches in the theatres, after my performance, that I have not yetgiven up. I talked thus to the young men. 

"If you don't do your duty now, " I told them, "you may live to be oldmen. But even if you do, you will regret it! Yours will be asorrowful old age. In the years to come, mayhap, there'll be a weegrandchild nestling on your knee that'll circle its little arms aboutyour neck and look into your wrinkled face, and ask you:

"'How old are you, Grandpa? You're a very old man. '

"How will you answer that bairn's question?" So I asked the youngmen. And then I answered for them: "I don't know how old I am, but Iam so old that I can remember the great war. "

"And then"--I told them, the young men who were wavering--"and thenwill come the question that you will always have to dread--when youhave won through to the old age that may be yours in safety if youshirk now! For the bairn will ask you, straightaway: 'Did _you_ fightin the great war, Grandpa? What did you do?'

"God help the man, " I told them, "who cannot hand it down as aheritage to his children and his children's children that he foughtin the great war!"

I must have impressed many a brave lad who wanted only a bit ofresolution to make him do his duty. They tell me that I and my bandtogether influenced more than twelve thousand men to join the colors;they give me credit for that many, in one way and another. I am proudof that. But I am prouder still of the way the boys who enlisted uponmy urging feel. Never a one has upbraided me; never a one has told mehe was sorry he had heard me and been led to go. 

It is far otherwise. The laddies who went because of me called metheir godfather, many of them! Many's the letter I have had fromthem; many the one who has greeted me, as I was passing through ahospital, or, long afterward, when I made my first tour in France, behind the front line trenches. Many letters, did I say? I have hadhundreds--thousands! And not so much as a word of regret in any oneof them. 

It was not only in Britain that I influenced enlistments. I preachedthe cause of the Empire in Canada, later. And here is a bit of versethat a Canadian sergeant sent to me. He dedicated it to me, indeed, and I am proud and glad that he did. 

 "ONE OF THE BOYS WHO WENT"

 Say, here now, Mate, Don't you figure it's great To think when this war is all over; When we're through with this mud, And spilling o' blood, And we're shipped back again to old Dover. When they've paid us our tin, And we've blown the lot in, And our last penny is spent; We'll still have a thought-- If it's all that we've got-- I'm one of the boys who went! And perhaps later on When your wild days are gone, You'll be settling down for life, You've a girl in your eye You'll ask bye and bye To share up with you as your wife. When a few years have flown, And you've kids of your own, And you're feeling quite snug and content; It'll make your heart glad When they boast of their dad As one of the boys who went!

There was much work for me to do beside my share in the campaign toincrease enlistments. Every day now the wards of the hospitals werefilling up. Men suffering from frightful wounds came back to bemended and made as near whole as might be. And among them there waswork for me, if ever the world held work for any man. 

I did not wait to begin my work in the hospitals. Everywhere I went, where there were wounded men, I sang for those who were strong enoughto be allowed to listen, and told them stories, and did all I couldto cheer them up. It was heartrending work, oftentimes. There weredour sights, dreadful sights in those hospitals. There were woundsthe memory of which robbed me of sleep. There were men doomed toblindness for the rest of their lives. 

But over all there was a spirit that never lagged or faltered, andthat strengthened me when I thought some sight was more than I couldbear. It was the spirit of the British soldier, triumphant oversuffering and cruel disfigurement, with his inevitable answer to anyquestion as to how he was getting on. I never heard that answervaried when a man could speak at all. Always it was the same. Twowords were enough. 

"All right!"

CHAPTER V

As I went about the country now, working hard to recruit men, toinduce people to subscribe to the war loan, doing all the things inwhich I saw a chance to make myself useful, there was now an everpresent thought. When would John go out? He must go soon. I knewthat, so did his mother. We had learned that he would not be sentwithout a chance to bid us good-by. There we were better off thanmany a father and mother in the early days of the war. Many's themother who learned first that her lad had gone to France when theytold her he was dead. And many's the lassie who learned in the sameway that her lover would never come home to be her husband. 

But by now Britain was settled down to war. It was as if war were thenatural state of things, and everything was adjusted to war and thosewho must fight it. And many things were ordered better and moremercifully than they had been at first. 

It was in April that word came to us. We might see John again, hismother and I, if we hurried to Bedford. And so we did. For once Iheeded no other call. It was a sad journey, but I was proud and gladas well as sorry. John must do his share. There was no reason why myson should take fewer risks than another man's. That was somethingall Britain was learning in those days. We were one people. We mustfight as one; one for all--all for one. 

John was sober when he met us. Sober, aye! But what a light there wasin his eyes! He was eager to be at the Huns. Tales of their doingswere coming back to us now, faster and faster. They were tales toshock me. But they were tales, too, to whet the courage and sharpenthe steel of every man who could fight and meant to go. 

It was John's turn to go. So it was he felt. And so it was his motherand I bid him farewell, there at Bedford. We did not know whether wewould ever see him again, the bonnie laddie! We had to bid him good-by, lest it be our last chance. For in Britain we knew, by then, what werethe chances they took, those boys of ours who went out. 

"Good-by, son--good luck!"

"Good-by, Dad. See you when I get leave!"

That was all. We were not allowed to know more than that he wasordered to France. Whereabouts in the long trench line he would besent we were not told. "Somewhere in France. " That phrase, that hadbeen dinned so often into our ears, had a meaning for us now. 

And now, indeed, our days and nights were anxious ones. The war wasin our house as it had never been before. I could think of nothingbut my boy. And yet, all the time I had to go on. I had to carry on, as John was always bidding his men do. I had to appear daily beforemy audiences, and laugh and sing, that I might make them laugh, andso be better able to do their part. 

They had made me understand, my friends, by that time, that it wasreally right for me to carry on with my own work. I had not thoughtso at first. I had felt that it was wrong for me to be singing atsuch a time. But they showed me that I was influencing thousands todo their duty, in one way or another, and that I was helping to keepup the spirit of Britain, too. 

"Never forget the part that plays, Harry, " my friends told me. "That's the thing the Hun can't understand. He thought the Britishwould be poor fighters because they went into action with a laugh. But that's the thing that makes them invincible. You've your part todo in keeping up that spirit. "

So I went on but it was with a heavy heart, oftentimes. John'sletters were not what made my heart heavy. There was good cheer ineveryone of them. He told us as much as the censor's rules would lethim of the front, and of conditions as he found them. They were stillbad--cruelly bad. But there was no word of complaint from John. 

The Germans still had the best of us in guns in those days, althoughwe were beginning to catch up with them. And they knew more aboutmaking themselves comfortable in the trenches than did our boys. Nowonder! They spent years of planning and making ready for this war. And it has not taken us so long, all things considered, to catch upwith them. 

John's letters were cheery and they came regularly, too, for a time. But I suppose it was because they left out so much, because there wasso great a part of my boy's life that was hidden from me, that Ifound myself thinking more and more of John as a wee bairn and as alad growing up. 

He was a real boy. He had the real boy's spirit of fun and mischief. There was a story I had often told of him that came to my mind now. We were living in Glasgow. One drizzly day, Mrs. Lauder kept John inthe house, and he spent the time standing at the parlor windowlooking down on the street, apparently innocently interested in thepassing traffic. 

In Glasgow it is the custom for the coal dealers to go along thestreets with their lorries, crying their wares, much after the mannerof a vegetable peddler in America. If a housewife wants any coal, shegoes to the window when she hears the hail of the coal man, and holdsup a finger, or two fingers, according to the number of sacks of coalshe wants. 

To Mrs. Lauder's surprise, and finally to her great vexation, coalmen came tramping up our stairs every few minutes all afternoon, eachone staggering under the weight of a hundredweight sack of coal. Shehad ordered no coal and she wanted no coal, but still the coal mencame--a veritable pest of them. 

They kept coming, too, until she discovered that little John was theauthor of their grimy pilgrimages to our door. He was signallingevery passing lorrie from the window in the Glasgow coal code!

I watched him from that window another day when he was quarrelingwith a number of playmates in the street below. The quarrel finallyended in a fight. John was giving one lad a pretty good pegging, whenthe others decided that the battle was too much his way, and jumpedon him. 

John promptly executed a strategic retreat. He retreated withconsiderable speed, too. I saw him running; I heard the patter of hisfeet on our stairs, and a banging at our door. I opened it andadmitted a flushed, disheveled little warrior, and I heard the otherboys shouting up the stairs what they would do to him. 

By the time I got the door closed, and got back to our little parlor, John was standing at the window, giving a marvelous pantomime for thebenefit of his enemies in the street. He was putting his small, clenched fist now to his nose, and now to his jaw, to indicate to theyoungsters what he was going to do to them later on. 

Those, and a hundred other little incidents, were as fresh in mymemory as if they had only occurred yesterday. His mother and Irecalled them over and over again. From the day John was born, itseems to me the only things that really interested me were the thingsin which he was concerned. I used to tuck him in his crib at night. The affairs of his babyhood were far more important to me than my ownpersonal affairs. 

I watched him grow and develop with enormous pride, and he took greatpride in me. That to me was far sweeter than praise from crownedheads. Soon he was my constant companion. He was my businessconfidant. More--he was my most intimate friend. 

There were no secrets between us. I think that John and I talked ofthings that few fathers and sons have the courage to discuss. Henever feared to ask my advice on any subject, and I never feared togive it to him. 

I wish you could have known my son as he was to me. I wish allfathers could know their sons as I knew John. He was the mostbrilliant conversationalist I have ever known. He was my idealmusician. 

He took up music only as an accomplishment, however. He did not wantto be a performer, although he had amazing natural talent in thatdirection. Music was born in him. He could transpose a melody in anykey. You could whistle an air for him, and he could turn it into alittle opera at once. 

However, he was anxious to make for himself in some other line ofendeavor, and while he was often my piano accompanist, he never hadany intention of going on the stage. 

When he was fifteen years old, I was commanded to appear before KingEdward, who was a guest at Rufford Abbey, the seat of Lord and LadySayville, situated in a district called the Dukeries, and I took Johnas my accompanist. 

I gave my usual performance, and while I was making my changes, Johnplayed the piano. At the close, King Edward sent for me, and thankedme. It was a proud moment for me, but a prouder moment came when theKing spoke of John's playing, and thanked him for his part in theentertainment. 

There were curious contradictions, it often seemed to me, in John. His uncle, Tom Vallance, was in his day, one of the very greatestfootball players in Scotland. But John never greatly liked the game. He thought it was too rough. He thought any game was a poor game inwhich players were likely to be hurt. And yet--he had been eager forthe rough game of war! The roughest game of all!

Ah, but that was not a game to him! He was not one of those who wentto war with a light heart, as they might have entered upon a footballmatch. All honor to those who went into the war so--they played agreat part and a noble part! But there were more who went to war asmy boy did--taking it upon themselves as a duty and a solemnobligation. They had no illusions. They did not love war. No! Johnhated war, and the black ugly horrors of it. But there were things hehated more than he hated war. And one was a peace won throughsubmission to injustice. 

Have I told you how my boy looked? He was slender, but he was strongand wiry. He was about five feet five inches tall; he topped his Dadby a handspan. And he was the neatest boy you might ever have hopedto see. Aye--but he did not inherit that from me! Indeed, he used toreproach me, oftentimes, for being careless about my clothes. Mycollar would be loose, perhaps, or my waistcoat would not fit justso. He'd not like that, and he would tell me so!

When he did that I would tell him of times when he was a wee boy, andwould come in from play with a dirty face; how his mother would orderhim to wash, and how he would painstakingly mop off just enough ofhis features to leave a dark ring abaft his cheeks, and above hiseyes, and below his chin. 

"You wash your face, but never let on to your neck, " I would tell himwhen he was a wee laddie. 

He had a habit then of parting and brushing about an inch of hishair, leaving the rest all topsy-turvy. My recollection of thatboyhood habit served me as a defense in later years when he wouldcall my attention to my own disordered hair. 

I linger long, and I linger lovingly over these small details, because they are part of my daily thoughts. Every day some littleincident comes up to remind me of my boy. A battered old hamper, inwhich I carry my different character make-ups, stands in my dressingroom. It was John's favorite seat. Every time I look at it I have avision of a tiny wide-eyed boy perched on the lid, watching me makeready for the stage. A lump rises, unbidden, in my throat. 

In all his life, I never had to admonish my son once. Not once. Hewas the most considerate lad I have ever known. He was alwaysthinking of others. He was always doing for others. 

It was with such thoughts as these that John's mother and I filled inthe time between his letters. They came as if by a schedule. We knewwhat post should bring one. And once or twice a letter was a postlate and our hearts were in our throats with fear. And then came aday when there should have been a letter, and none came. The wholeday passed. I tried to comfort John's mother! I tried to believemyself that it was no more than a mischance of the post. But it wasnot that. 

We could do nought but wait. Ah, but the folks at home in Britainknow all too well those sinister breaks in the chains of letters fromthe front! Such a break may mean nothing or anything. 

For us, news came quickly. But it was not a letter from John thatcame to us. It was a telegram from the war office and it told us nomore than that our boy was wounded and in hospital. 

CHAPTER VI

"Wounded and in hospital!"

That might have meant anything. And for a whole week that was all weknew. To hope for word more definite until--and unless--John himselfcould send us a message, appeared to be hopeless. Every effort wemade ended in failure. And, indeed, at such a time, private inquiriescould not well be made. The messages that had to do with the war andwith the business of the armies had to be dealt with first. 

But at last, after a week in which his mother and I almost went madwith anxiety, there came a note from our laddie himself. He told usnot to fret--that all that ailed him was that his nose was split andhis wrist bashed up a bit! His mother looked at me and I at her. Itseemed bad enough to us! But he made light of his wounds--aye, and hewas right! When I thought of men I'd seen in hospitals--men withwounds so frightful that they may not be told of--I rejoiced thatJohn had fared so well. 

And I hoped, too, that his wounds would bring him home to us--toBlighty, as the Tommies were beginning to call Britain. But hiswounds were not serious enough for that and so soon as they werehealed, he went back to the trenches. 

"Don't worry about me, " he wrote to us. "Lots of fellows out herehave been wounded five and six times, and don't think anything of it. I'll be all right so long as I don't get knocked out. "

He didn't tell us then that it was the bursting of a shell that gavehim his first wounded stripe. But he wrote to us regularly again, andthere were scarcely any days in which a letter did not come either tome or to his mother. When one of those breaks did come it was doublyhard to bear now. 

For now we knew what it was to dread the sight of a telegraphmessenger. Few homes in Britain there are that do not share thatknowledge now. It is by telegraph, from the war office, that bad newscomes first. And so, with the memory of that first telegram that wehad had, matters were even worse, somehow, than they had been before. For me the days and nights dragged by as if they would never pass. 

There was more news in John's letters now. We took some comfort fromthat. I remember one in which he told his mother how good a bed hehad finally made for himself the night before. For some reason he waswithout quarters--either a billet or a dug-out. He had to skirmisharound, for he did not care to sleep simply in Flanders mud. But atlast he found two handfuls of straw, and with them made his couch. 

"I got a good two hours' sleep, " he wrote to his mother. "And I wasperfectly comfortable. I can tell you one thing, too, Mother. If Iever get home after this experience, there'll be one in the housewho'll never grumble! This business puts the grumbling out of yourhead. This is where the men are. This is where every man ought to be. "

In another letter he told us that nine of his men had been killed. 

"We buried them last night, " he wrote, "just as the sun went down. Itwas the first funeral I have ever attended. It was most impressive. We carried the boys to one huge grave. The padre said a prayer, andwe lowered the boys into the ground, and we all sang a little hymn:'Peace, Perfect Peace!' Then I called my men to attention again, andwe marched straight back into the trenches, each of us, I dare say, wondering who would be the next. "

John was promoted for the second time in Flanders. He was a captain, having got his step on the field of battle. Promotion came swiftly inthose days to those who proved themselves worthy. And all of the fewreports that came to us of John showed us that he was a good officer. His men liked him, and trusted him, and would follow him anywhere. And little more than that can be said of any officer. 

While Captain John Lauder was playing his part across the Channel, Iwas still trying to do what I could at home. My band still travelledup and down, the length and width of the United Kingdom, skirling anddrumming and drawing men by the score to the recruiting office. 

There was no more talk now of a short war. We knew what we were infor now. 

But there was no thought or talk of anything save victory. Let thewar go on as long as it must--it could end only in one way. We hadbeen forced into the fight--but we were in, and we were in to stay. John, writing from France, was no more determined than those at home. 

It was not very long before there came again a break in John'sletters. We were used to the days--far apart--that brought no word. Not until the second day and the third day passed without a word, didMrs. Lauder and I confess our terrors and our anxiety to ourselvesand one another. This time our suspense was comparatively short-lived. Word came that John was in hospital again--at the Duke of Westminster'shospital at Le Toquet, in France. This time he was not wounded; he wassuffering from dysentery, fever and--a nervous breakdown. That was whatstaggered his mother and me. A nervous breakdown! We could not reconcilethe John we knew with the idea that the words conveyed to us. He hadbeen high strung, to be sure, and sensitive. But never had he been thesort of boy of whom to expect a breakdown so severe as this must be ifthey had sent him to the hospital. 

We could only wait to hear from him, however. And it was severalweeks before he was strong enough to be able to write to us. Therewas no hint of discouragement in what he wrote then. On the contrary, he kept on trying to reassure us, and if he ever grew downhearted, hemade it his business to see that we did not suspect it. Here is oneof his letters--like most of them it was not about himself. 

"I had a sad experience yesterday, " he wrote to me. "It was the firstday I was able to be out of bed, and I went over to a piano in acorner against the wall, sat down, and began playing very softly, more to myself than anything else. 

"One of the nurses came to me, and said a Captain Webster, of theGordon Highlanders, who lay on a bed in the same ward, wanted tospeak to me. She said he had asked who was playing, and she had toldhim Captain Lauder--Harry Lauder's son. 'Oh, ' he said, 'I know HarryLauder very well. Ask Captain Lauder to come here?'

"This man had gone through ten operations in less than a week. Ithought perhaps my playing had disturbed him, but when I went to hisbedside, he grasped my hand, pressed it with what little strength hehad left, and thanked me. He asked me if I could play a hymn. He saidhe would like to hear 'Lead, Kindly Light. '

"So I went back to the piano and played it as softly and as gently asI could. It was his last request. He died an hour later. I was veryglad I was able to soothe his last moments a little. I am very gladnow I learned the hymn at Sunday School as a boy. "

[ILLUSTRATION: "'Carry On!' were the last words of my boy, CaptainJohn Lauder, to his men, but he would mean them for me, too. " (SeeLauder03. Jpg)]

Soon after we received that letter there came what we could not butthink great news. John was ordered home! He was invalided, to besure, and I warned his mother that she must be prepared for a shockwhen she saw him. But no matter how ill he was, we would have our ladwith us for a space. And for that much British fathers and mothershad learned to be grateful. 

I had warned John's mother, but it was I who was shocked when I sawhim first on the day he came back to our wee hoose at Dunoon. Hischeeks were sunken, his eyes very bright, as a man's are who has afever. He was weak and thin, and there was no blood in his cheeks. Itwas a sight to wring one's heart to see the laddie so brought down--him who had looked so braw and strong the last time we had seen him. 

That had been when he was setting out for the wars, you ken! And nowhe was back, sae thin and weak and pitiful as I had not seen himsince he had been a bairn in his mother's arms. 

Aweel, it was for us, his mother and I, and all the folks at home, tomend him, and make him strong again. So he told us, for he had butone thing on his mind--to get back to his men. 

"They'll be needing me, out there, " he said. "They're needing men. Imust go back so soon as I can. Every man is needed there. "

"You'll be needing your strength back before you can be going back, son, " I told him. "If you fash and fret it will take you but so muchthe longer to get back. "

He knew that. But he knew things I could not know, because I had notseen them. He had seen things that he saw over and over again when hetried to sleep. His nerves were shattered utterly. It grieved me sorenot to spend all my time with him but he would not hear of it. Hedrove me back to my work. 

"You must work on, Dad, like every other Briton, " he said. "Think ofthe part you're playing. Why you're more use than any of us outthere--you're worth a brigade!"

So I left him on the Clyde, and went on about my work. But I wentback to Dunoon as often as I could, as I got a day or a night to makethe journey. At first there was small change of progress. John wouldcome downstairs about the middle of the day, moving slowly andpainfully. And he was listless; there was no life in him; noresiliency or spring. 

"How did you rest, son?" I would ask him. He always smiled when heanswered. 

"Oh, fairly well, " he'd tell me. "I fought three or four battlesthough, before I dropped off to sleep. "

He had come to the right place to be cured, though, and his motherwas the nurse he needed. It was quiet in the hills of the Clyde, andthere was rest and healing in the heather about Dunoon. Soon hissleep became better and less troubled by dreams. He could eat more, too, and they saw to it, at home, that he ate all they could stuffinto him. 

So it was a surprisingly short time, considering how bad he hadlooked when he first came back to Dunoon, before he was in goodhealth and spirits again. There was a bonnie, wee lassie who was tobecome Mrs. John Lauder ere so long--she helped our boy, too, to getback his strength. 

Soon he was ordered from home. For a time he had only light dutieswith the Home Reserve. Then he went to school. I laughed when he toldme he had been ordered to school, but he didna crack a smile. 

"You needn't be laughing, " he said. "It's a bombing school I'm goingto now-a-days. If you're away from the front for a few weeks, youfind everything changed when you get back. Bombing is going to beimportant. "

John did so well in the bombing school that he was made an instructorand assigned, for a while, to teach others. But he was impatient tobe back with his own men, and they were clamoring for him. And so, onSeptember 16, 1916, his mother and I bade him good-by again, and hewent back to France and the men his heart was wrapped up in. 

"Yon's where the men are, Dad!" he said to me, just before he started. 

CHAPTER VII

John's mother, his sweetheart and I all saw him off at Glasgow. Thefear was in all our hearts, and I think it must have been in all oureyes, as well--the fear that every father and mother and sweetheartin Britain shared with us in these days whenever they saw a boy offfor France and the trenches. Was it for the last time? Were we seeinghim now so strong and hale and hearty, only to have to go the rest ofour lives with no more than a memory of him to keep?

Aweel, we could not be telling that! We could only hope and pray! Andwe had learned again to pray, long since. I have wondered, often, andMrs. Lauder has wondered with me, what the fathers and mothers ofBritain would do in these black days without prayer to guide them andsustain them. So we could but stand there, keeping back our tears andour fears, and hoping for the best. One thing was sure; we might notlet the laddie see how close we were to greeting. It was for us to beso brave as God would let us be. It was hard for him. He was no boy, you ken, going blindly and gayly to a great adventure; he had need ofthe finest courage and devotion a man could muster that day. 

For he knew fully now what it was that he was going back to. He knewthe hell the Huns had made of war, which had been bad enough, in allconscience, before they did their part to make it worse. And he washigh strung. He could live over, and I make no doubt he did, in thosedays after he had his orders to go back, every grim and dreadfulthing that was waiting for him out there. He had been through it all, and he was going back. He had come out of the valley of the shadow, and now he was to ride down into it again. 

And it was with a smile he left us! I shall never forget that. Histhought was all for us whom he was leaving behind. His care was forus, lest we should worry too greatly and think too much of him. 

"I'll be all right, " he told us. "You're not to fret about me, any ofyou. A man does take his chances out there--but they're the chancesevery man must take these days, if he's a man at all. I'd rather betaking them than be safe at home. "

We did our best to match the laddie's spirit and be worthy of him. But it was cruelly hard. We had lost him and found him again, and nowhe was being taken from us for the second time. It was harder, muchharder, to see him go this second time than it had been at first, andit had been hard enough then, and bad enough. But there was nothingelse for it. So much we knew. It was a thing ordered and inevitable. 

And it was not many days before we had slipped back into the waythings had been before John was invalided home. It is a strange thingabout life, the way that one can become used to things. So it waswith us. Strange things, terrible things, outrageous things, that, intime of peace, we would never have dared so much as to thinkpossible, came to be the matters of every day for us. It was so withJohn. We came to think of it as natural that he should be away fromus, and in peril of his life every minute of every hour. It was noteasier for us. Indeed, it was harder than it had been before, just asit had been harder for us to say good-by the second time. But wethought less often of the strangeness of it. We were really growingused to the war, and it was less the monstrous, strange thing than ithad been in our daily lives. War had become our daily life andportion in Britain. All who were not slackers were doing their part--every one. Man and woman and child were in it, making sacrifices. Those happy days of peace lay far behind us, and we had lost ourtouch with them and our memory of them was growing dim. We were allin it. We had all to suffer alike, we were all in the same boat, wemothers and fathers and sweethearts of Britain. And so it was easierfor us not to think too much and too often of our own griefs andcares and anxieties. 

John's letters began to come again in a steady stream. He was ascareful as ever about writing. There was scarcely a day that did notbring its letter to one of the three of us. And what bonnie, braveletters they were! They were as cheerful and as bright as his firstletters had been. If John had bad hours and bad days out there hewould not let us know it. He told us what news there was, and he wasalways cheerful and bright when he wrote. He let no hint ofdiscouragement creep into anything he wrote to us. He thought ofothers first, always and all the time; of his men, and of us at home. He was quite cured and well, he told us, and going back had done himgood instead of harm. He wrote to us that he felt as if he had comehome. He felt, you ken, that it was there, in France and in thetrenches, that men should feel at home in those days, and not safe inBritain by their ain firesides. 

It was not easy for me to be cheerful and comfortable about him, though. I had my work to do. I tried to do it as well as I could, forI knew that that would please him. My band still went up and down thecountry, getting recruits, and I was speaking, too, and urging menmyself to go out and join the lads who were fighting and dying forthem in France. They told me I was doing good work; that I was agreat force in the war. And I did, indeed, get many a word and many ahandshake from men who told me I had induced them to enlist. 

"I'm glad I heard you, Harry, " man after man said to me. "You showedme what I should be doing and I've been easier in my mind ever sinceI put on the khaki!"

I knew they'd never regret it, no matter what came to them. No manwill, that's done his duty. It's the slackers who couldn't orwouldn't see their duty men should feel sorry for! It's not the ladswho gave everything and made the final sacrifice. 

It was hard for me to go on with my work of making folks laugh. Ithad been growing harder steadily ever since I had come home fromAmerica and that long voyage of mine to Australia and had seen whatwar was and what it was doing to Britain. But I carried on, and didthe best I could. 

That winter I was in the big revue at the Shaftesbury Theatre, inLondon, that was called "Three Cheers. " It was one of the gay showsthat London liked because it gave some relief from the war and madethe Zeppelin raids that the Huns were beginning to make so often nowa little easier to bear. And it was a great place for the men whowere back from France. It was partly because of them that I could goon as I did. We owed them all we could give them. And when they cameback from the mud and the grime and the dreariness of the trenches, they needed something to cheer them up--needed the sort of productionwe gave them. A man who has two days' leave in London does not wantto see a serious play or a problem drama, as a rule. He wantssomething light, with lots of pretty girls and jolly tunes and peopleto make him laugh. And we gave him that. The house was full ofofficers and men, night after night. 

Soon word came from John that he was to have leave, just afterChristmas, that would bring him home for the New Year's holidays. Hismother went home to make things ready, for John was to be marriedwhen he got his leave. I had my plans all made. I meant to build awee hoose for the two of them, near our own hoose at Dunoon, so thatwe might be all together, even though my laddie was in a home of hisown. And I counted the hours and the days against the time when Johnwould be home again. 

While we were playing at the Shaftesbury I lived at an hotel inSouthampton Row called the Bonnington. But it was lonely for methere. On New Year's Eve--it fell on a Sunday--Tom Vallance, mybrother-in-law, asked me to tea with him and his family in Clapham, where he lived. That is a pleasant place, a suburb of London on thesouthwest, and I was glad to go. And so I drove out with a friend ofmine, in a taxicab, and was glad to get out of the crowded part ofthe city for a time. 

I did not feel right that day. Holiday times were bad, hard times forme then. We had always made so much of Christmas, and here was thethird Christmas that our boy had been away. And so I was depressed. And then, there had been no word for me from John for a day or two. Iwas not worried, for I thought it likely that his mother or hissweetheart had heard, and had not time yet to let me know. But, whatever the reason, I was depressed and blue, and I could not enterinto the festive spirit that folk were trying to keep alive despitethe war. 

I must have been poor company during that ride to Clapham in thetaxicab. We scarcely exchanged a word, my friend and I. I did notfeel like talking, and he respected my mood, and kept quiet himself. I felt, at last, that I ought to apologize to him. 

"I don't know what's the matter with me, " I told him. "I simply don'twant to talk. I feel sad and lonely. I wonder if my boy is all right?"

"Of course he is!" my friend told me. "Cheer up, Harry. This is a timewhen no news is good news. If anything were wrong with him they'd letyou know. "

Well, I knew that, too. And I tried to cheer up, and feel better, sothat I would not spoil the pleasure of the others at Tom Vallance'shouse. I tried to picture John as I thought he must be--well, andhappy, and smiling the old, familiar boyish smile I knew so well. Ihad sent him a box of cigars only a few days before, and he would behanding it around among his fellow officers. I knew that! But it wasno use. I could think of John, but it was only with sorrow andlonging. And I wondered if this same time in a year would see himstill out there, in the trenches. Would this war ever end? And so theshadows still hung about me when we reached Tom's house. 

They made me very welcome, did Tom and all his family. They tried tocheer me, and Tom did all he could to make me feel better, and toreassure me. But I was still depressed when we left the house andbegan the drive back to London. 

"It's the holiday--I'm out of gear with that, I'm thinking, " I toldmy friend. 

He was going to join two other friends, and, with them, to see theNew Year in in an old fashioned way, and he wanted me to join them. But I did not feel up to it; I was not in the mood for anything ofthe sort. 

"No, no, I'll go home and turn in, " I told him. "I'm too dull tonightto be good company. "

He hoped, as we all did, that this New Year that was coming wouldbring victory and peace. Peace could not come without victory; wewere all agreed on that. But we all hoped that the New Year wouldbring both--the new year of 1917. And so I left him at the corner ofSouthhampton Row, and went back to my hotel alone. It was aboutmidnight, a little before, I think, when I got in, and one of theporters had a message for me. 

"Sir Thomas Lipton rang you up, " he said, "and wants you to speakwith him when you come in. "

I rang him up at home directly. 

"Happy New Year, when it comes, Harry!" he said. He spoke in the samebluff, hearty way he always did. He fairly shouted in my ear. "Whendid you hear from the boy? Are you and Mrs. Lauder well?"

"Aye, fine, " I told him. And I told him my last news of John. 

"Splendid!" he said. "Well, it was just to talk to you a minute thatI rang you up, Harry. Good-night--Happy New Year again. "

I went to bed then. But I did not go to sleep for a long time. It wasNew Year's, and I lay thinking of my boy, and wondering what thisyear would bring him. It was early in the morning before I slept. Andit seemed to me that I had scarce been asleep at all when there camea pounding at the door, loud enough to rouse the heaviest sleeperthere ever was. 

My heart almost stopped. There must be something serious indeed forthem to be rousing me so early. I rushed to the door, and there was aporter, holding out a telegram. I took it and tore it open. And Iknew why I had felt as I had the day before. I shall never forgetwhat I read:

"Captain John Lauder killed in action, December 28. Official. War Office. "

It had gone to Mrs. Lauder at Dunoon first, and she had sent it on tome. That was all it said. I knew nothing of how my boy had died, orwhere--save that it was for his country. 

But later I learned that when Sir Thomas Lipton had rung me up he hadintended to condole with me. He had heard on Saturday of my boy'sdeath. But when he spoke to me, and understood at once, from the toneof my voice, that I did not know, he had not been able to go on. Hisheart was too tender to make it possible for him to be the one togive me that blow--the heaviest that ever befell me. 

CHAPTER VIII

It was on Monday morning, January the first, 1917, that I learned ofmy boy's death. And he had been killed the Thursday before! He hadbeen dead four days before I knew it! And yet--I had known. Let noone ever tell me again that there is nothing in presentiment. Whyelse had I been so sad and uneasy in my mind? Why else, all throughthat Sunday, had it been so impossible for me to take comfort in whatwas said to cheer me? Some warning had come to me, some sense thatall was not well. 

Realization came to me slowly. I sat and stared at that slip ofpaper, that had come to me like the breath of doom. Dead! Dead thesefour days! I was never to see the light of his eyes again. I wasnever to hear that laugh of his. I had looked on my boy for the lasttime. Could it be true? Ah, I knew it was! And it was for this momentthat I had been waiting, that we had all been waiting, ever since wehad sent John away to fight for his country and do his part. I thinkwe had all felt that it must come. We had all known that it was toomuch to hope that he should be one of those to be spared. 

The black despair that had been hovering over me for hours closeddown now and enveloped all my senses. Everything was unreal. For atime I was quite numb. But then, as I began to realize and tovisualize what it was to mean in my life that my boy was dead therecame a great pain. The iron of realization slowly seared every wordof that curt telegram upon my heart. I said it to myself, over andover again. And I whispered to myself, as my thoughts took form, overand over, the one terrible word: "Dead!"

I felt that for me everything had come to an end with the reading ofthat dire message. It seemed to me that for me the board of life wasblack and blank. For me there was no past and there could be nofuture. Everything had been swept away, erased, by one sweep of thehand of a cruel fate. Oh, there was a past, though! And it was inthat past that I began to delve. It was made up of every memory I hadof my boy. I fell at once to remembering him. I clutched at everymemory, as if I must grasp them and make sure of them, lest they betaken from me as well as the hope of seeing him again that thetelegram had forever snatched away. 

I would have been destitute indeed then. It was as if I must fix inmy mind the way he had been wont to look, and recall to my ears everytone of his voice, every trick of his speech. There was somethingleft of him that I must keep, I knew, even then, at all costs, if Iwas to be able to bear his loss at all. 

There was a vision of him before my eyes. My bonnie Highland laddie, brave and strong in his kilt and the uniform of his country, goingout to his death with a smile on his face. And there was anothervision that came up now, unbidden. It was a vision of him lying starkand cold upon the battlefield, the mud on his uniform. And when I sawthat vision I was like a man gone mad and possessed of devils who hadstolen away his faculties. I cursed war as I saw that vision, and themen who caused war. And when I thought of the Germans who had killedmy boy a terrible and savage hatred swept me, and I longed to go outthere and kill with my bare hands until I had avenged him or they hadkilled me too. 

But then I was a little softened. I thought of his mother back in ourwee hoose at Dunoon. And the thought of her, bereft even as I was, sorrowing, even as I was, and lost in her frightful loneliness, waspitiful, so that I had but the one desire and wish--to go to her, andjoin my tears with hers, that we who were left alone to bear ourgrief might bear it together and give one to the other such comfortas there might be in life for us. And so I fell upon my knees andprayed, there in my lonely room in the hotel. I prayed to God that hemight give us both, John's mother and myself, strength to bear theblow that had been dealt us and to endure the sacrifice that He andour country had demanded of us. 

My friends came to me. They came rushing to me. Never did man havebetter friends, and kindlier friends than mine proved themselves tome on that day of sorrow. They did all that good men and women coulddo. But there was no help for me in the ministration of friends. Iwas beyond the power of human words to comfort or solace. I was gladof their kindness, and the memory of it now is a precious one, andone I would not be without. But at such a time I could not gain fromthem what they were eager to give me. I could only bow my head andpray for strength. 

That night, that New Year's night that I shall never forget, nomatter how long God may let me live, I went north. I took train fromLondon to Glasgow, and the next day I came to our wee hoose--a sad, lonely wee hoose it had become now!--on the Clyde at Dunoon, and waswith John's mother. It was the place for me. It was there that Iwanted to be, and it was with her, who must hereafter be all theworld to me. And I was eager to be with her, too, who had given Johnto me. Sore as my grief was, stricken as I was, I could comfort heras no one else could hope to do, and she could do as much for me. Webelonged together. 

I can scarce remember, even for myself, what happened there atDunoon. I cannot tell you what I said or what I did, or what wordsand what thoughts passed between John's mother and myself. But thereare some things that I do know and that I will tell you. 

Almighty God, to whom we prayed, was kind, and He was pitiful andmerciful. For presently He brought us both a sort of sad composure. Presently He assuaged our grief a little, and gave us the strengththat we must have to meet the needs of life and the thought of goingon in a world that was darkened by the loss of the boy in whom allour thoughts and all our hopes had been centred. I thanked God then, and I thank God now, that I have never denied Him nor taken His namein vain. 

For God gave me great thoughts about my boy and about his death. Slowly, gradually, He made me to see things in their true light, andHe took away the sharp agony of my first grief and sorrow, and gaveme a sort of peace. 

John died in the most glorious cause, and he died the most gloriousdeath, it may be given to a man to die. He died for humanity. He diedfor liberty, and that this world in which life must go on, no matterhow many die, may be a better world to live in. He died in a struggleagainst the blackest force and the direst threat that has appearedagainst liberty and humanity within the memory of man. And were healive now, and were he called again to-day to go out for the samecause, knowing that he must meet death--as he did meet it--he wouldgo as smilingly and as willingly as he went then. He would go as aBritish soldier and a British gentleman, to fight and die for hisKing and his country. And I would bid him go. 

I have lived through much since his death. They have not let me takea rifle or a sword and go into the trenches to avenge him. . . . Butof that I shall tell you later. 

Ah, it was not at once that I felt so! In my heart, in those earlydays of grief and sorrow, there was rebellion, often and often. Therewere moments when in my anguish I cried out, aloud: "Why? Why? Whydid they have to take John, my boy--my only child?"

But God came to me, and slowly His peace entered my soul. And He mademe see, as in a vision, that some things that I had said and that Ihad believed, were not so. He made me know, and I learned, straightfrom Him, that our boy had not been taken from us forever as I hadsaid to myself so often since that telegram had come. 

He is gone from this life, but he is waiting for us beyond this life. He is waiting beyond this life and this world of wicked war andwanton cruelty and slaughter. And we shall come, some day, his motherand I, to the place where he is waiting for us, and we shall all beas happy there as we were on this earth in the happy days before thewar. 

My eyes will rest again upon his face. I will hear his fresh youngvoice again as he sees me and cries out his greeting. I know what hewill say. He will spy me, and his voice will ring out as it used todo. "Hello, Dad!" he will call, as he sees me. And I will feel thegrip of his young, strong arms about me, just as in the happy daysbefore that day that is of all the days of my life the most terribleand the most hateful in my memory--the day when they told me that hehad been killed. 

That is my belief. That is the comfort that God has given me in mygrief and my sorrow. There is a God. Ah, yes, there is a God! Timesthere are, I know, when some of those who look upon the horridslaughter of this war, that is going on, hour by hour, feel thattheir faith is being shaken by doubts. They think of the sacrifices, of the blood that is being poured out, of the sufferings of women andchildren. And they see the cause that is wrong and foul prospering, for a little time, and they cannot understand. 

"If there is a God, " they whisper to themselves, "why does he permita thing so wicked to go on?"

But there is a God--there is! I have seen the stark horror of war. Iknow, as none can know until he has seen it at close quarters, what athing war is as it is fought to-day. And I believe as I do believe, and as I shall believe until the end, because I know God's comfortand His grace. I know that my boy is surely waiting for me. InAmerica, now, there are mothers and fathers by the scores ofthousands who have bidden their sons good-by; who water their lettersfrom France with their tears--who turn white at the sight of a telegramand tremble at the sudden clamor of a telephone. Ah, I know--I know!I suffered as they are suffering! And I have this to tell them and tobeg them. They must believe as I believe--then shall they find thepeace and the comfort that I have found. 

So it was that there, on the Clyde, John's mother and I came out ofthe blackness of our first grief. We began to be able to talk to oneanother. And every day we talked of John. We have never ceased to dothat, his mother and I. We never shall. We may not have him with usbodily, but his spirit is never absent. And each day we remember somenew thing about him that one of us can call to the other's mind. Andit is as if, when we do that, we bring back some part of him out ofthe void. 

Little, trifling memories of when he was a baby, and when he was aboy, growing up! And other memories, of later days. Often and oftenit was the days that were furthest away that we remembered best ofall, and things connected with those days. 

But I had small wish to see others. John's mother was enough for me. She and the peace that was coming to me on the Clyde. I could notbear to think of London. I had no plans to make. All that was over. All that part of my life, I thought, had ended with the news of myboy's death. I wanted no more than to stay at home on the Clyde andthink of him. My wife and I did not even talk about the future. Andno thing was further from all my thoughts than that I should everstep upon a stage again. 

What! Go out before an audience and seek to make it laugh? Sing mysongs when my heart was broken? I did not decide not to do it. I didnot so much as think of it as a thing I had to decide about. 

CHAPTER IX

And then one thing and another brought the thought into my mind, sothat I had to face it and tell people how I felt about it. There wereneighbors, wanting to know when I would be about my work again. Thatit was that first made me understand that others did not feel as Iwas feeling. 

"They're thinking I'll be going back to work again, " I told John'smother. "I canna'!"

She felt as I did. We could not see, either one of us, in our grief, how anyone could think that I could begin again where I had left off. 

"I canna'! I will not try!" I told her, again and again. "How can Itak up again with that old mummery? How can I laugh when my heart isbreaking, and make others smile when the tears are in my eyes?"

And she thought as I did, that I could not, and that no one should beasking me. The war had taken much of what I had earned, in one way oranother. I was not so rich as I had been, but there was enough. Therewas no need for me to go back to work, so far as our living wasconcerned. And so it seemed to be settled between us. Planning weleft for the future. It was no time for us to be making plans. Itmattered little enough to us what might be in store for us. We couldtake things as they might come. 

So we bided quiet in our home, and talked of John. And from everypart of the earth and from people in all walks and conditions of lifethere began to pour in upon us letters and telegrams of sympathy andsorrow. I think there were four thousand kindly folk who rememberedus in our sorrow, and let us know that they could think of us inspite of all the other care and trouble that filled the world inthose days. Many celebrated names were signed to those letters andtelegrams, and there were many, too, from simple folk whose verynames I did not know, who told me that I had given them cheer andcourage from the stage, and so they felt that they were friends ofmine, and must let me know that they were sorry for the blow that hadbefallen me. 

Then it came out that I meant to leave the stage. They sent word fromLondon, at last, to ask when they might look for me to be back at theShaftesbury Theatre. And when they found what it was in my mind to doall my friends began to plead with me and argue with me. They said itwas my duty to myself to go back. 

"You're too young a man to retire, Harry, " they said. "What would youdo? How could you pass away your time if you had no work to do? Menwho retire at your age are always sorry: They wither away and die ofdry rot. "

"There'll be plenty for me to be doing, " I told them. "I'll not beidle. "

But still they argued. I was not greatly moved. They were thinking ofme, and their arguments appealed to my selfish interests and needs, and just then I was not thinking very much about myself. 

And then another sort of argument came to me. People wrote to me, menand women, who, like me, had lost their sons. Their letters broughtthe tears to my eyes anew. They were tender letters, and beautifulletters, most of them, and letters to make proud and glad, as well assad, the heart of the man to whom they were written. I will not copythose letters down here, for they were written for my eyes, and forno others. But I can tell you the message that they all bore. 

"Don't desert us now, Harry!" It was so that they put it, one afteranother, in those letters. "Ah, Harry--there is so much woe and griefand pain in the world that you, who can, must do all that is in yourpower to make them easier to bear! There are few forces enough in theworld to-day to make us happy, even for a little space. Come back tous, Harry--make us laugh again!"

It was when those letters came that, for the first time, I saw that Ihad others to consider beside myself, and that it was not only my ownwishes that I might take into account. I talked to my wife, and I toldher of those letters, and there were tears in both our eyes as wethought about those folks who knew the sorrow that was in our hearts. 

"You must think about them, Harry, " she said. 

And so I did think about them. And then I began to find that therewere others still about whom I must think. There were three hundredpeople in the cast of "Three Cheers, " at the Shaftesbury Theatre, inLondon. And I began to hear now that unless I went back the showwould be closed, and all of them would be out of work. At that seasonof the year, in the theatrical world, it would be hard for them tofind other engagements, and they were not, most of them, like me, able to live without the salaries from the show. They wrote to me, many of them, and begged me to come back. And I knew that it was adesperate time for anyone to be without employment. I had to thinkabout those poor souls. And I could not bear the thought that I mightbe the means, however innocent, of bringing hardship and sufferingupon others. It might not be my fault, and yet it would lie alwaysupon my conscience. 

Yet, even with all such thoughts and prayers to move me, I did notsee how I could yield to them and go back. Even after I had come tothe point of being willing to go back if I could, I did not think Icould go through with it. I was afraid I would break down if I triedto play my part. I talked to Tom Valiance, my brother-in-law. 

"It's very well to talk, Tom, " I said. "But they'd ring the curtaindown on me! I can never do it!"

"You must!" he said. "Harry, you must go back! It's your duty! Whatwould the boy be saying and having you do? Don't you remember, Harry?John's last words to his men were--'Carry On!' That's what it isthey're asking you to do, too, Harry, and it's what John would havewanted. It would be his wish. "

And I knew that he was right. Tom had found the one argument thatcould really move me and make me see my duty as the others did. So Igave in. I wired to the management that I would rejoin the cast of"Three Cheers, " and I took the train to London. And as I rode in thetrain it seemed to me that the roar of the wheels made a refrain, andI could hear them pounding out those two words, in my boy's voice:"Carry On!"

But how hard it was to face the thought of going before an audienceagain! And especially in such circumstances. There were to be gayetyand life and light and sparkle all about me. There were to belassies, in their gay dresses, and the merriest music in London. Andmy part was to be merry, too, and to make the great audience laughthat I would see beyond the footlights. And I thought of the Merrymanin The Yeomen of the Guard, and that I must be a little like him, though my cause for grief was different. 

But I had given my word, and though I longed, again and again, as Irode toward London, and as the time drew near for my performance, toback out, there was no way that I could do so. And Tom Valiance didhis best to cheer me and hearten me, and relieve my nervousness. Ihave never been so nervous before. Not since I made my firstappearance before an audience have I been so near to stage fright. 

I would not see anyone that night, when I reached the theatre. Istayed in my dressing-room, and Tom Valiance stayed with me, and kepteveryone who tried to speak with me away. There were good folk, andkindly folk, friends of mine in the company, who wanted to shake myhand and tell me how they felt for me, but he knew that it was betterfor them not to see me yet, and he was my bodyguard. 

"It's no use, Tom, " I said to him, again and again, after I was dressedand in my make up. I was cold first, and then hot. And I trembled inevery limb. "They'll have to ring the curtain down on me. "

"You'll be all right, Harry, " he said. "So soon as you're out there!Remember, they're all your friends!"

But he could not comfort me. I felt sure that it was a foolish thingfor me to try to do; that I could not go through with it. And I wassorry, for the thousandth time, that I had let them persuade me tomake the effort. 

A call boy came at last to warn me that it was nearly time for myfirst entrance. I went with Tom into the wings, and stood there, waiting. I was pale under my make up, and I was shaking and tremblinglike a baby. And even then I wanted to cry off. But I remembered myboy, and those last words of his--"Carry On!" I must not fail himwithout at least trying to do what he would have wanted me to do!

My entrance was with a lilting little song called "I Love My Jean. "And I knew that in a moment my cue would be given, and I would hearthe music of that song beginning. I was as cold as if I had been inan icy street, although it was hot. I thought of the two thousandpeople who were waiting for me beyond the footlights--the house was abig one, and it was packed full that night. 

"I can't, Tom--I can't!" I cried. 

But he only smiled, and gave me a little push as my cue came and themusic began. I could scarcely hear it; it was like music a greatdistance off, coming very faintly to my ears. And I said a prayer, inside. I asked God to be good to me once more, and to give mestrength, and to bear me through this ordeal that I was facing, as hehad borne me through before. And then I had to step into the fullglare of the great lights. 

I felt as if I were in a dream. The people were unreal--stretchingaway from me in long, sloping rows, their white faces staring at mefrom the darkness beyond the great lights. And there was a littleripple that ran through them as I went out, as if a great manypeople, all at the same moment, had caught their breath. 

I stood and faced them, and the music sounded in my ears. For just amoment they were still. And then they were shaken by a mighty roar. They cheered and cheered and cheered. They stood up and waved to me. I could hear their voices rising, and cries coming to me, with my ownname among them. 

"Bravo, Harry!" I heard them call. And then there were more cheers, and a great clapping of hands. And I have been told that everywherein that great audience men and women were crying, and that the tearswere rolling down their cheeks without ever an attempt by any of themto hide them or to check them. It was the most wonderful and the mostbeautiful demonstration I have ever seen, in all the years that Ihave been upon the stage. Many and many a time audiences have beengood to me. They have clapped me and they have cheered me, but neverhas an audience treated me as that one did. I had to use every bit ofstrength and courage that I had to keep from breaking down. 

To this day I do not know how I got through with that first song thatnight. I do not even know whether I really sang it. But I think that, somehow, blindly, without knowing what I was doing, I did getthrough; I did sing it to the end. Habit, the way that I was used toit, I suppose, helped me to carry on. And when I left the stage thewhole company, it seemed to me, was waiting for me. They were cryingand laughing, hysterically, and they crowded around me, and kissedme, and hugged me, and wrung my hand. 

It seemed that the worst of my ordeal was over. But in the last act Ihad to face another test. 

There was a song for me in that last act that was the great song inLondon that season. I have sung it all over America since then "TheLaddies Who Fought and Won. " It has been successful everywhere--thatsong has been one of the most popular I have ever sung. But it was acruel song for me to sing that night!

It was the climax of the last act and of the whole piece. In "ThreeCheers" soldiers were brought on each night to be on the stage behindme when I sang that song. They were from the battalion of the ScotsGuards in London, and they were real soldiers, in uniform. Differentmen were used each night, and the money that was paid to the Tommiesfor their work went into the company fund of the men who appeared, and helped to provide them with comforts and luxuries. And the waroffice was glad of the arrangement, too, for it was a great song tostimulate recruiting. 

There were two lines in the refrain that I shall never forget. And itwas when I came to those two lines that night that I did, indeed, break down. Here they are:

 "When we all gather round the old fireside And the fond mother kisses her son--"

Were they not cruel words for me to have to sing, who knew that hismother could never kiss my son again? They brought it all back to me!My son was gone--he would never come back with the laddies who hadfought and won!

For a moment I could not go on. I was choking. The tears were in myEyes, and my throat was choked with sobs. But the music went on, andthe chorus took up the song, and between the singers and the orchestrathey covered the break my emotion had made. And in a little space I wasable to go on with the next verse, and to carry on until my part in theshow was done for the night. But I still wondered how it was that theyhad not had to ring down the curtain upon me, and that Tom Valiance andthe others had been right and I the one that was wrong!

Ah, weel, I learned that night what many and many another Briton hadlearned, both at home and in France--that you can never know what youcan do until you have to find it out! Yon was the hardest task ever Ihad to undertake, but for my boy's sake, and because they had made meunderstand that it was what he would have wanted me to do, I gotthrough with it. 

They rose to me again, and cheered and cheered, after I had finishedsinging "The Laddies Who Fought and Won. " And there were those whocalled to me for a speech, but so much I had to deny them, goodthough they had been to me, and much as I loved them for the way theyhad received me. I had no words that night to thank them, and I couldnot have spoken from that stage had my life depended upon it. I couldonly get through, after my poor fashion, with my part in the show. 

But the next night I did pull myself together, and I was able to saya few words to the audience--thanks that were simply and badly put, it may be, but that came from the bottom of my overflowing heart. 

CHAPTER X

I had not believed it possible. But there I was, not only back atwork, back upon the stage to which I thought I had said good-byforever, but successful as I had thought I could never be again. Andso I decided that I would remain until the engagement of "ThreeCheers" closed. But my mind was made up to retire after thatengagement. I felt that I had done all I could, and that it was timefor me to retire, and to cease trying to make others laugh. There wasno laughter in my heart, and often and often, that season, as Icracked my merriest jokes, my heart was sore and heavy and the tearswere in my eyes. 

But slowly a new sort of courage came to me. I was able to meet myfriends again, and to talk to them, of myself and of my boy. I metbrother officers of his, and I heard tales of him that gave me a newand even greater pride in him than I had known before. And my friendsbegged me to carry on in every way. 

"You were doing a great work and a good work, Harry, " they said. "Theboy would want you to carry on. Do not drop all the good you were doing. "

I knew that they were right. To sit alone and give way to my griefwas a selfish thing to do at such a time. If there was work for me todo, still, it was my duty to try to do it, no matter how greatly Iwould have preferred to rest quiet. At this time there was great needof making the people of Britain understand the need of foodconservation, and so I began to go about London, making speeches onthat subject wherever people could be gathered together to listen tome. They told me I did some good. And at least, I tried. 

And before long I was glad, indeed, that I had listened to thecounsel of my friends and had not given way to my selfish desire tonurse my grief in solitude and silence. For I realized that there wasa real work for me to do. Those folk who had begged me to do my partin lightening the gloom of Britain had been right. There was so muchsorrow and grief in the land that it was the duty of all who coulddispel it, if even for a little space, to do what they could. Iremembered that poem of Ella Wheeler Wilcox--"Laugh and the WorldLaughs With You!" And so I tried to laugh, and to make the part ofthe world that I chanced to be in laugh with me. For I knew there wasweeping and sorrowing enough. 

And all the time I felt that the spirit of my boy was with me, andthat he knew what I was doing, and why, and was glad, and that heunderstood that if I laughed it was not because I thought less oftenof him, or missed him less keenly and bitterly than I had done fromthe very beginning. 

There was much praise for my work from high officials, and it made meproud and glad to know that the men who were at the head of Britain'seffort in the war thought I was being of use. One time I spoke withMr. Balfour, the former Prime Minister, at Drury Lane Theatre to oneof the greatest war gatherings that was ever held in London. 

And always and everywhere there were the hospitals, full of theladdies who had been brought home from France. Ah, but they werepitiful, those laddies who had fought, and won, and been brought backto be nursed back to the life they had been so bravely willing to laydown for their country! But it was hard to look at them, and know howthey were suffering, and to go through with the task I had set myselfof cheering them and comforting them in my own way! There were timeswhen it was all I could do to get through with my program. 

They never complained. They were always bright and cheerful, nomatter how terrible their wounds might be; no matter what sacrificesthey had made of eyes and limbs. There were men in those hospitalswho knew that they were going out no more than half the men they hadbeen. And yet they were as brave and careless of themselves as iftheir wounds had been but trifles. I think the greatest exhibition ofcourage and nerve the world has ever seen was to be found in thosehospitals in London and, indeed, all over Britain, where thosewonderful lads kept up their spirits always, though they knew theycould never again be sound in body. 

Many and many of them there were who knew that they could never walkagain the shady lanes of their hameland or the little streets oftheir hame towns! Many and many more there were who knew that, evenafter the bandages were taken from about their eyes, they would nevergaze again upon the trees and the grass and the flowers growing upontheir native hillsides; that never again could they look upon thefaces of their loved ones. They knew that everlasting darkness wastheir portion upon this earth. 

But one and all they talked and laughed and sang! And it was thereamong the hospitals, that I came to find true courage and good cheer. It was not there that I found talk of discouragement, and longing forany early peace, even though the final victory that could alone bringa real peace and a worthy peace had not been won. No--not in thehospitals could I find and hear such talk as that! For that I had tolisten to those who had not gone--who had not had the courage and thenerve to offer all they had and all they were and go through thathell of hells that is modern war!

I saw other hospitals besides the ones in London. After a time, whenI was very tired, and far from well, I went to Scotland for a spaceto build myself up and get some rest. And in the far north I wentfishing on the River Dee, which runs through the Durrie estate. Andwhile I was there the Laird heard of it. And he sent word to tell meof a tiny hospital hard by where a guid lady named Mrs. Baird washelping to nurse disabled men back to health and strength. He askedme would I no call upon the men and try to give them a little cheer. And I was glad to hear of the chance to help. 

I laid down my rod forthwith, for here was better work than fishing--and in my ain country. They told me the way that I should go, andthat this Mrs. Baird had turned a little school house into aconvalescent home, and was doing a fine and wonderful work for theladdies she had taken in. So I set out to find it, and I walked alonga country road to come to it. 

Soon I saw a man, strong and hale, as it seemed, pushing a wheelchair along the road toward me. And in the chair sat a man, and Icould see at once that he had lost the use of his legs--that he wasparalyzed from the waist down. It was the way he called to him whowas pushing him that made me tak notice. 

"Go to the right, mon!" he would call. Or, a moment later, "To theleft now. "

And then they came near to the disaster. The one who was pushing washeading straight for the side of the road, and the one in the chairbellowed out to him:

"Whoa there!" he called. "Mon--ye're taking me into the ditch! Wherewould ye be going with me, anyway?"

And then I understood. The man who was pushing was blind! They hadbut the one pair of eyes and the one pair of legs between the two ofthem, and it was so that they contrived to go out together withouttaking help from anyone else! And they were both as cheerful as weeladdies out for a lark. It was great sport for them. And it was theywho gave me my directions to get to Mrs. Baird's. 

They disputed a little about the way. The blind man, puir laddie, thought he knew. And he did not--not quite. But he corrected the manwho could see but could not walk. 

"It's the wrong road you're giving the gentleman, " he said. "It's thesecond turn he should be taking, not the first. "

And the other would not argue with him. It was a kindly thing, theway he kept quiet, and did but wink at me, that I might know thetruth. He trusted me to understand and to know why he was acting ashe was, and I blessed him in my heart for his thoughtfulness. And soI thanked them, and passed on, and reached Mrs. Baird's, and found aroyal welcome there, and when they asked me if I would sing for thesoldiers, and I said it was for that that I had come, there weretears in Mrs. Baird's eyes. And so I gave a wee concert there, andsang my songs, and did my best to cheer up those boys. 

Ah, my puir, brave Scotland--my bonnie little Scotland!

No part of all the United Kingdom, and, for that matter, no part ofthe world, has played a greater part, in proportion to its size andits ability, than has Scotland in this war for humanity against theblack force that has attacked it. Nearly a million men has Scotlandsent to the army--out of a total population of five million! One infive of all her people have gone. No country in the world has evermatched that record. Ah, there were no slackers in Scotland! And theyare still going--they are still going! As fast as they are oldenough, as fast as restrictions are removed, so that men are takenwho were turned back at first by the recruiting officers, as fast asmen see to it that some provision is made for those they must leavebehind them, they are putting on the King's uniform and going outagainst the Hun. My country, my ain Scotland, is not great in area. It is not a rich country in worldly goods or money. But it is bigwith a bigness beyond measurement, it is rich beyond the wildestdreams of avarice, in patriotism, in love of country, and in bravery. 

We have few young men left in Scotland. It is rarely indeed that in aScottish village, in a glen, even in a city, you see a young man inthese days. Only the very old are left, and the men of middle age. And you know why the young men you see are there. They cannot go, because, although their spirit is willing their flesh is too weak tolet them go, for one reason or another. Factory and field and forge--all have been stripped to fill the Scottish regiments and keep themat their full strength. And in Scotland, as in England, women havestepped in to fill the places their men have left vacant. This war isnot to be fought by men alone. Women have their part to play, andthey are playing it nobly, day after day. The women of Scotland haveseen their duty; they have heard their country's call, and they haveanswered it. 

You will find it hard to discover anyone in domestic service to-dayin Scotland. The folk who used to keep servants sent them packinglong since, to work where they would be of more use to their country. The women of each household are doing the work about the house, little though they may have been accustomed to such tasks in the daysof peace. And they glory and take pride in the knowledge that theyare helping to fill a place in the munitions factories or in someother necessary war work. 

[ILLUSTRATION: "Bang! went sixpence. " HARRY LAUDER BUYING HIS BIT OFWHITE HEATHER (See Lauder04. Jpg)]

Do not look along the Scottish roads for folk riding in motor carsfor pleasure. Indeed, you will waste your time if you look forpleasure-making of any sort in Scotland to-day. Scotland has goneback to her ancient business of war, and she is carrying it on in themost businesslike way, sternly and relentlessly. But that is true allover the United Kingdom; I do not claim that Scotland takes the warmore seriously than the rest of Britain. But I do think that she hasset an example by the way she has flung herself, tooth and nail, intothe mighty task that confronts us all--all of us allies who areleagued against the Hun and his plan to conquer the world and make itbow its neck in submission under his iron heel. 

Let me tell you how Scotland takes this war. Let me show you thehomecoming of a Scottish soldier, back from the trenches on leave. Why, he is received with no more ceremony than if he were coming homefrom his day's work!

Donald--or Jock might be his name, or Andy!--steps from the train athis old hame town. He is fresh from the mud of the Flanders trenches, and all his possessions and his kit are on his back, so that he ismore like a beast of burden than the natty creature old traditiontaught us to think a soldier must always be. On his boots there arestill dried blobs of mud from some hole in France that is like acrater in hell. His uniform will be pretty sure to be dirty, too, andtorn, and perhaps, if you looked closely at it, you would see stainsupon it that you might not be far wrong in guessing to be blood. 

Leave long enough to let him come home to Scotland--a long road it isfrom France to Scotland these days!--has been a rare thing for Jock. He will have been campaigning a long time to earn it--monthscertainly, and maybe even years. Perhaps he was one of these who wentout first. He may have been mentioned in dispatches: there may be adistinguished conduct medal hidden about him somewhere--worth all theiron crosses the Kaiser ever gave! He has seen many a bloody field, be sure of that. He has heard the sounding of the gas alarm, andmaybe got a whiff of the dirty poison gas the Huns turned looseagainst our boys. He has looked Death in the face so often that hehas grown used to him. But now he is back in Scotland, safe andsound, free from battle and the work of the trenches for a space, home to gain new strength for his next bout with Fritz across thewater. 

When he gets off the train Jock looks about him, from force of habit. But no one has come to the station to meet him, and he looks as ifthat gave him neither surprise nor concern. For a minute, perhaps, hewill look around him, wondering, I think, that things are so much asthey were, fixing in his mind the old familiar scenes that havebrought him cheer so often in black, deadly nights in the trenches orin lonely billets out there in France. And then, quietly, and as ifhe were indeed just home from some short trip, he shifts his pack, sothat it lies comfortably across his back, and trudges off. Therewould be cabs around the station, but it would not come into Jock'smind to hail one of the drivers. He has been used to using Shank'sMare in France when he wanted to go anywhere, and so now he sets offquietly, with his long, swinging soldier's stride. 

As he walks along he is among scenes familiar to him since hisboyhood. You house, you barn, yon wooded rise against the sky arelandmarks for him. And he is pretty sure to meet old friends. Theynod to him, pleasantly, and with a smile, but there is no excitement, no strangeness, in their greeting. For all the emotion they show, these folk to whom he has come back, as from the grave, they mighthave seen him yesterday, and the day before that, and the war neverhave been at all. And Jock thinks nothing of it that they are notmore excited about him. You and I may be thinking of Jock as a hero, but that is not his idea about himself. He is just a Tommy, home onleave from France--one of a hundred thousand, maybe. And if hethought at all about the way his home folk greeted him it would bejust so--that he could not expect them to be making a fuss about onesoldier out of so many. And, since he, Jock, is not much excited, notmuch worked up, because he is seeing these good folk again, he doesnot think it strange that they are not more excited about the sightof him. It would be if they did make a fuss over him, and welcome himloudly, that he would think it strange!

And at last he comes to his own old home. He will stop and lookaround a bit. Maybe he has seen that old house a thousand times outthere, tried to remember every line and corner of it. And maybe, ashe looks down the quiet village street, he is thinking of howdifferent France was. And, deep down in his heart, Jock is glad thateverything is as it was, and that nothing has been changed. He couldnot tell you why; he could not put his feeling into words. But it isthere, deep down, and the truer and the keener because it is so deep. Ah, Jock may take it quietly, and there may be no way for him to showhis heart, but he is glad to be home!

And at his gate will come, as a rule, Jock's first real greeting. Adog, grown old since his departure, will come out, wagging his tail, and licking the soldier's hand. And Jock will lean down, and give hisold dog a pat. If the dog had not come he would have been surprisedand disappointed. And so, glad with every fibre of his being, Jockgoes in, and finds father and mother and sisters within. They look upat his coming, and their happiness shines for a moment in their eyes. But they are not the sort of people to show their emotions or make afuss. Mother and girls will rise and kiss him, and begin to take hisgear, and his father will shake him by the hand. 

"Well, " the father will ask, "how are you getting along, lad?"

And--"All right, " he will answer. That is the British soldier'sanswer to that question, always and everywhere. 

Then he sits down, happy and at rest, and lights his pipe, maybe, andlooks about the old room which holds so many memories for him. Andsupper will be ready, you may be sure. They will not have much tosay, these folk of Jock's, but if you look at his face as dish afterdish is set before him, you will understand that this is a feast thathas been prepared for him. They may have been going without all sortsof good things themselves, but they have contrived, in some fashion, to have them all for Jock. All Scotland has tightened its belt, anddone its part, in that fashion, as in every other, toward the winningof the war. But for the soldiers the best is none too good. AndJock's folk would rather make him welcome so, by proof that takes nowords, than by demonstrations of delight and of affection. 

As he eats, they gather round him at the board, and they tell him allthe gossip of the neighborhood. He does not talk about the war, and, if they are curious--probably they are not!--they do not ask himquestions. They think that he wants to forget about the war and thetrenches and the mud, and they are right. And so, after he has eatenhis fill, he lights his pipe again, and sits about. And maybe, as itgrows dark, he takes a bit walk into town. He walks slowly, as if heis glad that for once he need not be in a hurry, and he stops to lookinto shop windows as if he had never seen their stocks before, thoughyou may be sure that, in a Scottish village, he has seen everythingthey have to offer hundreds of times. 

He will meet friends, maybe, and they will stop and nod to him. Andperhaps one of six will stop longer. 

"How are you getting on, Jock?" will be the question. 

"All right!" Jock will say. And he will think the question ratherfatuous, maybe. If he were not all right, how should he be there? Butif Jock had lost both legs, or an arm, or if he had been blinded, that would still be his answer. Those words have become a sort ofslogan for the British army, that typify its spirit. 

Jock's walk is soon over, and he goes home, by an old path that isknown to him, every foot of it, and goes to bed in his own old bed. He has not broken into the routine of the household, and he sees noreason why he should. And the next day it is much the same for him. He gets up as early as he ever did, and he is likely to do a few oddbits of work that his father has not had time to come to. He talkswith his mother and the girls of all sorts of little, commonplacethings, and with his father he discusses the affairs of thecommunity. And in the evening he strolls down town again, andexchanges a few words with friends, and learns, perhaps, of boys whohaven't been lucky enough to get home on leave--of boys with whom hegrew up, who have gone west. 

So it goes on for several days, each day the same. Jock is quietlyhappy. It is no task to entertain him: he does not want to beentertained. The peace and quiet of home are enough for him; they arechange enough from the turmoil of the front and the ceaseless grindof the life in the army in France. 

And then Jock's leave nears its end, and it is time for him to goback. He tells them, and he makes his few small preparations. Theywill have cleaned his kit for him, and mended some of his things thatneeded mending. And when it is time for him to go they help him onwith his pack and he kisses his mother and the girls good-by, andshakes hands with his father. 

"Well, good-by, " Jock says. He might be going to work in a factory afew miles off. "I'll be all right. Good-by, now. Don't you cry, now, mother, and you, Jeannie and Maggie. Don't you fash yourselves aboutme. I'll be back again. And if I shouldn't come back--why, I'll beall right. "

So he goes, and they stand looking after him, and his old dog wonderswhy he is going, and where, and makes a move to follow him, maybe. But he marches off down the street, alone, never looking back, and iswaiting when the train comes. It will be full of other Jocks andAndrews and Tams, on their way back to France, like him, and he willnod to some he knows as he settles down in the carriage. 

And in just two days Jock will have traveled the length of England, and crossed the channel, and ridden up to the front. He will havereported himself, and have been ordered, with his company, into thetrenches. And on the third night, had you followed him, you might seehim peering over the parapet at the lines of the Hun, across No Man'sLand, and listening to the whine of bullets and the shriek of shellsover his head, with a star shell, maybe, to throw a green light uponhim for a moment. 

So it is that a warrior comes and that a warrior goes in a land wherewar is war; in a land where war has become the business of all everyday, and has settled down into a matter of routine. 

CHAPTER XI

I could not, much as I should in many ways have liked to do so, prolong my stay in Scotland. The peace and the restfulness of theHighlands, the charm of the heather and the hills, the long, lazydays with my rod, whipping some favorite stream--ah, they made mehappy for a moment, but they could not make me forget! My duty calledme back, and the thought of war, and suffering, and there weremoments when it seemed to me that nothing could keep me from plungingagain into the work I had set out to do. 

In those days I was far too restless to be taking my ease at home, inmy wee hoose at Dunoon. A thousand activities called me. The rest hadbeen necessary; I had had to admit that, and to obey my doctor, for Ihad been feeling the strain of my long continued activity, piled up, as it was, on top of my grief and care. And yet I was eager to be offand about my work again. 

I did not want to go back to the same work I had been doing. No! Iwas still a young man. I was younger than men and officers who weretaking their turn in the trenches. I was but forty-six years old, andthere was a lot of life and snap in the old dog yet! My life had beenrightly lived. As a young man I had worked in a pit, ye ken, and thathad given me a strength in my back and my legs that would have servedme well in the trenches. War, these days, means hard work as well asfighting--more, indeed. War is a business, a great industry, now. There is all manner of work that must be done at the front and rightbehind it. Aye, and I was eager to be there and to be doing my shareof it--and not for the first time. 

Many a time, and often, I had broached my idea of being allowed toenlist, e'en before the Huns killed my boy. But they would no listento me. They told me, each time, that there was more and better workfor me to do at hame in Britain, spurring others on, cheering themwhen they came back maimed and broken, getting the country to put itsshoulder to the wheel when it came to subscribing to the war loansand all the rest of it. And it seemed to me that it was not for me todecide; that I must obey those who were better in a position to judgethan I could be. 

I went down south to England, and I talked again of enlisting andtrying to get a crack at those who had killed my boy. And again myfriends refused to listen to me. 

"Why, Harry, " they said to me--and not my own friends, only, but menhighly placed enough to make me know that I must pay heed to whatthey said--"you must not think of it! If you enlisted, or if we gotyou a commission, you'd be but one man out there. Here you're worthmany men--a brigade, or a division, maybe. You are more use to usthan many men who go out there to fight. You do great things towardwinning the war every day. No, Harry, there is work for every man inBritain to do, and you have found yours and are doing it. "

I was not content, though, even when I seemed to agree with them. Idid try to argue, but it was no use. And still I felt that it was notime for a man to be playing and to be giving so much of his time tomaking others gay. It was well for folk to laugh, and to get theirminds off the horror of war for a little time. Well I knew! Aye, andI believed that I was doing good, some good at least, and givingcheer to some puir laddies who needed it sorely. But--weel, it was nowhat I wanted to be doing when my country was fighting for her life!I made up my mind, slowly, what it was that I wanted to do that wouldfit in with the ideas and wishes of those whose word I was bound toheed and that would still come closer than what I was doing to meetmy own desires. 

Every day, nearly, then, I was getting letters from the front. Theycame from laddies whom I'd helped to make up their minds that theybelonged over yon, where the men were. Some were from boys who camefrom aboot Dunoon. I'd known those laddies since they were bits o'bairns, most of them. And then there were letters--and they touchedme as much and came as close home as any of them--from boys who wereutter strangers to me, but who told me they felt they knew me becausethey'd seen me on the stage, or because their phonograph, maybe, played some of my records, and because they'd read that my boy hadshared their dangers and given his life, as they were ready, one andall, to do. 

And those letters, nearly all, had the same refrain. They wanted me. They wanted me to come to them, since they couldn't be coming to me. 

"Come on out here and see us and sing for us, Harry, " they'd write tome. "It'd be a fair treat to see your mug and hear you singing aboutthe wee hoose amang the heather or the bonnie, bonnie lassie!"

How could a man get such a plea as that and not want to do what thoseladdies asked? How could he think of the great deal they were doingand not want to do the little bit they asked of him? But it was no asimple matter, ye'll ken! I could not pack a bag and start for Francefrom Charing Cross or Victoria as I might have done--and often did--before the war. No one might go to France unless he had passports andleave from the war office, and many another sort of arrangement therewas to make. But I set wheels in motion. 

Just to go to France to sing for the boys would have been easyenough. They told me that at once. 

"What? Harry Lauder wants to go to France to sing for the soldiers?He shall--whenever he pleases! Tell him we'll be glad to send him!"

So said the war office. But I knew what they meant. They meant for meto go to one or more of the British bases and give concerts. Therewere troops moving in and out of the bases all the time; men who'dbeen in the trenches or in action in an offensive and were back inrest billets, or even further back, were there in their thousands. But it was the real front I was eager to reach. I wanted to be wheremy boy had been, and to see his grave. I wanted to sing for theladdies who were bearing the brunt of the big job over there--whilethey were bearing it. 

And that no one had done. Many of our leading actors and singers andother entertainers were going back and forth to France all the time. Never a week went by but they were helping to cheer up the boys atthe bases. It was a grand work they were doing, and the boys weregrateful to them, and all Britain should share that gratitude. But itwas a wee bit more that I wanted to be doing, and there was the rub. 

I wanted to go up to the battle lines themselves and to sing for theboys who were in the thick of the struggle with the Hun. I wanted togive a concert in a front-line trench where the Huns could hear me, if they cared to listen. I wanted them to learn once more the lessonwe could never teach them often enough--the lesson of the spirit ofthe British army, that could go into battle with a laugh on its lips. 

But at first I got no encouragement at all when I told what it was inmy mind to do. My friends who had influence shook their heads. 

"I'm afraid it can't be managed, Harry, " they told me. "It's neverbeen done. "

I told them what I believed myself, and what I have often thought ofwhen things looked hard and prospects were dark. I told themeverything had to be done for the first time sometime, and I beggedthem not to give up the effort to win my way for me. And so I knewthat when they told me no one had done it before it wasn't reasonenough why I shouldn't do it. And I made up my mind that I would bethe pioneer in giving concerts under fire if that should turn out tobe a part of the contract. 

But I could not argue. I could only say what it was that I wanted todo, and wait the pleasure of those whose duty it was to decide. Icouldn't tell the military authorities where they must send me. Itwas for me to obey when they gave their orders, and to go whereverthey thought I would do the most good. I would not have you thinkingthat I was naming conditions, and saying I would go where I pleasedor bide at hame! That was not my way. All I could do was to hope thatin the end they would see matters as I did and so decide to let mehave my way. But I was ready for my orders, whatever they might be. 

There was one thing I wanted, above all others, to do when I got toFrance, and so much I said. I wanted to meet the Highland Brigade, and see the bonnie laddies in their kilts as the Huns saw them--theHuns, who called them the Ladies from Hell, and hated them worse thanthey hated any troops in the whole British army. 

Ha' ye heard the tale of the Scotsman and the Jew? Sandy and Ikeythey were, and they were having a disputatious argument together. Each said he could name more great men of his race who were famous inhistory than the other could. And they argued, and nearly came toblows, and were no further along until they thought of making a bet. An odd bet it was. For each great name that Sandy named of a Scotwhom history had honored he was to pull out one of Ikey's hairs, andIkey was to have the same privilege. 

"Do ye begin!" said Sandy. 

"Moses!" said They, and pulled. 

"Bobbie Burns!" cried Sandy, and returned the compliment. 

"Abraham!" said Ikey, and pulled again. "Ouch--Duggie Haig!" saidSandy. 

And then Ikey grabbed a handful of hairs at once. 

"Joseph and his brethren!" he said, gloating a bit as he watched thetears starting from Sandy's eyes at the pain of losing so many goodhairs at once. 

"So it's pulling them out in bunches ye are!" said Sandy. "Ah, well, man" And he reached with both his hands for Ikey's thatch. 

"The Hieland Brigade!" he roared, and pulled all the hairs his twohands would hold!

Ah, weel, there are sad thoughts that come to me, as well as proudand happy ones, when I think of the bonnie kilted laddies who foughtand died so nobly out there against the Hun! They were my ownladdies, those, and it was with them and amang them that my boy wentto his death. It was amang them I would find, I thought, those whocould tell me more than I knew of how he had died, and of how he hadlived before he died. And I thought the boys of the brigade would beglad to see me and to hear my songs--songs of their hames and theirain land, auld Scotland. And so I used what influence I had, and didnot think it wrong to employ at such a time, and in such a cause. ForI knew that if they sent me to the Hieland Brigade they would besending me to the front of the front line--for that was where I wouldhave to go seeking the Hieland laddies!

I waited as patiently as I could. And then one day I got my orders! Iwas delighted, for the thing they had told me could not be done hadactually been arranged for me. I was asked to get ready to go toFrance to entertain the soldiers, and it was the happiest day I hadknown since I had heard of my boy's death. 

There was not much for me to do in the way of making ready. The wholetrip, of course, would be a military one. I might be setting out as aminstrel for France, but every detail of my arrangements had to bemade in accordance with military rules, and once I reached France Iwould be under the orders of the army in every movement I might make. All that was carefully explained to me. 

But still there were things for me to think about and to arrange. Iwanted some sort of accompaniment for my songs, and how to get itpuzzled me for a time. But there was a firm in London that madepianos that heard of my coming trip, and solved that problem for me. They built, and they presented to me, the weest piano ever you saw--apiano so wee that it could be carried in an ordinary motor car. Onlyfive octaves it had, but it was big enough, and sma' enough at once. I was delighted with it, and so were all who saw it. It weighed onlyabout a hundred and fifty pounds--less than even a middling stoutman! And it was cunningly built, so that no space at all was wasted. Mrs. Lauder, when she saw it, called it cute, and so did every otherwoman who laid eyes upon it. It was designed to be carried on thegrid of a motor car--and so it was, for many miles of shell-tornroads!

When I was sure of my piano I thought of another thing it would bewell for me to take with me. And so I spent a hundred pounds--fivehundred American dollars--for cigarettes. I knew they would be welcomeeverywhere I went. It makes no matter how many cigarettes we send toFrance, there will never be enough. My friends thought I was making amistake in taking so many; they were afraid they would make mattershard when it came to transportation, and reminded me that I faceddifficulties in that respect in France it was nearly impossible for usat home in Britain to visualize at all. But I had my mind and my heartset on getting those fags--a cigarette is a fag to every Britishsoldier--to my destination with me. Indeed, I thought they would meanmore to the laddies out there than I could hope to do myself!

I was not to travel alone. My tour was to include two travelingcompanions of distinction and fame. One was James Hogge, M. P. , memberfrom East Edinburgh, who was eager, as so many members of Parliamentwere, to see for himself how things were at the front. James Hoggewas one of the members most liked by the soldiers. He had worked hardfor them, and gained--and well earned--much fame by the way hestruggled with the matter of getting the right sort of pensions forthe laddies who were offering their lives. 

The other distinguished companion I was to have was an old and goodfriend of mine, the Reverend George Adam, then a secretary to theMinister of Munitions. He lived in Ilford, a suburb of London, then, but is now in Montreal, Canada. I was glad of the opportunity to travelwith both these men, for I knew that one's traveling companions, onsuch a tour, were of the utmost importance in determining its successor failure, and I could not have chosen a better pair, had the choicebeen left to me--which, of course, it was not. 

There we were, you see--the Reverend George Adam, Harry Lauder andJames Hogge, M. P. And no sooner did the soldiers hear of thecombination than our tour was named "The Reverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour" was what we were called! And that absurd name stuck to usthrough our whole journey, in France, up and down the battle line, and until we came home to England and broke up!

CHAPTER XII

Up to that time I had thought I knew a good deal about the war. I hadhad much news from my boy. I had talked, I think, to as many returnedsoldiers as any man in Britain. I had seen much of the backwash andthe wretched aftermath of war. Ah, yes, I thought I knew more thanmost folk did of what war meant! But until my tour began, as I seenow, easily enough, I knew nothing--literally nothing at all!

There are towns and ports in Britain that are military areas. One maynot enter them except upon business, the urgency of which has beenestablished to the satisfaction of the military authorities. One musthave a permit to live in them, even if they be one's home town. Thesetowns are vital to the war and its successful prosecution. 

Until one has seen a British port of embarkation in this war one hasno real beginning, even, of a conception of the task the war hasimposed upon Britain. It was so with me, I know, and since then othermen have told me the same thing. There the army begins to pour intothe funnel, so to speak, that leads to France and the front. Thereall sorts of lines are brought together, all sorts of scatteredactivities come to a focus. There is incessant activity, day andnight. 

It was from Folkestone, on the southeast coast, that the ReverendHarry Lauder, M. P. Tour was to embark. And we reached Folkestone onJune 7, 1917. 

Folkestone, in time of peace, was one of the greatest of the Southernwatering places. It is a lovely spot. Great hotels line the Leas, aglorious promenade, along the top of chalk cliffs, that looks outover the Channel. In the distance one fancies one may see the coastof France, beyond the blue water. 

There is green grass everywhere behind the beach. Folkestone has aminiature harbor, that in time of peace gave shelter to the fishingfleet and to the channel steamers that plied to and from Boulogne, inFrance. The harbor is guarded by stone jetties. It has been greatlyenlarged now--so has all Folkestone, for that matter. But I amremembering the town as it was in peace!

There was no pleasanter and kindlier resort along that coast. Thebeach was wonderful, and all summer long it attracted bathers andchildren at play. Bathing machines lined the beach, of course, withinthe limits of the town; those queer, old, clumsy looking wagons, witha dressing cabin on wheels, that were drawn up and down according tothe tide, so that bathers might enter the water from them directly. There, as in most British towns, women bathed at one part of thebeach, men at the other, and all in the most decorous and modest ofcostumes. 

But at Folkestone, in the old days of peace, about a mile from thetown limits, there was another stretch of beach where all the gayfolk bathed--men and women together. And there the costumes were suchas might be seen at Deauville or Ostend, Etretat or Trouville. Highlythey scandalized the good folk of Folkestone, to be sure--but littlewas said, and nothing was done, for, after all those were the folkwho spent the money! They dressed in white tents that gleamed againstthe sea, and a pretty splash of color they made on a bright day forthe soberer folk to go and watch, as they sat on the low chalk cliffsabove them!

Gone--gone! Such days have passed for Folkestone! They will no doubtcome again--but when? When?

June the seventh! Folkestone should have been gay for the beginningof the onset of summer visitors. Sea bathing should just have beenbeginning to be attractive, as the sun warmed the sea and the beach. But when we reached the town war was over all. Men in uniform wereeverywhere. Warships lay outside the harbor. Khaki and guns, mentrudging along, bearing the burdens of war, motor trucks, rushingponderously along, carrying ammunition and food, messengers onmotorcycles, sounding to all traffic that might be in the way theclamorous summons to clear the path--those were the sights we saw!

How hopelessly confused it all seemed! I could not believe that therewas order in the chaos that I saw. But that was because the key toall that bewildering activity was not in my possession. 

Every man had his appointed task. He was a cog in the greatestmachine the world has ever seen. He knew just what he was to do, andhow much time had been allowed for the performance of his task. Itwas assumed he would not fail. The British army makes thatassumption, and it is warranted. 

I hear praise, even from men who hate the Hun as I hate him, for thesuperb military organization of the German army. They say theKaiser's people may well take pride in that. But I say that I amprouder of what Britain and the new British army that has come intobeing since this war began have done than any German has a right tobe! They spent forty-four years in making ready for a war they knewthey meant, some day, to fight. We had not had, that day that I firstsaw our machine really functioning, as many months for preparation asthey had had years. And yet we were doing our part. 

We had had to build and prepare while we helped our ally, France, tohold off that gray horde that had swept down so treacherously throughBelgium from the north and east. It was as if we had organized andtrained and equipped a fire brigade while the fire was burning, andwhile our first devoted fighters sought to keep it in check withwater buckets. And they did! They did! The water buckets served whilethe hose was made, and the mains were laid, and the hydrants set inplace, and the trained firemen were made ready to take up the task. 

And, now that I had come to Folkestone, now that I was seeing theresults of all the labor that had been performed, the effect of allthe prodigies of organization, I began to know what Lord Kitchenerand those who had worked with him had done. System ruled everythingat Folkestone. Nothing, it seemed to me, as officers explained asmuch as they properly could, had been left to chance. Here was orderindeed. 

In the air above us airplanes flew to and fro. They circled aboutlike great, watchful hawks. They looped and whirled around, cuttingthis way and that, circling always. And I knew that, as they flewabout outside the harbor the men in them were never off their guard;that they were peering down, watching every moment for the firsttrace of a submarine that might have crept through the more remotedefenses of the Channel. Let a submarine appear--its shrift would beshort indeed!

There, above, waited the airplanes. And on the surface of the seasinister destroyers darted about as watchful as the flyers above, ready for any emergency that might arise. I have no doubt thatsubmarines of our own lurked below, waiting, too, to do their part. But those, if any there were, I did not see. And one asks noquestions at a place like Folkestone. I was glad of any informationan officer might voluntarily give me. But it was not for me or anyother loyal Briton to put him in the position of having to refuse toanswer. 

Soon a great transport was pointed out to me, lying beside the jetty. Gangplanks were down, and up them streams of men in khaki movedendlessly. Up they went, in an endless brown river, to disappear intothe ship. The whole ship was a very hive of activity. Not only menwere going aboard, but supplies of every sort; boxes of ammunition, stores, food. And I understood, and was presently to see, that beyondher sides there was the same ordered scene as prevailed on shore. Every man knew his task; the stowing away of everything that wasbeing carried aboard was being carried out systematically and withthe utmost possible economy of time and effort. 

"That's the ship you will cross the Channel on, " I was told. And Iregarded her with a new interest. I do not know what part she hadbeen wont to play in time of peace; what useful, pleasant journeys ithad been her part to complete, I only knew that she was to carry meto France, and to the place where my heart was and for a long timehad been. Me--and two thousand men who were to be of real use overthere!

We were nearly the last to go on board. We found the decks swarmingwith men. Ah, the braw laddies! They smoked and they laughed as theysettled themselves for the trip. Never a one looked as though hemight be sorry to be there. They were leaving behind them all thegood things, all the pleasant things, of life as, in time of peace, every one of them had learned to live it and to know it. Long, longsince had the last illusion faded of the old days when war had seemeda thing of pomp and circumstance and glory. 

They knew well, those boys, what it was they faced. Hard, grindingwork they could look forward to doing; such work as few of them hadever known in the old days. Death and wounds they could reckon uponas the portion of just about so many of them. There would be bittercold, later, in the trenches, and mud, and standing for hours in icymud and water. There would be hard fare, and scanty, sometimes, whenthings went wrong. There would be gas attacks, and the bursting ofshells about them with all sorts of poisons in them. Always therewould be the deadliest perils of these perilous days. 

But they sang as they set out upon the great adventure of theirlives. They smiled and laughed. They cheered me, so that the tearsstarted from my eyes, when they saw me, and they called the gayest ofgay greetings, though they knew that I was going only for a littlewhile, and that many of them had set foot on British soil for thelast time. The steady babble of their voices came to our ears, andthey swarmed below us like ants as they disposed themselves about thedecks, and made the most of the scanty space that was allowed forthem. The trip was to be short, of course; there were too few ships, and the problems of convoy were too great, to make it possible tomake the voyage a comfortable one. It was a case of getting them overas might best be arranged. 

A word of command rang out and was passed around by officers and noncoms. 

"Life belts must be put on before the ship sails!"

That simple order brought home the grim facts of war at that moment asscarcely anything else could have done. Here was a grim warning of theperil that lurked outside. Everywhere men were scurrying to obey--Iamong the rest. The order applied as much to us civilians as it did toany of the soldiers. And my belt did not fit, and was hard, extremelyhard, for me to don. I could no manage it at all by myself, but Adamand Hogge had had an easier time with theirs, and they came to my help. Among us we got mine on, and Hogge stood off, and looked at me, and smiled. 

"An extraordinary effect, Harry!" he said, with a smile. "I declare--it gives you the most charming embonpoint!"

I had my doubts about his use of the word charming. I know that Ishould not have cared to have anyone judge of my looks from a picturetaken as I looked then, had one been taken. 

But it was not a time for such thoughts. For a civilian, especially, and one not used to journeys in such times as these, there is athrill and a solemnity about the donning of a life preserver. I feltthat I was indeed, it might be, taking a risk in making this journey, and it was an awesome thought that I, too, might have seen my nativeland for the last time, and said a real good-by to those whom I hadleft behind me. 

Now we cast off, and began to move, and a thrill ran through me suchas I had never known before in all my life. I went to the rail as weturned our nose toward the open sea. A destroyer was ahead, anotherwas beside us, others rode steadily along on either side. It was themost reassuring of sights to see them. They looked so business like, so capable. I could not imagine a Hun submarine as able to evadetheir watchfulness. And moreover, there were the watchful man birdsabove us, the circling airplanes, that could make out, so much betterthan could any lookout on a ship, the first trace of the presence ofa tin fish. No--I was not afraid! I trusted in the British navy, which had guarded the sea lane so well that not a man had lost hislife as the result of a Hun attack, although many millions had goneback and forth to France since the beginning of the war. 

I did not stay with my own party. I preferred to move about among theSoldiers. I was deeply interested in them, as I have always been. AndI wanted to make friends among them, and see how they felt. 

"Lor' lumme--its old 'Arry Lauder!" said one cockney. "God bless you, 'Arry--many's the time I've sung with you in the 'alls. It's good tosee you with us!"

And so I was greeted everywhere. Man after man crowded around me toshake hands. It brought a lump into my throat to be greeted so, andit made me more than ever glad that the military authorities had beenable to see their way to grant my request. It confirmed my beliefthat I was going where I might be really useful to the men who wereready and willing to make the greatest of all sacrifices in the causeso close to all our hearts. 

When I first went aboard the transport I picked up a little goldstripe. It was one of those men wear who have been wounded, as abadge of honor. I hoped I might be able to find the man who had lostit, and return it to him. But none of them claimed it, and I havekept it, to this day, as a souvenir of that voyage. 

It was easy for them to know me. I wore my kilt and my cap, and myknife in my stocking, as I have always done, on the stage, and nearlyalways off it as well. And so they recognized me without difficulty. And never a one called me anything but Harry--except when it was'Arry! I think I would be much affronted if ever a British soldiercalled me Mr. Lauder. I don't know--because not one of them ever did, and I hope none ever will!

They told me that there were men from the Highlands on board, and Iwent looking for them, and found them after a time, though goingabout that ship, so crowded she was, was no easy matter. They wereGordon Highlanders, mostly, I found, and they were glad to see me, and made me welcome, and I had a pipe with them, and a good talk. 

Many of them were going back, after having been at home, recuperatingfrom wounds. And they and the new men too were all eager and anxiousto be put there and at work. 

"Gie us a chance at the Huns--it's all we're asking, " said one of anew draft. "They're telling us they don't like the sight of ourkilts, Harry, and that a Hun's got less stomach for the cold steel ofa bayonet than for anything else on earth. Weel--we're carrying adose of it for them!"

And the men who had been out before, and were taking back with themthe scars they had earned, were just as anxious as the rest. That wasthe spirit of every man on board. They did not like war as war, butthey knew that this was a war that must be fought to the finish, andnever a man of them wanted peace to come until Fritz had learned hislesson to the bottom of Lie last grim page. 

I never heard a word of the danger of meeting a submarine. The ideathat one might send a torpedo after us popped into my mind once ortwice, but when it did I looked out at the destroyers, guarding us, and the airplanes above, and I felt as safe as if I had been in bedin my wee hoose at Dunoon. It was a true highway of war that thosewhippets of the sea had made the Channel crossing. 

Ahm, but I was proud that day of the British navy! It is a great taskthat it has performed, and nobly it has done it. And it was proud andglad I was again when we sighted land, as we soon did, and I knewthat I was gazing, for the first time since war had been declared, upon the shores of our great ally, France. It was the great day andthe proud day and the happy day for me!

I was near the realizing of an old dream I had often had. I was withthe soldiers who had my love and my devotion, and I was coming toFrance--the France that every Scotchman learns to love at hismother's breast. 

A stir ran through the men. Orders began to fly, and I went back tomy place and my party. Soon we would be ashore, and I would be in theway of beginning the work I had come to do. 

[ILLUSTRATION: Harry Lauder preserves the bonnet of his son, broughtto him from where the lad fell. "The memory of his boy, it is almosthis religion. " (See Lauder05. Jpg)]

[ILLUSTRATION: A tatter of plaid of the Black Watch on a wire of aGerman entanglement barely suggests the hell the Scotch troops havegone through. (See Lauder06. Jpg)]

CHAPTER XIII

Boulogne!

Like Folkestone, Boulogne, in happier times, had been a wateringplace, less fashionable than some on the French coast, but thepleasant resort of many in search of health and pleasure. And likeFolkestone it had suffered the blight of war. The war had laid itsheavy hand upon the port. It ruled everything; it was omnipresent. From the moment when we came into full view of the harbor it wasimpossible to think of anything else. 

Folkestone had made me think of the mouth of a great funnel, intowhich all broad Britain had been pouring men and guns and all themanifold supplies and stores of modern war. And the trip across thenarrow, well guarded lane in the Channel had been like the pouring ofwater through the neck of that same funnel. Here in Boulogne was theopening. Here the stream of men and sup-plies spread out to begin itsorderly, irresistible flow to the front. All of northern France andBelgium lay before that stream; it had to cover all the great lengthof the British front. Not from Boulogne alone, of course; I knew ofDunkirk and Calais, and guessed at other ports. There were otherfunnels, and into all of them, day after day, Britain was pouring hertribute; through all of them she was offering her sacrifice, to belaid upon the altar of strife. 

Here, much more than at Folkestone, as it chanced, I saw at onceanother thing. There was a double funnel. The stream ran both ways. For, as we steamed into Boulogne, a ship was coming out--a ship witha grim and tragic burden. She was one of our hospital ships. But shewas guarded as carefully by destroyers and aircraft as our transporthad been. The Red Cross meant nothing to the Hun--except, perhaps, ashining target. Ship after ship that bore that symbol of mercy and ofpain had been sunk. No longer did our navy dare to trust the RedCross. It took every precaution it could take to protect the poorfellows who were going home to Blighty. 

As we made our way slowly in, through the crowded harbor, full oftransports, of ammunition ships, of food carriers, of destroyers andsmall naval craft of all sorts, I began to be able to see more andmore of what was afoot ashore. It was near noon; the day that hadbeen chosen for my arrival in France was one of brilliant sunshineand a cloudless sky. And my eyes were drawn to other hospital shipsthat were waiting at the docks. Motor ambulances came dashing up, oneafter the other, in what seemed to me to be an endless stream. Thepity of that sight! It was as if I could peer through the interveningspace and see the bandaged heads, the places where limbs had been, the steadfast gaze of the boys who were being carried up instretchers. They had done their task, a great number of them; theyhad given all that God would let them give to King and country. Lifewas left to them, to be sure; most of these boys were sure to live. 

But to what maimed and incomplete lives were they doomed! Thethousands who would be cripples always--blind, some of them, andhelpless, dependent upon what others might choose or be able to dofor them. It was then, in that moment, that an idea was born, vaguely, in my mind, of which I shall have much more to say later. 

There was beauty in that harbor of Boulogne. The sun gleamed againstthe chalk cliffs. It caught the wings of airplanes, flying high aboveus. But there was little of beauty in my mind's eye. That could seethrough the surface beauty of the scene and of the day to the grim, stark ugliness of war that lay beneath. 

I saw the ordered piles of boxes and supplies, the bright guns, withthe sun reflected from their barrels, dulled though these were toprevent that very thing. And I thought of the waste that wasinvolved--of how all this vast product of industry was destined to bedestroyed, as swiftly as might be, bringing no useful accomplishmentwith its destruction--save, of course, that accomplishment which mustbe completed before any useful thing may be done again in this world. 

Then we went ashore, and I could scarcely believe that we were indeedin France, that land which, friends though our nations are, is atheart and in spirit so different from my own country. Boulogne hadceased to be French, indeed. The port was like a bit of Britainpicked up, carried across the Channel and transplanted successfullyto a new resting-place. 

English was spoken everywhere--and much of it was the English of thecockney, 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 theKing's English! Well I ken it! It was good to hear it--had there beena thought in my mind of being homesick, it would quickly have beendispelled. The streets rang to the tread of British soldiers; ouruniform was everywhere. There were Frenchmen, too; they wereattached, many of them, for one reason and another, to the Britishforces. But most of them spoke English too. 

I had most care about the unloading of my cigarettes. It was a pointof honor with me, by now, after the way my friends had joked me aboutthem, to see that every last one of the "fags" I had brought with mereached a British Tommy. So to them I gave my first care. Then I sawto the unloading of my wee piano, and, having done so, was free to gowith the other members of the Reverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour tothe small hotel that was to be headquarters for all of us inBoulogne. 

Arrangements had to be made for my debut in France, and I can tellyou that no professional engagement I have ever filled ever gave mehalf so much concern as this one! I have sung before many strangeaudiences, in all parts of the world, or nearly all. I have sung forfolk who had no idea of what to expect from me, and have known that Imust be at work from the moment of my first appearance on the stageto win them. But these audiences that I was to face here in Francegave me more thought than any of them. I had so great a reason forwanting to suceed with them!

And here, ye ken, I faced conditions that were harder than had everfallen to my lot. I was not to have, most of the time, even themilitary theaters that had, in some cases, been built for the menbehind the lines, where many actors and, indeed, whole companies, from home had been appearing. I could make no changes of costume. Iwould have no orchestra. Part of the time I would have my wee piano, but I reckoned on going to places where even that sma' thing could nofollow me. 

But I had a good manager--the British army, no less! It was the armythat had arranged my booking. We were not left alone, not for aminute. I would not have you think that we were left to go around onour own, and as we pleased. Far from it! No sooner had we landed thanCaptain Roberts, D. S. O. , told me, in a brief, soldierly way, that wasalso extremely businesslike, what sort of plans had been made for us. 

"We have a number of big hospitals here, " he said. "This is one ofthe important British bases, as you know, and it is one of thosewhere many of our men are treated before they are sent home. So, since you are here, we thought you would want to give your firstconcerts to the wounded men here. "

So I learned that the opening of what you might call my engagement inthe trenches was to be in hospitals. That was not new to me, and yetI was to find that there was a difference between a base hospital inFrance and the sort of hospitals I had seen so often at home. 

Nothing, indeed, was left to us. After Captain Roberts had explainedmatters, we met Captain Godfrey, who was to travel with us, and beour guide, our military mentor and our ruler. We understood that wemust place ourselves under him, and under military discipline. NoTommy, indeed, was more under discipline than we had to be. But wedid not chafe, civilians though we were. When you see the Britisharmy at work nothing is further from your thoughts than to criticizeor to offer any suggestions. It knows its business, and does it, quietly and without fuss. But even Fritz has learned to be chary ofgetting in the way when the British army has made up its mind--andthat is what he is there for, though I've no doubt that Fritz himselfwould give a pretty penny to be at home again, with peace declared. 

Captain Godfrey, absolute though his power over us was--he could haveordered us all home at a moment's notice--turned out to be adelightful young officer, who did everything in his power to make ourway smooth and pleasant, and who was certainly as good a manager as Iever had or ever expect to have. He entered into the spirit of ourtour, and it was plain to see that it would be a success from startto finish if it were within his power to make it so. He liked to callhimself my manager, and took a great delight, indeed, in the wholeexperience. Well, it was a change for him, no doubt!

I had brought a piano with me, but no accompanist. That was not anoversight; it was a matter of deliberate choice. I had been told, before I left home, that I would have no difficulty in finding someone among the soldiers to accompany me. And that was true, as I soonfound. In fact, as I was to learn later, I could have recruited afull orchestra among the Tommies, and I would have had in my band, too, musicians of fame and great ability, far above the averagetheater orchestra. Oh, you must go to France to learn how every artand craft in Britain has done its part!

Aye, every sort of artist and artisan, men of every profession andtrade, can be found in the British army. It has taken them all, likesome great melting pot, and made them soldiers. I think, indeed, there is no calling that you could name that would not yield you amaster hand from the ranks of the British army. And I am not talkingof the officers alone, but of the great mass of Tommies. And so whenI told Captain Godfrey I would be needing a good pianist to play myaccompaniments, he just smiled. 

"Right you are!" he said. "We'll turn one up for you in no time!"

He had no doubts at all, and he was right. They found a lad calledJohnson, a Yorkshireman, in a convalescent ward of one of the bighospitals. He was recovering from an illness he had incurred in thetrenches, and was not quite ready to go back to active duty. But hewas well enough to play for me, and delighted when he heard he mightget the assignment. He was nervous lest he should not please me, andfeared I might ask for another man. But when I ran over with him thesongs I meant to sing I found he played the piano very well indeed, and had a knack for accompanying, too. There are good pianists, soloists, who are not good accompanists; it takes more than just theability to play the piano to work with a singer, and especially witha singer like me. It is no straight ahead singing I do always, as youken, perhaps. 

But I saw at once that Johnson and I would get along fine together, so everyone was pleased, and I went on and made my preparations withhim for my first concert. That was to be in the Boulogne Casino--center of the gayety of the resort in the old days, but now, for along time, turned into a base hospital. 

They had played for high stakes there in the old days before the war. Thousands of dollars had changed hands in an hour there. But theywere playing for higher stakes now! They were playing for the livesand the health of men, and the hearts of the women at home in Britainwho were bound up with them. In the old days men had staked theirmoney against the turn of a card or the roll of the wheel. But now itwas with Death they staked--and it was a mightier game than those oldwalls had ever seen before. 

The largest ward of the hospital was in what had been the Baccaratroom, and it was there I held my first concert of the trenchengagement. When I appeared it was packed full. There were men oncots, lying still and helpless, bandaged to their very eyes. Somecame limping in on their crutches; some were rolled in in chairs. Itwas a sad scene and an impressive one, and it went to my heart when Ithought that my own poor laddie must have lain in just such a room--in this very one, perhaps. He had suffered as these men weresuffering, and he had died--as some of these men for whom I was tosing would die. For there were men here who would be patched up, presently, and would go back. And for them there might be a nexttime--a next time when they would need no hospital. 

There was one thing about the place I liked. It was so clean andwhite and spotless. All the garish display, the paint and tawdryfinery, of the old gambling days, had gone. It was restful, now, andthough there was the hospital smell, it was a clean smell. And themen looked as though they had wonderful care. Indeed, I knew they hadthat; I knew that everything that could be done to ease their statewas being done. And every face I saw was brave and cheerful, thoughthe skin of many and many a lad was stretched tight over his boneswith the pain he had known, and there was a look in their eyes, alook with no repining in it, or complaint, but with the evidences ofa terrible pain, bravely suffered, that sent the tears starting to myeyes more than once. 

It was much as it had been in the many hospitals I had visited inBritain, and yet it was different, too. I felt that I was really atthe front. Later I came to realize how far from the real front Iactually was at Boulogne, but then I knew no better. 

I had chosen my programme carefully. It was made up of songsaltogether. I had had enough experience in hospitals and camps by nowto have learned what soldiers liked best, and I had no doubt at allthat it was just songs. And best of all they liked the old lovesongs, and the old songs of Scotland--tender, crooning melodies, thatwould help to carry them back, in memory, to their hames and, if theyhad them, to the lassies of their dreams. It was no sad, lugubrioussongs they wanted. But a note of wistful tenderness they liked. Thatwas true of sick and wounded, and of the hale and hearty too--and itshowed that, though they were soldiers, they were just humans likethe rest of us, for all the great and super-human things they ha'done out there in France. 

Not every actor and artist who has tried to help in the hospitals hasfully understood the men he or she wanted to please. They meant well, every one, but some were a wee bit unfortunate in the way they wentto work. There is a story that is told of one of our really greatserious actors. He is serious minded, always, on the stage and off, and very, very dignified. But some folk went to him and asked himwould he no do his bit to cheer up the puir laddies in a hospital?

He never thought of refusing--and I would no have you think I amsneering at the man! His intentions were of the best. 

"Of course, I do not sing or dance, " he said, drawing down his lip. And the look in his eyes showed what he thought of such of us as haddescended to such low ways of pleasing the public that paid to see usand to hear us: "But I shall very gladly do something to bring alittle diversion into the sad lives of the poor boys in thehospitals. "

It was a stretcher audience that he had. That means a lot of boys whohad to lie in bed to hear him. They needed cheering. And that greatactor, with all his good intentions could think of nothing morefitting than to stand up before them and begin to recite, in a sad, elocutionary tone, Longfellow's "The Wreck of the Hesperus!"

He went on, and his voice gained power. He had come to the thirdstanza, or the fourth, maybe, when a command rang out through theward. It was one that had been heard many and many a time in France, along the trenches. It came from one of the beds. 

"To cover, men!" came the order. 

It rang out through the ward, in a hoarse voice. And on the wordevery man's head popped under the bedclothes! And the great actor, astonished beyond measure, was left there, reciting away to shakingmounds of bedclothes that entrenched his hearers from the sound ofhis voice!

Well, I had heard yon tale. I do no think I should ever have risked asimilar fate by making the same sort of mistake, but I profited byhearing it, and I always remembered it. And there was another thing. I never thought, when I was going to sing for soldiers, that I wasdoing something for them that should make them glad to listen to me, no matter what I chose to sing for them. 

I always thought, instead, that here was an audience that had paid tohear me in the dearest coin in all the world--their legs and arms, their health and happiness. Oh, they had paid! They had not come inon free passes! Their tickets had cost them dear--dearer than ticketsfor the theater had ever cost before. I owed them more than I couldever pay--my own future, and my freedom, and the right and the chanceto go on living in my own country free from the threat and the menaceof the Hun. It was for me to please those boys when I sang for them, and to make such an effort as no ordinary audience had ever heardfrom me. 

They had made a little platform to serve as a stage for me. There wasroom for me and for Johnson, and for the wee piano. And so I sang forthem, and they showed me from the start that they were pleased. Thosewho could, clapped, and all cheered, and after each song there was agreat pounding of crutches on the floor. It was an inspiring soundand a great sight, sad though it was to see and to hear. 

When I had done I went aboot amang the men, shaking hands with suchas could gie me their hands, and saying a word or two to all of them. Directly in front of the platform there lay a wounded Scots soldier, and all through my concert he watched me most intently; he never tookhis eyes off me. When I had sung my last song he beckoned to mefeebly, and I went to him, and bent over to listen to him. 

"Eh, Harry, man, " he said, "will ye be doin' me a favor?"

"Aye, that I will, if I can, " I told him. 

"It's to ask the doctor will I no be gettin' better soon. Because, Harry, mon, I've but the one desire left--and that's to be in at thefinish of yon fight!"

I was to give one more concert in Boulogne, that night. That was morecheerful, and it was different, again, from anything I had done orknown before. There was a convalescent camp, about two miles fromtown, high up on the chalk cliffs. And this time my theater was aY. M. C. A. Hut. But do not let the name hut deceive ye! I had anaudience of two thousand men that nicht! It was all the "hut" wouldhold, with tight squeezing. And what a roaring, wild crowd that was, to be sure! They sang with me, and they cheered and clapped until Ithought that hut would be needing a new roof!

I had to give over at last, for I was tired, and needed sleep. We hadour orders. The Reverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour was to start forVimy Ridge at six o'clock next morning!

CHAPTER XIV

We were up next morning before daybreak. But I did not feel as if Iwere getting up early. Indeed, it was quite the reverse. All about uswas a scene of such activity that I felt as if I had been lying inbed unconsciously long--as if I were the laziest man in all that busytown. Troops were setting out, boarding military trains. Cheery, jovial fellows they were--the same lads, some of them, who hadcrossed the Channel with me, and many others who had come in later. Oh, it is a steady stream of men and supplies, indeed, that goesacross the narrow sea to France!

Motor trucks--they were calling them camions, after the Frenchfashion, because it was a shorter and a simpler word--fairly swarmedin the streets. Guns rolled ponderously along. It was not militarypomp we saw. Indeed, I saw little enough of that in France. It wasonly the uniforms and the guns that made me realize that this waswar. The activity was more that of a busy, bustling factory town. Itwas not English, and it was not French. I think it made me think moreof an American city. War, I cannot tell you often enough, is a greatbusiness, a vast industry, in these days. Someone said, and he wasright, that they did not win victories any more--that theymanufactured them, as all sorts of goods are manufactured. Digging, and building--that is the great work of modern war. 

Our preparations, being in the hands of Captain Godfrey and theBritish army, were few and easily made. Two great, fast army motorcars had been put at the disposal of the Reverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour, and when we went out to get into them and make our start it wasjust a problem of stowing away all we had to carry with us. 

The first car was a passenger car. Each motor had a soldier aschauffeur. I and the Reverend George Adam rode in the tonneau of theleading car, and Captain Godfrey, our manager and guide, sat with thedriver, in front. That was where he belonged, and where, being aBritish officer, he naturally wanted to be. They have called ourofficers reckless, and said that they risked their lives too freely. Weel--I dinna ken! I am no soldier. But I know what a glorioustradition the British officer has--and I know, too, how his menfollow him. They know, do the laddies in the ranks, that theirofficers will never ask them to go anywhere or do anything they wouldshirk themselves--and that makes for a spirit that you could notesteem too highly. 

It was the second car that was our problem. We put Johnson, myaccompanist, in the tonneau first, and then we covered him withcigarettes. It was a problem to get them stowed away, and when we hadaccomplished the task, finally, there was not much of Johnson to beseen! He was covered and surrounded with cigarettes, but he was snug, and he looked happy and comfortable, as he grinned at us--his facewas about all of him that we could see. Hogge rode in front with thedriver of that car, and had more room, so, than he would have had inthe tonneau, where, as a passenger and a guest, he really belonged. The wee bit piano was lashed to the grid of the second car. And Igive you my word it looked like a gypsy's wagon more than like one ofthe neat cars of the British army!

Weel, all was ready in due time, and it was just six o'clock when weset off. There was a thing I noted again and again. The army didthings on time in France. If we were to start at a certain time wealways did. Nothing ever happened to make us unpunctual. 

It was a glorious morning! We went roaring out of Boulogne on a roadthat was as hard and smooth as a paved street in London despite allthe terrific traffic it had borne since the war made Boulogne aBritish base. And there were no speed limits here. So soon as thecars were tuned up we went along at the highest speed of which thecars were capable. Our soldier drivers knew their business; only thepicked men were assigned to the driving of these cars, and speed wasone of the things that was wanted of them. Much may hang on the speedof a motor car in France. 

But, fast as we traveled, we did not go too fast for me to enjoy thedrive and the sights and sounds that were all about us. They wereoddly mixed. Some were homely and familiar, and some were so strangethat I could not give over wondering at them. The motors made a greatnoise, but it was not too loud for me to hear larks singing in theearly morning. All the world was green with the early sun upon it, lighting up every detail of a strange countryside. There was a softwind, a gentle, caressing wind, that stirred the leaves of the treesalong the road. 

But not for long could we escape the touch of war. That grim etcherwas at work upon the road and the whole countryside. As we went on wewere bound to move more slowly, because of the congestion of thetraffic. Never was Piccadilly or Fifth Avenue more crowded withmotors at the busiest hour of the day than was that road. As wepassed through villages or came to cross roads we saw militarypolice, directing traffic, precisely as they do at busy intersectionsof crowded streets in London or New York. 

But the traffic along that road was not the traffic of the cities. Here were no ladies, gorgeously clad, reclining in their luxurious, deeply upholstered cars. Here were no footmen and chauffeurs inlivery. Ah, they wore a livery--aye! But it was the livery of glory--the khaki of the King! Generals and high officers passed us, bowlingalong, lolling in their cars, taking their few brief minutes or halfhours of ease, smoking and talking. They corresponded to thelimousines and landaulets of the cities. And there were wagons fromthe shops--great trucks, carrying supplies, going along at a pacethat racked their engines and their bodies, and that boded disasterto whoever got in their way. But no one did--there was no realconfusion here, despite the seeming madness of the welter of trafficthat we saw. 

What a traffic that was! And it was all the traffic of the carnage wewere nearing. It was a marvelous and an impressive panorama of forceand of destruction that we saw it was being constantly unrolledbefore my wondering eyes as we traveled along the road out of oldBoulogne. 

At first all the traffic was going our way. Sometimes there came awarning shriek from behind, and everything drew to one side to makeroom for a dispatch rider on a motor cycle. These had the right ofway. Sir Douglas Haig himself, were he driving along, would see hisdriver turn out to make way for one of those shrieking motor bikes!The rule is absolute--everything makes way for them. 

But it was not long before a tide of traffic began to meet us, flowing back toward Boulogne. There was a double stream then, and Iwondered how collisions and traffic jams of all sorts could beavoided. I do not know yet; I only know that there is no trouble. Here were empty trucks, speeding back for new loads. And some therewere that carried all sorts of wreckage--the flotsam and jetsam castup on the safe shores behind the front by the red tide of war. Nothing is thrown away out there; nothing is wasted. Great piles ofdiscarded shoes are brought back to be made over. They are as good asnew when they come back from the factories where they are workedover. Indeed, the men told me they were better than new, because theywere less trying to their feet, and did not need so much breaking in. 

Men go about, behind the front, and after a battle, picking upeverything that has been thrown away. Everything is sorted and goneover with the utmost care. Rifles that have been thrown away ordropped when men were wounded or killed, bits of uniforms, bayonets--everything is saved. Reclamation is the order of the day. There iswaste enough in war that cannot be avoided; the British army sees toit that there is none that is avoidable. 

But it was not only that sort of wreckage, that sort of driftwoodthat was being carried back to be made over. Presently we began tosee great motor ambulances coming along, each with a Red Crosspainted glaringly on its side--though that paint was wasted or worse, for there is no target the Hun loves better, it would seem, than thegreat red cross of mercy. And in them, as we knew, there was the mostpitiful wreckage of all--the human wreckage of the war. 

In the wee sma' hours of the morn they bear the men back who havebeen hit the day before and during the night. They go back to thefield dressing stations and the hospitals just behind the front, tobe sorted like the other wreckage. Some there are who cannot be movedfurther, at first, but must he cared for under fire, lest they die onthe way. But all whose wounds are such that they can safely be movedgo back in the ambulances, first to the great base hospitals, andthen, when possible, on the hospital ships to England. 

Sometimes, but not often, we passed troops marching along the road. They swung along. They marched easily, with the stride that couldcarry them furthest with the least effort. They did not look muchlike the troops I used to see in London. They did not have the snapof the Coldstream Guards, marching through Green Park in the olddays. But they looked like business and like war. They looked likemen who had a job of work to do and meant to see it through. 

They had discipline, those laddies, but it was not the old, stiffdiscipline of the old army. That is a thing of a day that is dead andgone. Now, as we passed along the side of the road that marchingtroops always leave clear, there was always a series of hails for me. 

"Hello, Harry!" I would hear. 

And I would look back, and see grinning Tommies waving their hands tome. It was a flattering experience, I can tell you, to be recognizedlike that along that road. It was like running into old friends in astrange town where you have come thinking you know no one at all. 

We were about thirty miles out of Boulogne when there was a suddenexplosion underneath the car, followed by a sibilant sound that Iknew only too well. 

"Hello--a puncture!" said Godfrey, and smiled as he turned around. Wedrew up to the side of the road, and both chauffeurs jumped out andwent to work on the recalcitrant tire. The rest of us sat still, andgazed around us at the fields. I was glad to have a chance to lookquietly about. The fields stretched out, all emerald green, in alldirections to the distant horizon, sapphire blue that gloriousmorning. And in the fields, here and there, were the bent, stoopedfigures of old men and women. They were carrying on, quietly. Husbands and sons and brothers had gone to war; all the young men ofFrance had gone. These were left, and they were seeing to theperformance of the endless cycle of duty. France would survive; theHun could not crush her. Here was a spirit made manifest--a spiritdifferent in degree but not in kind from the spirit of my ainBritain. It brought a lump into my throat to see them, the old menand the women, going so patiently and quietly about their tasks. 

It was very quiet. Faint sounds came to us; there was a distantrumbling, like the muttering of thunder on a summer's night, when theday has been hot and there are low, black clouds lying against thehorizon, with the flashes of the lightning playing through them. Butthat I had come already not to heed, though I knew full well, by now, what it was and what it meant. For a little space the busy road hadbecome clear; there was a long break in the traffic. 

I turned to Adam and to Captain Godfrey. 

"I'm thinking here's a fine chance for a bit of a rehearsal in theopen air, " I said. "I'm not used to singing so--mayhap it would bewell to try my voice and see will it carry as it should. "

"Right oh!" said Godfrey. 

And so we dug Johnson out from his snug barricade of cigarettes, thathid him as an emplacement hides a gun, and we unstrapped my wee piano, and set it up in the road. Johnson tried the piano, and then we began. 

I think I never sang with less restraint in all my life than I didthat quiet morning on the Boulogne road. I raised my voice and let ithave its will. And I felt my spirits rising with the lilt of themelody. My voice rang out, full and free, and it must have carriedfar and wide across the fields. 

My audience was small at first--Captain Godfrey, Hogge, Adam, and thetwo chauffeurs, working away, and having more trouble with the tirethan they had thought at first they would--which is the way of tires, as every man knows who owns a car. But as they heard my songs the oldmen and women in the fields straightened up to listen. They stoodwondering, at first, and then, slowly, they gave over their work fora space, and came to gather round me and to listen. 

It must have seemed strange to them! Indeed, it must have seemedstrange to anyone had they seen and heard me! There I was, withJohnson at my piano, like some wayside tinker setting up his cart andworking at his trade! But I did not care for appearances--not a whit. For the moment I was care free, a wandering minstrel, like sometroubadour of old, care free and happy in my song. I forgot the blackshadow under which we all lay in that smiling land, the black shadowof war in which I sang. 

It delighted me to see those old peasants and to study their faces, and to try to win them with my song. They could not understand a wordI sang, and yet I saw the smiles breaking out over their wrinkledfaces, and it made me proud and happy. For it was plain that I wasreaching them--that I was able to throw a bridge over the gap of astrange tongue and an alien race. When I had done and it was plain Imeant to sing no more they clapped me. 

"There's a hand for you, Harry, " said Adam. "Aye--and I'm proud ofit!" I told him for reply. 

I was almost sorry when I saw that the two chauffeurs had finishedtheir repairs and were ready to go on. But I told them to lash thepiano back in its place, and Johnson prepared to climb gingerly backamong his cigarettes. But just then something happened that I had notexpected. 

There was a turn in the road just beyond us that hid its continuationfrom us. And around the bend now there came a company of soldiers. Not neat and well-appointed soldiers these. Ah, no! They were freshfrom the trenches, on their way back to rest. The mud and grime ofthe trenches were upon them. They were tired and weary, and theycarried all their accoutrements and packs with them. Their boots wereheavy with mud. And they looked bad, and many of them shaky. Most ofthese men, Godfrey told me after a glance at them, had been orderedback to hospital for minor ailments. They were able to march, but notmuch more. 

They were the first men I had seen in such a case, They looked badenough, but Godfrey said they were happy enough. Some of them wouldget leave for Blighty, and be home, in a few days, to see theirfamilies and their girls. And they came swinging along in fine style, sick and tired as they were, for the thought of where they were goingcheered them and helped to keep them going. 

A British soldier, equipped for the trenches, on his way in or out, has quite a load to carry. He has his pack, and his emergency ration, and his entrenching tools, and extra clothing that he needs in badweather in the trenches, to say nothing of his ever-present rifle. And the sight of them made me realize for the first time the truththat lay behind the jest in a story that is one of Tommy's favorites. 

A child saw a soldier in heavy marching order. She gazed at him inwide-eyed wonder. He was not her idea of what a soldier should looklike. 

"Mother, " she asked, "what is a soldier for?"

The mother gazed at the man. And then she smiled. 

"A soldier, " she answered, "is to hang things on. "

They eyed me very curiously as they came along, those sick laddies. They couldn't seem to understand what I was doing there, but theirdiscipline held them. They were in charge of a young lieutenant withone star--a second lieutenant. I learned later that he was a long wayfrom being a well man himself. So I stopped him. "Would your men liketo hear a few songs, lieutenant?" I asked him. 

He hesitated. He didn't quite understand, and he wasn't a bit surewhat his duty was in the circumstances. He glanced at Godfrey, andGodfrey smiled at him as if in encouragement. 

"It's very good of you, I'm sure, " he said, slowly. "Fall out!"

So the men fell out, and squatted there, along the wayside. At oncediscipline was relaxed. Their faces were a study as the wee piano wasset up again, and Johnson, in uniform, of course sat down and trued achord or two. And then suddenly something happened that broke theice. Just as I stood up to sing a loud voice broke the silence. 

"Lor' love us!" one of the men cried, "if it ain't old 'Arry Lauder!"

There was a stir of interest at once. I spotted the owner of thevoice. It was a shriveled up little chap, with a weazened face thatlooked like a sun-dried apple. He was showing all his teeth in a grinat me, and he was a typical little cockney of the sort all Londonersknow well. 

"Go it, 'Arry!" he shouted, shrilly. "Many's the time h' I've 'eardyou at the old Shoreditch!"

So I went it as well as I could, and I never did have a moreappreciative audience. My little cockney friend seemed to take aparticular personal pride in me. I think he thought he had found me, and that he was, in an odd way, responsible for my success with hismates. And so he was especially glad when they cheered me and thankedme as they did. 

My concert didn't last long, for we had to be getting on, and thecompany of sick men had just so much time, too, to reach theirdestination--Boulogne, whence we had set out. When it was over I saidgood-by to the men, and shook hands with particular warmth with thelittle cockney. It wasn't every day I was likely to meet a man whohad often heard me at the old Shoreditch! After we had stowed Johnsonand the piano away again, with a few less cigarettes, now, to get inJohnson's way, we started, and as long as we were in sight the littlecockney and I were waving to one another. 

I took some of the cigarettes into the car I was in now. And as wesped along we were again in the thick of the great British warmachine. Motor trucks and ambulances were more frequent than ever, and it was a common occurrence now to pass soldiers, marching in bothdirections--to the front and away from it. There was always some-oneto recognize me and start a volley of "Hello, Harrys" coming my way, and I answered every greeting, you may be sure, and threw cigarettesto go with my "Hellos. "

Aye, I was glad I had brought the cigarettes! They seemed to be evenmore welcome than I had hoped they would be, and I only wondered howlong the supply would hold out, and if I would be able to get more ifit did not. So Johnson, little by little, was getting more room, as Icalled for more and more of the cigarettes that walled him in in histonneau. 

About noon, as we drove through a little town, I saw, for the firsttime, a whole flock of airplanes riding the sky. They were swoopingabout like lazy hawks, and a bonnie sight they were. I drew a longbreath when I saw them, and turned to my friend Adam. 

"Well, " I said, "I think we're coming to it, now!"

I meant the front--the real, British front. 

Suddenly, at a sharp order from Captain Godfrey, our cars stopped. Heturned around to us, and grinned, very cheerfully. 

"Gentlemen, " he said, very calmly, "we'll stop here long enough toput on our steel helmets. "

He said it just as he might have said: "Well, here's where we willstop for tea. "

It meant no more than that to him. But for me it meant many things. It meant that at last I was really to be under fire; that I was goinginto danger. I was not really frightened yet; you have to see danger, and know just what it is, and appreciate exactly its character, before you can be frightened. But I had imagination enough to knowwhat that order meant, and to have a queer feeling as I donned thesteel helmet. It was less uncomfortable than I had expected it tobe--lighter, and easier to wear. The British trench helmets arebeautifully made, now; as in every other phase of the war and itswork they represent a constant study for improvement, lightening. 

But, even had it not been for the warning that was implied in CaptainGodfrey's order, I should soon have understood that we had come intoa new region. For a long time now the noise of the guns had beendifferent. Instead of being like distant thunder it was a much nearerand louder sound. It was a steady, throbbing roar now. 

And, at intervals, there came a different sound; a sound moreindividual, that stood out from the steady roar. It was as if the airwere being cracked apart by the blow of some giant hammer. I knewwhat it was. Aye, I knew. You need no man to tell you what it is--theexplosion of a great shell not so far from you!

Nor was it our ears alone that told us what was going on. Ever andanon, now, ahead of us, as we looked at the fields, we saw a cloud ofdirt rise up. That was where a shell struck. And in the fields aboutus, now, we could see holes, full of water, as a rule, and mounds ofdirt that did not look as if shovels and picks had raised them. 

It surprised me to see that the peasants were still at work. I spoketo Godfrey about that. 

"The French peasants don't seem to know what it is to be afraid ofshell-fire, " he said. "They go only when we make them. It is the sameon the French front. They will cling to a farmhouse in the zone offire until they are ordered out, no matter how heavily it may beshelled. They are splendid folk! The Germans can never beat a racethat has such folk as that behind its battle line. "

I could well believe him. I have seen no sight along the whole frontmore quietly impressive than the calm, impassive courage of thoseFrench peasants. They know they are right! It is no Kaiser, no warlord, who gives them courage. It is the knowledge and theconsciousness that they are suffering in a holy cause, and that, inthe end, the right and the truth must prevail. Their own fate, whatever may befall them, does not matter. France must go on andshall, and they do their humble part to see that she does and shall. 

Solemn thoughts moved me as we drove on. Here there had been real warand fighting. Now I saw a country blasted by shell-fire and wreckedby the contention of great armies. And I knew that I was coming tosoil watered by British blood; to rows of British graves; to soilthat shall be forever sacred to the memory of the Britons, fromBritain and from over the seas, who died and fought upon it to redeemit from the Hun. 

I had no mind to talk, to ask questions. For the time I was contentto be with my own thoughts, that were evoked by the historic groundthrough which we passed. My heart was heavy with grief and with thememories of my boy that came flooding it, but it was lightened, too, by other thoughts. 

And always, as we sped on, there was the thunder of the guns. Alwaysthere were the bursting shells, and the old bent peasants paying noheed to them. Always there were the circling airplanes, far above us, like hawks against the deep blue of the sky. And always we camenearer and nearer to Vimy Ridge--that deathless name in the historyof Britain. 

CHAPTER XV

Now Captain Godfrey leaned back and smiled at us. 

"There's Vimy Ridge, " he said. And he pointed. 

"Yon?" I asked, in astonishment. 

I was almost disappointed. We had heard so much, in Britain and inScotland, of Vimy Ridge. The name of that famous hill had beenwritten imperishably in history. But to look at it first, to see itas I saw it, it was no hill at all! My eyes were used to themountains of my ain Scotland, and this great ridge was but a tinything beside them. But then I began to picture the scene as it hadbeen the day the Canadians stormed it and won for themselves theglory of all the ages. I pictured it blotted from sight by the hellof shells bursting over it, and raking its slopes as the Canadianscharged upward. I pictured it crowned by defenses and lined by suchof the Huns as had survived the artillery battering, spitting deathand destruction from their machine guns. And then I saw it as Ishould, and I breathed deep at the thought of the men who had faceddeath and hell to win that height and plant the flag of Britain uponit. Aye, and the Stars and Stripes of America, too!

Ye ken that tale? There was an American who had enlisted, like somany of his fellow countrymen before America was in the war, in theCanadian forces. The British army was full of men who had told awhite lie to don the King's uniform. Men there are in the Britisharmy who winked as they enlisted and were told: "You'll be aCanadian?"

"Aye, aye, I'm a Canadian, " they'd say. "From what province?"

"The province of Kentucky--or New York--or California!"

Well, there was a lad, one of them, was in the first wave at VimyRidge that April day in 1917. 'Twas but a few days before that a waveof the wildest cheering ever heard had run along the whole Westernfront, so that Fritz in his trenches wondered what was up the noo. Well, he has learned, since then! He has learned, despite his Kaiserand his officers, and his lying newspapers, that that cheer went upwhen the news came that America had declared war upon Germany. Andso, it was a few days after that cheer was heard that the Canadiansleaped over the top and went for Vimy Ridge, and this young fellowfrom America had a wee silken flag. He spoke to his officer. 

"Now that my own country's in the war, sir, " he said, "I'd like tocarry her flag with me when we go over the top. Wrapped around me, sir--"

"Go it!" said the officer. 

And so he did. And he was one of those who won through and reachedthe top. There he was wounded, but he had carried the Stars andStripes with him to the crest. 

Vimy Ridge! I could see it. And above it, and beyond it, now, for thefront had been carried on, far beyond, within what used to be thelines of the Hun, the airplanes circled. Very quiet and lazy theyseemed, for all I knew of their endless activity and the preciouswork that they were doing. I could see how the Huns were shellingthem. You would see an airplane hovering, and then, close by, suddenly, a ball of cottony white smoke. Shrapnel that was, bursting, as Fritz tried to get the range with an anti-aircraft gun--an Archie, as the Tommies call them. But the plane would pay no heed, except, maybe, to dip a bit or climb a little higher to make it harder forthe Hun. It made me think of a man shrugging his shoulders, calmlyand imperturbably, in the face of some great peril, and I wanted tocheer. I had some wild idea that maybe he would hear me, and knowthat someone saw him, and appreciated what he was doing--someone towhom it was not an old story! But then I smiled at my own thought. 

Now it was time for us to leave the cars and get some exercise. Oursteel helmets were on, and glad we were of them, for shrapnel wasbursting nearby sometimes, although most of the shells were bigfellows, that buried themselves in the ground and then exploded. Fritz wasn't doing much casual shelling the noo, though. He wassaving his fire until his observers gave him a real target to aim at. But that was no so often, for our airplanes were in command of theair then, and his flyers got precious little chance to guide hisshooting. Most of his hits were due to luck. 

"Spread out a bit as you go along here, " said Captain Godfrey. "If acrump lands close by there's no need of all of us going! If we'respread out a bit, you see, a shell might get one and leave the restof us. "

It sounded cold blooded, but it was not. To men who have lived at thefront everything comes to be taken as a matter of course. Men can getused to anything--this war has proved that again, if there was needof proving it. And I came to understand that, and to listen to thingsI heard with different ears. But those are things no one can tell youof; you must have been at the front yourself to understand all thatgoes on there, both in action and in the minds of men. 

We obeyed Captain Godfrey readily enough, as you can guess. And so Iwas alone as I walked toward Vimy Ridge. It looked just like a lumpyexcrescence on the landscape; at hame we would not even think of itas a foothill. But as I neared it, and as I rememered all it stoodfor, I thought that in the atlas of history it would loom higher thanthe highest peak of the great Himalaya range. 

Beyond the ridge, beyond the actual line of the trenches, miles away, indeed, were the German batteries from which the shells we heard andsaw as they burst were coming. I was glad of my helmet, and of thecool assurance of Captain Godfrey. I felt that we were as safe, inhis hands, as men could be in such a spot. 

It was not more than a mile we had to cover, but it was rough going, bad going. Here war had had its grim way without interruption. Theface of the earth had been cut to pieces. Its surface had beensmashed to a pulpy mass. The ground had been plowed, over and over, by a rain of shells--German and British. What a planting there hadbeen that spring, and what a plowing! A harvest of death it had beenthat had been sown--and the reaper had not waited for summer to come, and the Harvest moon. He had passed that way with his scythe, andwhere we passed now he had taken his terrible, his horrid, toll. 

At the foot of the ridge I saw men fighting for the first time--actually fighting, seeking to hurt an enemy. It was a Canadianbattery we saw, and it was firing, steadily and methodically, at theHuns. Up to now I had seen only the vast industrial side of war, itsbusiness and its labor. Now I was, for the first time, in touch withactual fighting. I saw the guns belching death and destruction, destined for men miles away. It was high angle fire, of course, directed by observers in the air. 

But even that seemed part of the sheer, factory-like industry of war. There was no passion, no coming to grips in hot blood, here. Orderswere given by the battery commander and the other officers as theforeman in a machine shop might give them. And the busy artillerymenworked like laborers, too, clearing their guns after a salvo, loadingthem, bringing up fresh supplies of ammunition. It was allmethodical, all a matter of routine. 

"Good artillery work is like that, " said Captain Godfrey, when Ispoke to him about it. "It's a science. It's all a matter of thehigher mathematics. Everything is worked out to half a dozen placesof decimals. We've eliminated chance and guesswork just as far aspossible from modern artillery actions. "

But there was something about it all that was disappointing, at firstsight. It let you down a bit. Only the guns themselves kept up thetradition. Only they were acting as they should, and showing a properpassion and excitement. I could hear them growling ominously, likedogs locked in their kennel when they would be loose and about, andhunting. And then they would spit, angrily. They inflamed myimagination, did those guns; they satisfied me and my old-fashionedconception of war and fighting, more than anything else that I hadseen had done. And it seemed to me that after they had spit out theirdeadly charge they wiped their muzzles with red tongues of flame, satisfied beyond all words or measure with what they had done. 

We were rising now, as we walked, and getting a better view of thecountry that lay beyond. And so I came to understand a little betterthe value of a height even so low and insignificant as Vimy Ridge inthat flat country. While the Germans held it they could overlook allour positions, and all the advantage of natural placing had been tothem. Now, thanks to the Canadians, it was our turn, and we werelooking down. 

Weel, I was under fire. There was no doubt about it. There was adroning over us now, like the noise bees make, or many flies in asmall room on a hot summer's day. That was the drone of the Germanshells. There was a little freshening of the artillery activity onboth sides, Captain Godfrey said, as if in my honor. When one sideincreased its fire the other always answered--played copy cat. Therewas no telling, ye ken, when such an increase of fire might not bethe first sign of an attack. And neither side took more chances thanit must. 

I had known, before I left Britain, that I would come under fire. AndI had wondered what it would be like: I had expected to be afraid, nervous. Brave men had told me, one after another, that every man isafraid when he first comes under fire. And so I had wondered how Iwould be, and I had expected to be badly scared and extremelynervous. Now I could hear that constant droning of shells, and, inthe distance, I could see, very often, powdery squirts of smoke anddirt along the ground, where our shells were striking, so that I knewI had the Hun lines in sight. 

And I can truthfully say that, that day, at least, I felt no greatfear or nervousness. Later I did, as I shall tell you, but that dayone overpowering emotion mastered every other. It was a desire forvengeance! You were the Huns--the men who had killed my boy. Theywere almost within my reach. And as I looked at them there in theirlines a savage desire possessed me, almost overwhelmed me, indeed, that made me want to rush to those guns and turn them to my own madpurpose of vengeance. 

It was all I could do, I tell you, to restrain myself--to check thatwild, almost ungovernable impulse to rush to the guns and grapplewith them myself--myself fire them at the men who had killed my boy. I wanted to fight! I wanted to fight with my two hands--to tear andrend, and have the consciousness that I flash back, like a telegraphmessage from my satiated hands to my eager brain that was spurring me on. 

But that was not to be. I knew it, and I grew calmer, presently. Theroughness of the going helped me to do that, for it took all a man'swits and faculties to grope his way along the path we were followingnow. Indeed, it was no path at all that led us to the Pimple--thetopmost point of Vimy Ridge, which changed hands half a dozen timesin the few minutes of bloody fighting that had gone on here duringthe great attack. 

The ground was absolutely riddled with shell holes here. There musthave been a mine of metal underneath us. What path there waszigzagged around. It had been worn to such smoothness as it possessedsince the battle, and it evaded the worst craters by going aroundthem. My madness was passed now, and a great sadness had taken itsplace. For here, where I was walking, men had stumbled up withbullets and shells raining about them. At every step I trod groundthat must have been the last resting-place of some Canadian soldier, who had died that I might climb this ridge in a safety soimmeasurably greater than his had been. 

If it was hard for us to make this climb, if we stumbled as we walked, what had it been for them? Our breath came hard and fast--how had itbeen with them? Yet they had done it! They had stormed the ridge theHuns had proudly called impregnable. They had taken, in a swift rush, that nothing could stay, a position the Kaiser's generals had assuredhim would never be lost--could never be reached by mortal troops. 

The Pimple, for which we were heading now, was an observation post atthat time. There there was a detachment of soldiers, for it was animportant post, covering much of the Hun territory beyond. A major ofinfantry was in command; his headquarters were a large hole in theground, dug for him by a German shell--fired by German gunners who hadno thought further from their minds than to do a favor for a Britishofficer. And he was sitting calmly in front of his headquarters, smoking a pipe, when we reached the crest and came to the Pimple. 

He was a very calm man, that major, given, I should say, to thegreatest repression. I think nothing would have moved him from thatphlegmatic calm of his! He watched us coming, climbing and makinghard going of it. If he was amused he gave no sign, as he puffed athis pipe. I, for one, was puffing, too--I was panting like a grampus. I had thought myself in good condition, but I found out at Vimy Ridgethat I was soft and flabby. 

Not a sign did that major give until we reached him. And then, as westood looking at him, and beyond him at the panorama of the trenches, he took his pipe from his mouth. 

"Welcome to Vimy Ridge!" he said, in the manner of a host greeting aparty bidden for the weekend. 

I was determined that that major should not outdo me. I had preciouslittle wind left to breathe with, much less to talk, but I called forthe last of it. 

"Thank you, major, " I said. "May I join you in a smoke?"

"Of course you can!" he said, unsmiling. 

"That is, if you've brought your pipe with you. " "Aye, I've my pipe, "I told him. "I may forget to pay my debt, but I'll never forget mypipe. " And no more I will. 

So I sat down beside him, and drew out my pipe, and made a longbusiness of filling it, and pushing the tobacco down just so, sincethat gave me a chance to get my wind. And when I was ready to lightup I felt better, and I was breathing right, so that I could talk asI pleased without fighting for breath. 

My friend the major proved an entertaining chap, and a talkative one, too, for all his seeming brusqueness. He pointed out the spots thathad been made famous in the battle, and explained to me what it wasthe Canadians had done. And I saw and understood better than everbefore what a great feat that had been, and how heavily it hadcounted. He lent me his binoculars, too, and with them I swept thewhole valley toward Lens, where the great French coal mines are, andwhere the Germans have been under steady fire so long, and have beenhanging on by their eyelashes. 

It was not the place I should choose, ordinarily, to do a bit ofsight-seeing. The German shells were still humming through the airabove us, though not quite so often as they had. But there wereenough of them, and they seemed to me close enough for me to feel thewind they raised as they passed. I thought for sure one of them wouldcome along, presently, and clip my ears right off. And sometimes Ifelt myself ducking my head--as if that would do me any good! But Idid not think about it; I would feel myself doing it, without havingintended to do anything of the sort. I was a bit nervous, I suppose, but no one could be really scared or alarmed in the unplumbabledepths of calm in which that British major was plunged!

It was a grand view I had of the valley, but it was not the sort ofthing I had expected to see. I knew there were thousands of menthere, and I think I had expected to see men really fighting. Butthere was nothing of the sort. Not a man could I see in all thevalley. They were under cover, of course. When I stopped to thinkabout it, that was what I should have expected, of course. If I couldhave seen our laddies there below, why, the Huns could have seen themtoo. And that would never have done. 

I could hear our guns, too, now, very well. They were giving voiceall around me, but never a gun could I see, for all my peering andsearching around. Even the battery we had passed below was out ofsight now. And it was a weird thing, and an uncanny thing to think ofall that riot of sound around, and not a sight to be had of thebatteries that were making it!

Hogge came up while I was talking to the major. "Hello!" he said. "What have you done to your knee, Lauder?"

I looked down and saw a trickle of blood running down, below my knee. It was bare, of course, because I wore my kilt. 

"Oh, that's nothing, " I said. 

I knew at once what it was. I remembered that, as I stumbled up thehill, I had tripped over a bit of barbed wire and scratched my leg. And so I explained. 

"And I fell into a shell-hole, too, " I said. "A wee one, as they goaround here. " But I laughed. "Still, I'll be able to say I waswounded on Vimy Ridge. "

I glanced at the major as I said that, and was half sorry I had madethe poor jest. And I saw him smile, in one corner of his mouth, as Isaid I had been "wounded. " It was the corner furthest from me, but Isaw it. And it was a dry smile, a withered smile. I could guess histhought. 

"Wounded!" he must have said to himself, scornfully. And he must haveremembered the real wounds the Canadians had received on thathillside. Aye, I could guess his thought. And I shared it, although Idid not tell him so. But I think he understood. 

He was still sitting there, puffing away at his old pipe, as quietand calm and imperturbable as ever, when Captain Godfrey gathered ustogether to go on. He gazed out over the valley. 

He was a man to be remembered for a long time, that major. I can seehim now, in my mind's eye, sitting there, brooding, staring outtoward Lens and the German lines. And I think that if I were choosinga figure for some great sculptor to immortalize, to typify andrepresent the superb, the majestic imperturbability of the BritishEmpire in time of stress and storm, his would be the one. I couldthink of no finer figure than his for such a statue. You would seehim, if the sculptor followed my thought, sitting in front of hisshell-hole on Vimy Ridge, calm, dispassionate, devoted to his dutyand the day's work, quietly giving the directions that guided theBritish guns in their work of blasting the Hun out of the refuge hehad chosen when the Canadians had driven him from the spot where themajor sat. 

It was easier going down Vimy Ridge than it had been coming up, butit was hard going still. We had to skirt great, gaping holes torn bymonstrous shells--shells that had torn the very guts out of thelittle hill. 

"We're going to visit another battery, " said Captain Godfrey. "I'lltell you I think it's the best hidden battery on the whole Britishfront! And that's saying a good deal, for we've learned a thing ortwo about hiding our whereabouts from Fritz. He's a curious one, Fritz is, but we try not to gratify his curiosity any more than wemust. "

"I'll be glad to see more of the guns, " I said. 

"Well, here you'll see more than guns. The major in command at thisbattery we're heading for has a decoration that was given to him justfor the way he hid his guns. There's much more than fighting that aman has to do in this war if he's to make good. "

As we went along I kept my eyes open, trying to get a peep at theguns before Godfrey should point them out to me. I could hear firinggoing on all around me, but there was so much noise that my ears werenot a guide. I was not a trained observer, of course; I would notknow a gun position at sight, as some soldier trained to the workwould be sure to do. And yet I thought I could tell when I was comingto a great battery. I thought so, I say!

Again, though I had that feeling of something weird and uncanny. Fornow, as we walked along, I did hear the guns, and I was sure, fromthe nature of the sound, that we were coming close to them. But, as Ilooked straight toward the spot where my ears told me that they mustbe, I could see nothing at all. I thought that perhaps Godfrey hadlost his way, and that we were wandering along the wrong path. It didnot seem likely, but it was possible. 

And then, suddenly, when I was least expecting it, we stopped. 

"Well--here we are!" said the captain, and grinned at our amazement. 

And there we were indeed! We were right among the guns of a Canadianbattery, and the artillerymen were shouting their welcome, for theyhad heard that I was coming, and recognized me as soon as they sawme. But--how had we got here? I looked around me, in utter amazement. Even now that I had come to the battery I could not understand how itwas that I had been deceived--how that battery had been so marvelouslyconcealed that, if one did not know of its existence and of its exactlocation, one might literally stumble over it in broad daylight!

CHAPTER XVI

It had turned very hot, now, at the full of the day. Indeed, it wasgrilling weather, and there in the battery, in a hollow, close downbeside a little run or stream, it was even hotter than on theshell-swept bare top of the ridge. So the Canadian gunners hadstripped down for comfort. Not a man had more than his under-shirt onabove his trousers, and many of them were naked to the waist, withtheir hide tanned to the color of old saddles. 

These laddies reminded me of those in the first battery I had seen. They were just as calm, and just as dispassionate as they worked intheir mill--it might well have been a mill in which I saw themworking. Only they were no grinding corn, but death--death for theHuns, who had brought death to so many of their mates. But there wasno excitement, there were no cries of hatred and anger. 

They were hard at work. Their work, it seemed, never came to an endor even to a pause. The orders rang out, in a sort of sing-songvoice. After each shot a man who sat with a telephone strapped abouthis head called out corrections of the range, in figures that werejust a meaningless jumble to me, although they made sense to the menwho listened and changed the pointing of the guns at each order. 

[ILLUSTRATION: Capt. John Lauder and Comrades Before The Trenches InFrance (See Lauder07. Jpg)]

Their faces, that, like their bare backs and chests, looked liketanned leather, were all grimy from their work among the smoke andthe gases. And through the grime the sweat had run down like littlerivers making courses for themselves in the soft dirt of a hillside. They looked grotesque enough, but there was nothing about them tomake me feel like laughing, I can tell you! And they all grinnedamiably when the amazed and disconcerted Reverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour came tumbling in among them. We all felt right at hame at once--and I the more so when a chap I had met and come to know well inToronto during one of my American tours came over and gripped my hand. 

"Aye, but it's good to see your face, Harry!" he said, as he mademe welcome. 

This battery had done great work ever since it had come out. Nobattery in the whole army had a finer record, I was told. And no oneneeded to tell me the tale of its losses. Not far away there was alittle cemetery, filled with doleful little crosses, set up overmounds that told their grim story all too plainly and too eloquently. 

The battery had gone through the Battle of Vimy Ridge and made agreat name for itself. And now it was set down upon a spot that hadseen some of the very bloodiest of the fighting on that day. I sawhere, for the first time, some of the most horrible things that thewar holds. There was a little stream, as I said, that ran through thehollow in which the battery was placed, and that stream had beenfilled with blood, not water, on the day of the battle. 

Everywhere, here, were whitened bones of men. In the wild swirling ofthe battle, and the confusion of digging in and meeting Germancounter attacks that had followed it, it had not been possible tobury all the dead. And so the whitened bones remained, though theelements had long since stripped them bare. The elements--and thehungry rats. These are not pretty things to tell, but they are true, and the world should know what war is to-day. 

I almost trod upon one skeleton that remained complete. It was thatof a huge German soldier--a veritable giant of a man, he must havebeen. The bones of his feet were still encased in his great boots, their soles heavily studded with nails. Even a few shreds of hisuniform remained. But the flesh was all gone. The sun and the ratsand the birds had accounted for the last morsel of it. 

Hundreds of years from now, I suppose, the bones that were strewnalong that ground will still be being turned up by plows. Thegenerations to come who live there will never lack relics of thebattle, and of the fighting that preceded and followed it. They willfind bones, and shell cases, and bits of metal of all sorts. Rustybayonets will be turned up by their plowshares; strange coins, aspuzzling as some of those of Roman times that we in Britain havefound, will puzzle them. Who can tell how long it will be before thesoil about Vimy Ridge will cease to give up its relics?

That ground had been searched carefully for everything that mightconceivably be put to use again, or be made fit for further service. The British army searches every battlefield so in these days. Andyet, when I was there, many weeks after the storm of fighting hadpassed on, and when the scavengers had done their work, the groundwas still rather thickly strewn with odds and ends that interested mevastly. I might have picked up much more than I did. But I could notcarry so very much, and, too, so many of the things brought grislythoughts to my mind! God knows I needed no reminders of the war! Ihad a reminder in my heart, that never left me. Still, I took somefew things, more for the sake of the hame folks, who might not see, and would, surely, be interested. I gathered some bayonets for mycollection--somehow they seemed the things I was most willing to takealong. One was British, one German--two were French. 

But the best souvenir of all I got at Vimy Ridge I did not pick up. It was given to me by my friend, the grave major--him of whom I wouldlike some famous sculptor to make a statue as he sat at his work ofobservation. That was a club--a wicked looking instrument. This clubhad a great thick head, huge in proportion to its length and size, and this head was studded with great, sharp nails. A single blow fromit would finish the strongest man that ever lived. It was a fitweapon for a murderer--and a murderer had wielded it. The major hadtaken it from a Hun, who had meant to use it--had, doubtless, usedit!--to beat out the brains of wounded men, lying on the ground. Manyof those clubs were taken from the Germans, all along the front, bothby the British and the French, and the Germans had never made anysecret of the purpose for which they were intended. Well, they pickedpoor men to try such tactics on when they went against the Canadians!

The Canadians started no such work, but they were quick to adopt apolicy of give and take. It was the Canadians who began the trenchraids for which the Germans have such a fierce distaste, and afterthey had learned something of how Fritz fought the Canadians took topaying him back in some of his own coin. Not that they matched thedeeds of the Huns--only a Hun could do that. But the Canadians werenot eager to take prisoners. They would bomb a dugout rather thantake its occupants back. And a dugout that has been bombed yields fewliving men!

Who shall blame them? Not I--nor any other man who knows what lessonsin brutality and treachery the Canadians have had from the Hun. It wasthe Canadians, near Ypres, who went through the first gas attack--thatfearful day when the Germans were closer to breaking through than theyever were before or since. I shall not set down here all the tales Iheard of the atrocities of the Huns. Others have done that. Men havewritten of that who have firsthand knowledge, as mine cannot be. Iknow only what has been told to me, and there is little need of hearsayevidence. There is evidence enough that any court would accept as hangingproof. But this much it is right to say--that no troops along the Westernfront have more to revenge than have the Canadians. 

It is not the loss of comrades, dearly loved though they be, thatbreeds hatred among the soldiers. That is a part of war, and alwayswas. The loss of friends and comrades may fire the blood. It may leadmen to risk their own lives in a desperate charge to get even. But itis a pain that does not rankle and that does not fester like a sorethat will not heal. It is the tales the Canadians have to tell ofsheer, depraved torture and brutality that has inflamed them to thepitch of hatred that they cherish. It has seemed as if the Germanshad a particular grudge against the Canadians. And that, indeed, isknown to be the case. The Germans harbored many a fond illusion beforethe war. They thought that Britain would not fight, first of all. 

And then, when Britain did declare war, they thought they couldspeedily destroy her "contemptible little army. " Ah, weel--they didcome near to destroying it! But not until it had helped to balk themof their desire--not until it had played its great and decisive partin ruining the plans the Hun had been making and perfecting forforty-four long years. And not until it had served as a dyke behindwhich floods of men in the khaki of King George had had time to armand drill to rush out to oppose the gray-green floods that had sweptthrough helpless Belgium. 

They had other illusions, beside that major one that helped to wreckthem. They thought there would be a rebellion and civil war inIreland. They took too seriously the troubles of the early summer of1914, when Ulster and the South of Ireland were snapping and snarlingat each other's throats. They looked for a new mutiny in India, whichshould keep Britain's hands full. They expected strikes at home. But, above all, they were sure that the great, self-governing dependenciesof Britain, that made up the mighty British Empire, would take nopart in the fight. 

Canada, Australasia, South Africa--they never reckoned upon having tocope with them. These were separate nations, they thought, independent in fact if not in name, which would seize the occasion toseparate themselves entirely from the mother country. In South Africathey were sure that there would be smoldering discontent enough leftfrom the days of the Boer war to break out into a new flame of warand rebellion at this great chance. 

And so it drove them mad with fury when they learned that Canada andall the rest had gone in, heart and soul. And when even their poisongas could not make the Canadians yield; when, later still, theylearned that the Canadians were their match, and more than theirmatch, in every phase of the great game of war, their rage led themto excesses against the men from overseas even more damnable thanthose that were their general practice. 

These Canadians, who were now my hosts, had located their guns in apit triangular in shape. The guns were mounted at the corners of thetriangle, and along its sides. And constantly, while I was there theycoughed their short, sharp coughs and sent a spume of metal flyingtoward the German lines. Never have I seen a busier spot. And, remember--until I had almost fallen into that pit, with itssputtering, busy guns, I had not been able to make even a good guessas to where they were! The very presence of this workshop of deathwas hidden from all save those who had a right to know of it. 

It was a masterly piece of camouflage. I wish I could explain to youhow the effect was achieved. It was all made plain to me; every stepof the process was explained, and I cried out in wonder and inadmiration at the clever simplicity of it. But that is one of thethings I may not tell. I saw many things, during my time at thefront, that the Germans would give a pretty penny to know. But noneof the secrets that I learned would be more valuable, even to-day, than that of that hidden battery. And so--I must leave you inignorance as to that. 

The commanding officer was most kindly and patient in explainingmatters to me. 

"We can't see hide nor hair of our targets here, of course, " he said, "any more than Fritz can see us. We get all our ranges and therecords of all our hits, from Normabell. "

I looked a question, I suppose. 

"You called on him, I think--up on the Pimple. Major Normabell, D. S. O. "

That was how I learned the name of the imperturbable major with whomI had smoked a pipe on the crest of Vimy Ridge. I shall alwaysremember his name and him. I saw no man in France who made a livelierimpression upon my mind and my imagination. 

"Aye, " I said. "I remember. So that's his name--Normabell, D. S. O. I'll make a note of that. "

My informant smiled. 

"Normabell's one of our characters, " he said. "Well, you see hecommands a goodish bit of country there where he sits. And when heneeds them he has aircraft observations to help him, too. He's ourpair of eyes. We're like moles down here, we gunners--but he does allour seeing for us. And he's in constant communication--he or one ofhis officers. "

I wondered where all the shells the battery was firing were headedfor. And I learned that just then it was paying its respectsparticularly to a big factory building just west of Lens. For somereason that had been marked for destruction, but it had beenreinforced and strengthened so that it was taking a lot of smashingand standing a good deal more punishment than anyone had thought itcould--which was reason enough, in itself, to stick to the job untilthat factory was nothing more than a heap of dust and ruins. 

The way the guns kept pounding away at it made me think of firemen ina small town drenching a local blaze with their hose. The gunnerswere just so eager as that. And I could almost see that factory, crumbling away. Major Normabell had pointed it out to me, up on theridge, and now I knew why. I'll venture to say that before night theeight-inch howitzers of that battery had utterly demolished it, andso ended whatever usefulness it had had for the Germans. 

It was cruel business to be knocking the towns and factories of ourally, France, to bits in the fashion that we were doing that day--there and at many another point along the front. The Huns are fond ofsaying that much of the destruction in Northern France has been thework of allied artillery. True enough--but who made that inevitableAnd it was not our guns that laid waste a whole countryside beforethe German retreat in the spring of 1917, when the Huns ran wild, rooting up fruit trees, cutting down every other tree that could befound, and doing every other sort of wanton damage and mischief theirhands could find to do. 

"Hard lines, " said the battery commander. He shrugged his shoulders. "No use trying to spare shells here, though, even on French towns. The harder we smash them the sooner it'll be over. Look here, sir. "

He pointed out the men who sat, their telephone receivers strappedover their ears. Each served a gun. In all that hideous din it was ofthe utmost importance that they should hear correctly every word andfigure that came to them over the wire--a part of that marvelouslycomplete telephone and telegraph system that has been built for andby the British army in France. 

"They get corrections on every shot, " he told me. "The guns arealtered in elevation according to what they hear. The range ischanged, and the pointing, too. We never see old Fritz--but we knowhe's getting the visiting cards we send him. "

They were amazingly calm, those laddies at the telephones. In allthat hideous, never-ending din, they never grew excited. Their voiceswere calm and steady as they repeated the orders that came to them. Ihave seen girls at hotel switchboards, expert operators, working withconditions made to their order, who grew infinitely more excited at abusy time, when many calls were coming in and going out. Those menmight have been at home, talking to a friend of their plans for anevening's diversion, for all the nervousness or fussiness they showed. 

Up there, on the Pimple, I had seen Normabell, the eyes of thebattery. Here I was watching its ears. And, to finish the metaphor, to work it out, I was listening to its voice. Its brazen tongues weregiving voice continually. The guns--after all, everything else led upto them. They were the reason for all the rest of the machinery ofthe battery, and it was they who said the last short word. 

There was a good deal of rough joking and laughter in the battery. The Canadian gunners took their task lightly enough, though theirwork was of the hardest--and of the most dangerous, too. But jokesran from group to group, from gun to gun. They were constantlykidding one another, as an American would say, I think. If acorrection came for one gun that showed there had been a mistake insighting after the last orders--if, that is, the gunners, and not thedistant observers, were plainly at fault--there would be agood-natured outburst of chaffing from all the others. 

But, though such a spirit of lightness prevailed, there was not amoment of loafing. These men were engaged in a grim, deadly task, and every once in a while I would catch a black, purposeful lookin a man's eyes that made me realize that, under all the lighttalk and laughter there was a perfect realization of the truth. They might not show, on the surface, that they took life and theirwork seriously. Ah, no! They preferred, after the custom of theirrace, to joke with death. 

And so they were doing quite literally. The Germans knew perfectlywell that there was a battery somewhere near the spot where I hadfound my gunners. Only the exact location was hidden from them, andthey never ceased their efforts to determine that. Fritz's airplaneswere always trying to sneak over to get a look. An airplane was theonly means of detection the Canadians feared. No--I will not say theyfeared it! The word fear did not exist for that battery! But it wasthe only way in which there was a tolerable chance, even, for Fritzto locate them, and, for the sake of the whole operation at thatpoint, as well as for their own interest, they were eager to avoidthat. 

German airplanes were always trying to sneak over, I say, but nearlyalways our men of the Royal Flying Corps drove them back. We came asclose, just then, to having command of the air in that sector as anyarmy does these days. You cannot quite command or control the air. Afew hostile flyers can get through the heaviest barrage and thestaunchest air patrol. And so, every once in a while, an alarm wouldsound, and all hands would crane their necks upward to watch anairplane flying above with an iron cross painted upon its wings. 

Then, and, as a rule, then only, fire would cease for a few minutes. There was far less chance of detection when the guns were still. Atthe height at which our archies--so the anti-aircraft guns are calledby Tommy Atkins--forced the Boche to fly there was little chance ofhis observers picking out this battery, at least, against the ground. If the guns were giving voice that chance was tripled--and so theystopped, at such times, until a British flyer had had time to engagethe Hun and either bring him down or send him scurrying for the safeshelter behind his own lines. 

Fritz, in the air, liked to have the odds with him, as a rule. It wasexceptional to find a German flyer like Boelke who really went in forsingle-handed duels in the air. As a rule they preferred to attack asingle plane with half a dozen, and so make as sure as they could ofvictory at a minimum of risk. But that policy did not always work--sometimes the lone British flyer came out ahead, despite the oddsagainst him. 

There was a good deal of firing on general principles from Fritz. Hisshells came wandering querulously about, striking on every side ofthe battery. Occasionally, of course, there was a hit that wasdirect, or nearly so. And then, as a rule, a new mound or two wouldappear in the little cemetery, and a new set of crosses that, for afew days, you might easily enough have marked for new because theywould not be weathered yet. But such hits were few and far between, and they were lucky, casual shots, of which the Germans themselvesdid not have the satisfaction of knowing. 

"Of course, if they get our range, really, and find out all about us, we'll have to move, " said the officer in command. "That would be abore, but it couldn't be helped. We're a fixed target, you see, assoon as they know just where we are, and they can turn loose abattery of heavy howitzers against us and clear us out of here in notime. But we're pretty quick movers when we have to move! It's greatsport, in a way too, sometimes. We leave all the camouflage behind, and some-times Fritz will spend a week shelling a position that wasmoved away at the first shell that came as if it meant they reallywere on to us. "

I wondered how a battery commander would determine the differencebetween a casual hit and the first shell of a bombardment definitelyplanned and accurately placed. 

"You can tell, as a rule, if you know the game, " he said. "There'llbe searching shells, you see. There'll be one too far, perhaps. Andthen, after a pretty exact interval, there'll be another, maybe a bitshort. Then one to the left--and then to the right. By that timewe're off as a rule--we don't wait for the one that will be scored ahit! If you're quick, you see, you can beat Fritz to it by keepingyour eyes open, and being ready to move in a hurry when he's got areally good argument to make you do it. "

But while I was there, while Fritz was inquisitive enough, hiscuriosity got him nowhere. There were no casual hits, even, and therewas nothing to make the battery feel that it must be making ready fora quick trek. 

Was that no a weird, strange game of hide and seek that I watchedbeing played at Vimy Ridge? It gave me the creeps, that idea ofbattling with an enemy you could not see! It must be hard, at times, I think, for, the gunners to realize that they are actually at war. But, no--there is always the drone and the squawking of the Germanshells, and the plop-plop, from time to time, as one finds its markin the mud nearby. But to think of shooting always at an enemy youcannot see!

It brought to my mind a tale I had heard at hame in Scotland. Therewas a hospital in Glasgow, and there a man who had gone to see afriend stopped, suddenly, in amazement, at the side of a cot. Helooked down at features that were familiar to him. The man in the cotwas not looking at him, and the visitor stood gaping, staring at himin the utmost astonishment and doubt. 

"I say, man, " he asked, at last, "are ye not Tamson, the baker?"

The wounded man opened his eyes, and looked up, weakly. 

"Aye, " he said. "I'm Tamson, the baker. " His voice was weak, and helooked tired. But he looked puzzled, too. 

"Weel, Tamson, man, what's the matter wi' ye?" asked the other. "Ididna hear that ye were sick or hurt. How comes it ye are here? Canit be that ye ha' been to the war, man, and we not hearing of it, at all?"

"Aye, I think so, " said Tamson, still weakly, but as if he wererather glad of a chance to talk, at that. 

"Ye think so?" asked his friend, in greater astonishment than ever. "Man, if ye've been to the war do ye not know it for sure andcertain?"

"Well, I will tell ye how it is, " said Tamson, very slowly andwearily. "I was in the reserve, do ye ken. And I was standin' infront of my hoose one day in August, thinkin' of nothin' at all. Imarked a man who was coming doon the street, wi' a blue paper in hishand, and studyin' the numbers on the doorplates. But I paid no greatheed to him until he stopped and spoke to me. 

"He had stopped outside my hoose and looked at the number, and thenat his blue paper. And then he turned to me. 

"'Are ye Tamson, the baker?' he asked me--just as ye asked me thatsame question the noo. 

"And I said to him, just as I said it to ye, 'Aye, I'm Tamson, the baker. '

"'Then it's Hamilton Barracks for ye, Tamson, ' he said, and handed methe blue paper. 

"Four hours from the time when he handed me the blue paper in frontof my hoose in Glasgow I was at Hamilton Barracks. In twelve hours Iwas in Southhampton. In twenty hours I was in France. And aboot assoon as I got there I was in a lot of shooting and running this wayand that that they ha' told me since was the Battle of the Marne. 

"And in twenty-four hours more I was on my way back to Glasgow! Inforty-eight hours I woke up in Stobe Hill Infirmary and the nurse wassaying in my ear: 'Ye're all richt the noon, Tamson. We ha' only justamputated your leg!'

"So I think I ha' been to the war, but I can only say I think so. Ionly know what I was told--that ha' never seen a damn German yet!"

That is a true story of Tamson the baker. And his experience hasactually been shared by many a poor fellow--and by many another whomight have counted himself lucky if he had lost no more than a leg, as Tamson did. 

But the laddies of my battery, though they were shooting now atGermans they could not see, had had many a close up view of Fritz inthe past, and expected many another in the future. Maybe they willget one, some time, after the fashion of the company of which my boyJohn once told me. 

The captain of this company--a Hieland company, it was, though not ofJohn's regiment--had spent must of his time in London before the war, and belonged to several clubs, which, in those days, employed manyGermans as servants and waiters. He was a big man, and he had a deep, bass voice, so that he roared like the bull of Bashan when he had amind to raise it for all to hear. 

One day things were dull in his sector. The front line trench was notfar from that of the Germans, but there was no activity beyond thatof the snipers, and the Germans were being so cautious that ours weregetting mighty few shots. The captain was bored, and so were the men. 

"How would you like a pot shot, lads?" he asked. 

"Fine!" came the answer. "Fine, sir!"

"Very well, " said the captain. "Get ready with your rifles, and keepyour eyes on you trench. "

It was not more than thirty yards away--pointblank range. The captainwaited until they were ready. And then his voice rang out in itsloudest, most commanding roar. 

"Waiter!" he shouted. 

Forty helmets popped up over the German parapet, and a storm ofbullets swept them away!

CHAPTER XVII

It was getting late--for men who had had so early a breakfast as wehad had to make to get started in good time. And just as I wasbeginning to feel hungry--odd, it seemed to me, that such a thing aslunch should stay in my mind in such surroundings and when so manyvastly more important things were afoot!--the major looked at hiswrist watch. 

"By Jove!" he said, "Lunch time! Gentlemen--you'll accept suchhospitality as we can offer you at our officer's mess?"

There wasn't any question about acceptance! We all said we weredelighted, and we meant it. I looked around for a hut or some suchplace, or even for a tent, and, seeing nothing of the sort, wonderedwhere we might be going to eat. I soon found out. The major led theway underground, into a dugout. This was the mess. It was hard by theguns, and in a hole that had been dug out, quit literally. Here therewas a certain degree of safety. In these dugouts every phase of thebattery's life except the actual serving of the guns went on. Officers and men alike ate and slept in them. 

They were much snugger within than you might fancy. A lot of the menhad given homelike touches to their habitations. Pictures cut fromthe illustrated papers at home, which are such prime favorites withall the Tommies made up a large part of the decorative scheme. Pictures of actresses predominated; the Tommies didn't go in for warpictures. Indeed, there is little disposition to hammer the war homeat you in a dugout. The men don't talk about it or think about, saveas they must; you hear less talk about the war along the front thanyou do at home. I heard a story at Vimy Ridge of a Tommy who had comeback to the trenches after seeing Blighty for the first time inmonths. 

"Hello, Bill, " said one of his mates. "Back again, are you? How'sthings in Blighty?" "Oh, all right, " said Bill. 

Then he looked around. He pricked his ears as a shell whined abovehim. And he took out his pipe and stuffed it full of tobacco, andlighted it, and sat back. He sighed in the deepest content as thesmoke began to curl upward. 

"Bli'me, Bill--I'd say, to look at you, you was glad to be backhere!" said his mate, astonished. 

"Well, I ain't so sorry, and that's a fact, " said Bill. "I tell youhow it is, Alf. Back there in Blighty they don't talk about nothingbut this bloody war. I'm fair fed up with it, that I am! I'm glad tobe back here, where I don't have to 'ear about the war every bleedin'minute!"

That story sounds far fetched to you, perhaps, but it isn't. War talkis shop talk to the men who are fighting it and winning it, and it isperfectly true and perfectly reasonable, too, that they like to getaway from it when they can, just as any man likes to get away fromthe thought of his business or his work when he isn't at the officeor the factory or the shop. 

Captain Godfrey explained to me, as we went into the mess hall forlunch, that the dugouts were really pretty safe. Of course there weredangers--where are there not along that strip of land that runs fromthe North Sea to Switzerland in France and Belgium?

"A direct hit from a big enough shell would bury us all, " he said. "But that's not likely--the chances are all against it. And, eventhen, we'd have a chance. I've seen men dug out alive from a holelike this after a shell from one of their biggest howitzers hadlanded square upon it. "

But I had no anxiety to form part of an experiment to prove the truthor the falsity of that suggestion! I was glad to know that thechances of a shell's coming along were pretty slim. 

Conditions were primitive at that mess. The refinements of life werelacking, to be sure--but who cared? Certainly the hungry members ofthe Reverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour did not! We ate from a roughdeal table, sitting on rude benches that had a decidedly home-madelook. But--we had music with our meals, just like the folks in Londonat the Savoy or in New York at Sherry's! It was the incessant thunderof the guns that served as the musical accompaniment of our lunch, and I was already growing to love that music. I could begin, now, todistinguish degrees of sound and modulations of all sorts in themighty diapason of the cannon. It was as if a conductor were leadingan orchestra, and as if it responded instantly to every suggestion ofhis 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 realstaff of life for the British army. And there were potatoes, inplentiful supply, and bread and butter, and tea--there is always teawhere Tommy or his officers are about! There was a lack of tableware; a dainty soul might not have liked the thought of spreading hisbutter on his bread with his thumb, as we had to do. But I was toohungry to be fastidious, myself. 

Because the mess had guests there was a special dish in our honor. One of the men had gone over--at considerable risk of his life, as Ilearned later--to the heap of stones and dust that had once been thevillage of Givenchy. There he had found a lot of gooseberries. TheFrench call them grossets, as we in Scotland do, too--although thepronunciation of the word is different in the two languages, ofcourse. There had been gardens around the houses of Givenchy once, before the place had been made into a desert of rubble and brickdust. And, somehow, life had survived in those bruised and batteredgardens, and the delicious mess of gooseberries that we had fordessert stood as proof thereof. 

The meal was seasoned by good talk. I love to hear the young Britishofficers talk. It is a liberal education. They have grown so wise, those boys! Those of them who come back when the war is over willhave the world at their feet, indeed. Nothing will be able to stopthem or to check them in their rise. They have learned every greatlesson that a man must learn if he is to succeed in the affairs oflife. Self control is theirs, and an infinite patience, and a doggeddetermination that refuses to admit that there are any things that aman cannot do if he only makes up his mind that he must and will dothem. For the British army has accomplished the impossible, timeafter time; it has done things that men knew could not be done. 

And so we sat and talked, as we smoked, after the meal, until themajor rose, at last, and invited me to walk around the battery againwith him. I could ask questions now, having seen the men at work, andhe explained many things I wanted to know--and which Fritz would liketo know, too, to this day! But above all I was fascinated by the workof the gunners. I kept trying, in my mind's eye, to follow the courseof the shells that were dispatched so calmly upon their errands ofdestruction. My imagination played with the thought of what they weredoing at the other end of their swift voyage through the air. Ipictured the havoc that must be wrought when one made a clean hit. 

And, suddenly, I was swept by that same almost irresistible desire tobe fighting myself that had come over me when I had seen the otherbattery. If I could only play my part! If I could fire even a singleshot--if I, with my own hands, could do that much against those whohad killed my boy! And then, incredulously, I heard the words in myear. It was the major. 

"Would you like to try a shot, Harry?" he asked me. 

Would I? I stared at him. I couldn't believe my ears. It was as if hehad read my thoughts. I gasped out some sort of an affirmative. Myblood was boiling at the very thought, and the sweat started from mypores. 

"All right--nothing easier!" said the major, smiling. "I had an ideayou were wanting to take a hand, Harry. "

He led me toward one of the guns, where the sweating crew wasespecially active, as it seemed to me. They grinned at me as they sawme coming. 

"Here's old Harry Lauder come to take a crack at them himself, " Iheard one man say to another. 

"Good for him! The more the merrier!" answered his mate. He was anAmerican--would ye no know it from his speech?

I was trembling with eagerness. I wondered if my shot would tell. Itried to visualize its consequences. It might strike some vital spot. It might kill some man whose life was of the utmost value to theenemy. It might--it might do anything! And I knew that my shot wouldbe watched; Normabell, sitting up there on the Pimple in his littleobservatory, would watch it, as he did all of that battery's shots. Would be make a report?

Everything was made ready. The gun recoiled from the previous shot;swiftly it was swabbed out. A new shell was handed up; I looked itover tenderly. That was my shell! I watched the men as they placed itand saw it disappear with a jerk. Then came the swift sighting of thegun, the almost inperceptible corrections of elevation and position. 

They showed me my place. After all, it was the simplest of matters tofire even the biggest of guns. I had but to pull a lever. All morningI had been watching men do that. I knew it was but a perfunctory act. But I could not feel that! I was thrilled and excited as I had neverbeen in all my life before. 

"All ready! Fire!"

The order rang in my ears. And I pulled the lever, as hard as Icould. The great gun sprang into life as I moved the lever. I heardthe roar of the explosion, and it seemed to me that it was a louderbark than any gun I had heard had given! It was not, of course, andso, down in my heart, I knew. There was no shade of variation betweenthat shot and all the others that had been fired. But it pleased meto think so--it pleases me, sometimes, to think so even now. Just asit pleases me to think that that long snouted engine of war propelledthat shell, under my guiding hand, with unwonted accuracy andeffectiveness! Perhaps I was childish, to feel as I did; indeed, Ihave no doubt that that was so. But I dinna care!

There was no report by telephone from Normabell about that particularshot; I hung about a while, by the telephone listeners, hoping onewould come. And it disappointed me that no attention was paid tothat shot. 

"Probably simply means it went home, " said Godfrey. "A shot that actsjust as it should doesn't get reported. "

But I was disappointed, just the same. And yet the sensation is one Ishall never forget, and I shall never cease to be glad that the majorgave me my chance. The most thrilling moment was that of the recoilof the great gun. I felt exactly as one does when one dives into deepwater from a considerable height. 

"Good work, Harry!" said the major, warmly, when I had stepped down. "I'll wager you wiped out a bit of the German trenches with thatshot! I think I'll draft you and keep you here as a gunner!"

And the officers and men all spoke in the same way, smiling as theydid so. But I hae me doots! I'd like to think I did real damage withmy one shot, but I'm afraid my shell was just one of those thatturned up a bit of dirt and made one of those small brown eruptions Ihad seen rising on all sides along the German lines as I had sat andsmoked my pipe with Normabell earlier in the day. 

"Well, anyway, " I said, exultingly, "that's that! I hope I got twofor my one, at least!"

But my exultation did not last long. I reflected upon theinscrutability of war and of this deadly fighting that was going onall about me. How casual a matter was this sending out of a shellthat could, in a flash of time, obliterate all that lived in a widecircle about where it chanced to strike! The pulling of a lever--thatwas all that I had done! And at any moment a shell some German gunnerhad sent winging its way through the air in precisely that same, casual fashion might come tearing into this quiet nook, guided bysome chance, lucky for him, and wipe out the major, and all thepleasant boys with whom I had broken bread just now, and the sweatinggunners who had cheered me on as I fired my shot!

I was to give a concert for this battery, and I felt that it wastime, now, for it to begin. I could see, too, that the men weregrowing a bit impatient. And so I said that I was ready. 

"Then come along to our theater, " said the major, and grinned at mylook of astonishment. 

"Oh, we've got a real amphitheater for you, such as the Greeks usedfor the tragedies of Sophocles!" he said. "There it is!"

He had not stretched the truth. It was a superb theater--a great, crater-like hole in the ground. Certainly it was as well ventilated ashow house as you could hope for, and I found, when the time came, that the acoustics were splendid. I went down into the middle of thehole, with Hogge and Adam, who had become part of my company, and thesoldiers grouped themselves about its rim. 

Before we left Boulogne a definite programme had been laid out forthe Reverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour. We had decided that we wouldget better results by adopting a programme and sticking to it at allour meetings or concerts. So, at all the assemblies that we gathered, Hogge opened proceedings by talking to the men about pensions, thesubject in which he was so vitally interested, and in which he haddone and was doing such magnificent work. Adam would follow him witha talk about the war and its progress. 

He was a splendid speaker, was Adam. He had all the eloquence of thefine preacher that he was, but he did not preach to the lads in thetrenches--not he! He told them about the war, and about the way thefolks at hame in Britain were backing them up. He talked about warloans and food conservation, and made them understand that it was notthey alone who were doing the fighting. It was a cheering and aninspiring talk he gave them, and he got good round applause whereverhe spoke. 

They saved me up for the last, and when Adam had finished speakingeither he or Hogge would introduce me, and my singing would begin. That was the programme we had arranged for the Hole-in-the-GroundTheater, as the Canadians called their amphitheater. For thisperformance, of course, I had no piano. Johnson and the weeinstrument were back where we had left the motor cars, and so I justhad to sing without an accompaniment--except that which the greatbooming of the guns was to furnish me. 

I was afraid at first that the guns would bother me. But as Ilistened to Hogge and Adam I ceased, gradually, to notice them atall, and I soon felt that they would annoy me no more, when it was myturn to go on, than the chatter of a bunch of stage hands in thewings of a theater had so often done. 

When it was my turn I began with "Roamin' In the Gloamin'. " The versewent well, and I swung into the chorus. I had picked the song to openwith because I knew the soldiers were pretty sure to know it, and sowould join me in the chorus--which is something I always want them todo. And these were no exceptions to the general rule. But, just as Igot into the chorus, the tune of the guns changed. They had beencoughing and spitting intermittently, but now, suddenly, it seemed tome that it was as if someone had kicked the lid off the fireworksfactory and dropped a lighted torch inside. 

Every gun in the battery around the hole began whanging away at once. I was jumpy and nervous, I'll admit, and it was all I could do tohold to the pitch and not break the time. I thought all of VonHindenburg's army must be attacking us, and, from the row and din, I judged he must have brought up some of the German navy to help, instead of letting it lie in the Kiel canal where the Britishfleet could not get at it. I never heard such a terrific racketin all my days. 

I took the opportunity to look around at my audience. They didn'tseem to be a bit excited. They all had their eyes fixed on me, andthey weren't listening to the guns--only to me and my singing. Andso, as they probably knew what was afoot, and took it so quietly, Imanaged to keep on singing as if I, too, were used to such a row, andthought no more of it than of the ordinary traffic noise of a Londonor a Glasgow street. But if I really managed to look that way myappearances were most deceptive, because I was nearer to being scaredthan I had been at any time yet!

But presently I began to get interested in the noise of the guns. They developed a certain regular rhythm. I had to allow for it, andmake it fit the time of what I was singing. And as I realized thatprobably this was just a part of the regular day's work, a bit ofordinary strafing, and not a feature of a grand attack, I took noteof the rhythm. It went something like this, as near as I can gie itto you in print:

"Roamin' in the--PUH--LAH--gloamin'--BAM!

"On the--WHUFF!--BOOM!--bonny--BR-R-R!--banks o'--BIFF--Clyde--ZOW!"

And so it went all through the rest of the concert. I had to adjusteach song I sang to that odd rhythm of the guns, and I don't know butwhat it was just as well that Johnson wasn't there! He'd have hadtrouble staying with me with his wee bit piano, I'm thinkin'!

And, do you ken, I got to see, after a bit, that it was the gunners, all the time, havin' a bit of fun with me! For when I sang a versethe guns behaved themselves, but every time I came to the chorus theystarted up the same inferno of noise again. I think they wanted tosee, at first, if they could no shake me enough to make me stopsinging, and they liked me the better when they found I would nostop. The soldiers soon began to laugh, but the joke was not all onme, and I could see that they understood that, and were pleased. Indeed, it was all as amusing to me as to them. 

I doubt if "Roamin' in the Gloamin'" or any other song was ever sungin such circumstances. I sang several more songs--they called, asevery audience I have seems to do, for me to sing my "Wee Hoose Amangthe Heather"--and then Captain Godfrey brought the concert to an end. It was getting along toward midafternoon, and he explained that wehad another call to make before dark. 

"Good-by, Harry--good luck to you! Thanks for the singing!"

Such cries rose from all sides, and the Canadians came crowdingaround to shake my hand. It was touching to see how pleased theywere, and it made me rejoice that I had been able to come. I hadthought, sometimes, that it might be a presumptuous thing, in a way, for me to want to go so near the front, but the way I had been ableto cheer up the lonely, dull routine of that battery went far tojustify me in coming, I thought. 

I was sorry to be leaving the Canadians. And I was glad to see thatthey seemed as sorry to have me go as I was to be going. I have avery great fondness for the Canadian soldier. He is certainly one ofthe most picturesque and interesting of all the men who are fightingunder the flags of the Allies, and it is certain that the world cannever forget the record he has made in this war--a record of courageand heroism unexcelled by any and equaled by few. 

I stood around while we were getting ready to start back to the cars, and one of the officers was with me. 

"How often do you get a shell right inside the pit here?" I askedhim. "A fair hit, I mean?"

"Oh, I don't know!" he said, slowly. He looked around. "You know thathole you were singing in just now?"

I nodded. I had guessed that it had been made by a shell. 

"Well, that's the result of a Boche shell, " he said. "If you'd comeyesterday we'd have had to find another place for your concert!"

"Oh--is that so!" I said. 

"Aye, " he said, and grinned. "We didn't tell you before, Harry, because we didn't want you to feel nervous, or anything like that, while you were singing. But it was obliging of Fritz--now wasn't it?Think of having him take all the trouble to dig out a fine theaterfor us that way!"

"It was obliging of him, to be sure, " I said, rather dryly. 

"That's what we said, " said the officer. "Why, as soon as I saw thehole that shell had made, I said to Campbell: 'By Jove--there'sthe very place for Harry Lauder's concert to-morrow!' And he agreedwith me!"

Now it was time for handshaking and good-bys. I said farewell allaround, and wished good luck to that brave battery, so cunninglyhidden away in its pit. There was a great deal of cheery shouting andwaving of hands as we went off. And in two minutes the battery wasout of sight--even though we knew exactly where it was!

We made our way slowly back, through the lengthening shadows, overthe shell-pitted ground. The motor cars were waiting, and Johnson, too. Everything was shipshape and ready for a new start, and weclimbed in. 

As we drove off I looked back at Vimy Ridge. And I continued to gazeat it for a long time. No longer did it disappoint me. No longer didI regard it as an insignificant hillock. All that feeling that hadcome to me with my first sight of it had been banished by myintroduction to the famous ridge itself. 

It had spoken to me eloquently, despite the muteness of the myriadtongues it had. It had graven deep into my heart the realization ofits true place in history. 

An excrescence in a flat country--a little hump of ground! That isall there is to Vimy Ridge. Aye! It does not stand so high above theground of Flanders as would the books that will be written about itin the future, were you to pile them all up together when the lastone of them is printed! But what a monument it is to bravery and tosacrifice--to all that is best in this human race of ours!

No human hands have ever reared such a monument as that ridge is andwill be. There some of the greatest deeds in history were done--someof the noblest acts that there is record of performed. There menlived and died gloriously in their brief moment of climax--the momentfor which, all unknowing, all their lives before that day of battlehad been lived. 

I took off my cap as I looked back, with a gesture and a thought ofdeep and solemn reverence. And so I said good-by to Vimy Ridge, andto the brave men I had known there--living and dead. For I felt thatI had come to know some of the dead as well as the living. 

CHAPTER XVIII

"You'll see another phase of the front now, Harry, " said CaptainGodfrey, as I turned my eyes to the front once more. 

"What's the next stop?" I asked. 

"We're heading for a rest billet behind the lines. There'll be lotsof men there who are just out of the trenches. It's a ghastly strainfor even the best and most seasoned troops--this work in thetrenches. So, after a battalion has been in for a certain length oftime, it's pulled out and sent back to a rest billet. "

"What do they do there?" I asked. 

"Well, they don't loaf--there's none of that in the British army, these days! But it's paradise, after the trenches. For one thingthere isn't the constant danger there is up front. The men aren'tunder steady fire. Of course, there's always the chance of a bombdropping raid by a Taube or a Fokker. The men get a chance to cleanup. They get baths, and their clothes are cleaned and disinfected. They get rid of the cooties--you know what they are?"

I could guess. The plague of vermin in the trenches is one of theminor horrors of war. 

"They do a lot of drilling, " Godfrey went on. "Except for those timesin the rest billets, regiments might get a bit slack. In thetrenches, you see, the routine is strict, but it's different. Men aremuch more on their own. There aren't any inspections of kit and allthat sort of thing--not for neatness, anyway. 

"And it's a good thing for soldiers to be neat. It helps discipline. And discipline, in time of war, isn't just a parade-ground matter. Itmeans lives--every time. Your disciplined man, who's trained to docertain things automatically, is the man you can depend on in anysort of emergency. 

"That's the thing that the Canadians and the Australians have had tolearn since they came out. There never were any braver troops thanthose in the world, but at first they didn't have the automaticdiscipline they needed. That'll be the first problem in training thenew American armies, too. It's a highly practical matter. And so, inthe rest billets, they drill the men a goodish bit. It keeps up themorale, and makes them fitter and keener for the work when they goback to the trenches. "

"You don't make it sound much like a real rest for them, " I said. 

"Oh, but it is, all right! They have a comfortable place to sleep. They get better food. The men in the trenches get the best food it'spossible to give them, but it can't be cooked much, for there aren'tfacilities. The diet gets pretty monotonous. In the rest billets theyget more variety. And they have plenty of free time, and there arehours when they can go to the estaminet--there's always one handy, asort of pub, you know--and buy things for themselves. Oh, they have apretty good time, as you'll see, in a rest billet. "

I had to take his word for it. We went bowling along at a good speed, but pretty soon we encountered a detachment of Somerset men. Theyhalted when they spied our caravan, and so did we. As usual theyrecognized us. 

"You'm Harry Lauder!" said one of them, in the broad accent of hiscountry. "Us has seen 'ee often!"

Johnson was out already, and he and the drivers were unlimbering thewee piano. It didn't take so long, now that we were getting used tothe task, to make ready for a roadside concert. While I waited Italked to the men. They were on their way to Ypres. Tommy can't getthe name right, and long ago ceased trying to do so. The French andBelgians call it "Eepre"--that's as near as I can give it to you inprint, at least. But Tommy, as all the world must know by now, callsit Wipers, and that is another name that will live as long as Britishhistory is told. 

The Somerset men squatted in the road while I sang my songs for them, and gave me their most rapt attention. It was hugely gratifying andflattering, the silence that always descended upon an audience ofsoldiers when I sang. There were never any interruptions. But at theend of a song, and during the chorus, which they always wanted tosing with me, as I wanted them to do, too, they made up for theirsilence. 

Soon the Reverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour was on its way again. Thecheers of the Somerset men sounded gayly in our ears, and the carsquickly picked up speed and began to mop up the miles at a greatrate. And then, suddenly--whoa! We were in the midst of soldiersagain. This time it was a bunch of motor repair men. 

They wandered along the roads, working on the trucks and cars thatwere abandoned when they got into trouble, and left along the side ofthe road. We had seen scores of such wrecks that day, and I hadwondered if they were left there indefinitely. Far from it, as Ilearned now. Squads like this--there were two hundred men in thisparticular party--were always at work. Many of the cars they salvagedwithout difficulty--those that had been abandoned because ofcomparatively minor engine troubles or defects. Others had to betowed to a repair shop, or loaded upon other trucks for the journey, if their wheels were out of commission. 

Others still were beyond repair. They had been utterly smashed in acollision, maybe, or as a result of skidding. Or they had burned. Sometimes they had been knocked off the road and generallydemoralized by a shell. And in such cases often, all that men such asthese we had met now could do was to retrieve some parts to be usedin repairing other cars in a less hopeless state. 

By this time Johnson and the two soldier chauffeurs had reduced thebusiness of setting our stage to a fine point. It took us but a veryfew minutes indeed to be ready for a concert, and from the time whenwe sighted a potential audience to the moment for the opening numberwas an almost incredibly brief period. This time that was a goodthing, for it was growing late. And so, although the repair men wereloath to let me go, it was but an abbreviated programme that I wasable to offer them. This was one of the most enthusiastic audiences Ihad had yet, for nearly every man there, it turned out, had been whatAmericans would call a Harry Lauder fan in the old days. They hadbeen wont to go again and again to hear me. I wanted to stay and singmore songs for them, but Captain Godfrey was in charge, and I had toobey his orders, reluctant though I was to go on. 

Our destination was a town called Aubigny--rather an old chateau justoutside the town. Aubigny was the billet of the Fifteenth Division, then in rest. Many officers were quartered in the chateau, as theguests of its French owners, who remained in possession, havingrefused to clear out, despite the nearness of the actual fightingfront. 

This was a Scots division, I was glad to find. I heard good Scotstalk all around me when I arrived, and it was Scottish hospitality, mingled with French, that awaited us. I know no finer combination, nor one more warming to the cockles of a man's heart. 

Here there was luxury, compared to what I had seen that day. AsGodfrey had warned me, the idea of resting that the troops had was abit more strenuous than mine would be. There was no lying and lollingabout. Hot though the weather was a deal of football was played, andthere were games of one sort and another going on nearly all the timewhen the men were off duty. 

This division, I learned, had seen some of the hardest and bloodiestfighting of the whole war. They had been through the great offensivethat had pivoted on Arras, and had been sorely knocked about. Theyhad well earned such rest as was coming to them now, and they weregetting ready, in the most cheerful way you can imagine, for theirnext tour of duty in the trenches. They knew about how much time theywould have, and they made the best use they could of it. 

New drafts were coming out daily from home to fill up their sadlydepleted ranks. The new men were quickly drawn in and assimilatedinto organizations that had been reduced to mere skeletons. Newofficers were getting acquainted with their men; that wonderful thingthat is called esprit de corps was being made all around me. It is agreat sight to watch it in the making; it helps you to understand thevictories our laddies have won. 

I was glad to see the kilted men of the Scots regiments all about me. It was them, after all, that I had come to see. I wanted to talk tothem, and see them here, in France. I had seen them at hame, flockingto the recruiting offices. I had seen them in their training camps. But this was different. I love all the soldiers of the Empire, but itis natural, is it no, that my warmest feeling should be for theladdies who wear the kilt. 

They were the most cheerful souls, as I saw them when we reachedtheir rest camp, that you could imagine. They were laughing andjoking all about us, and when they heard that the Reverend HarryLauder, M. P. , Tour had arrived they crowded about us to see. Theywanted to make sure that I was there, and I was greeted in all sortsof dialect that sounded enough, I'll be bound, to Godfrey and some ofthe rest of our party. There were even men who spoke to me in theGaelic. 

I saw a good deal, afterward, of these Scots troops. My, how hardthey did work while they rested! And what chances they took of brokenbones and bruises in their play! Ye would think, would ye no, thatthey had enough of that in the trenches, where they got lumps andbruises and sorer hurts in the run of duty? But no. So soon as theycame back to their rest billets they must begin to play by knockingthe skin and the hair off one another at sports of various sorts, ofwhich football was among the mildest, that are not by any means to berecommended to those of a delicate fiber. 

Some of the men I met at Aubigny had been out since Mons--some of theold kilted regiments of the old regular army, they were. Away back inthose desperate days the Germans had dubbed them the ladies fromHell, on account of their kilts. Some of the Germans really thoughtthey were women! That was learned from prisoners. Since Mons theyhave been out, and auld Scotland has poured out men by the scores ofthousands, as fast as they were needed, to fill the gaps the Germanshells and bullets have torn in the Scots ranks. Aye--since Mons, andthey will be there at the finish, when it comes, please God!

There have always been Scots regiments in the British army, eversince the day when King Jamie the Sixth, of Scotland, of the famousand unhappy house of Stuart, became King James the First of England. The kilted regiments, the Highlanders, belonging to the immortalHighland Brigade, include the Gordon Highlanders, the Forty-second, the world famous Black Watch, as it is better known than by itsnumbered designation, the Seaforth Highlanders, and the Argyle andSutherland regiment, or the Princess Louise's Own. That was theregiment to a territorial battalion of which my boy John belonged atthe outbreak of the war, and with which he served until he was killed. 

Some of those old, famous regiments have been wiped out half a dozentimes, almost literally annihilated, since Mons. New drafts, and theaddition of territorial battalions, have replenished them and kept uptheir strength, and the continuity of their tradition has never beenbroken. The men who compose a regiment may be wiped out, but theregiment survives. It is an organization, an entity, a creature witha soul as well as a body. And the Germans have no discovered a wayyet of killing the soul! They can do dreadful things to the bodies ofmen and women, but their souls are safe from them. 

Of course there are Scots regiments that are not kilted and that havenaught to do with the Hielanders, who have given as fine and brave anaccount of themselves as any. There are the Scots Guards, one of theregiments of the Guards Brigade, the very pick and flower of theBritish army. There are the King's Own Scottish Borderers, with asfine a history and tradition as any regiment in the army, and arecord of service of which any regiment might well be proud; theScots Fusiliers, the Royal Scots, the Scottish Rifles, and the ScotsGreys, of Crimean fame--the only cavalry regiment from Scotland. 

Since this war began other Highland regiments have been raised besidethose originally included in the Highland Brigade. There are Scotsfrom Canada who wear the kilt and their own tartan and cap. EveryHighland regiment, of course, has its own distinguishing tartan andcap. One of the proudest moments of my life came when I heard thatthe ninth battalion of the Highland Light Infantry, which was raisedin Glasgow, but has its depot, where its recruits and new drafts aretrained, at Hamilton, was known as the Harry Landers. That wasbecause they had adopted the Balmoral cap, with dice, that had becomeassociated with me because I had worn it so often and so long on thestage in singing one of my most famous and successful songs, "I Lovea Lassie. "

But in the trenches, of course, the Hieland troops all look alike. They cling to their kilts--or, rather, their kilts cling to them--butkilts and jackets are all of khaki. If they wore the bright plaids ofthe tartans they would be much too conspicuous a mark for theGermans, and so they have to forswear their much loved colors whenthey are actually at grips with Fritz. 

I wear the kilt nearly always, myself, as I have said. Partly I do sobecause it is my native costume, and I am proud of my Highland birth;partly because I revel in the comfort of the costume. But it bringsme some amusing experiences. Very often I am asked a question thatis, I presume, fired at many a Hieland soldier, intimate though it is. 

"I say, Harry, " someone will ask me, "you wear the kilt. Do you notwear anything underneath it?"

I do, myself. I wear a very short pair of trunks, chiefly for reasonsof modesty. So do some of the soldiers. But if they do they mustprovide it for themselves; no such garment is served out to them withtheir uniform. And so the vast majority of the men wear nothing buttheir skins under the kilt. He is bare, that is, from the waist tothe hose--except for the kilt. But that is garment enough! I'll tellye so, and I'm thinkin' I know!

So clad the Highland soldier is a great deal more comfortable and agreat deal more sanely dressed, I believe, than the city dweller whois trousered and underweared within an inch of his life. I think itis a matter of medical record, that can be verified from the reportsof the army surgeons, that the kilted troops are among the healthiestin the whole army. I know that the Highland troops are much lesssubject to abdominal troubles of all sorts--colic and the like. Thekilt lies snug and warm around the stomach, in several thick layers, and a more perfect protection from the cold has never been devisedfor that highly delicate and susceptible region of the human anatomy. 

Women, particularly, are always asking me another question. I haveseen them eyeing me, in cold weather, when I was walkin' around, comfortably, in my kilt. And their eyes would wander to my knees, andI would know before they opened their mouths what it was that theywere going to say. 

"Oh, Mr. Lauder, " they would ask me. "Don't your poor knees get cold--with no coverings, exposed to this bitter cold?"

Well, they never have! That's all I can tell you. They have had thechance, in all sorts of bitter weather. I am not thinking only of thecomparitively mild winters of Britain--although, up north, inScotland, we get some pretty severe winter weather. But I have beenin Western Canada, and in the northwestern states of the UnitedStates, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, where the thermometer dropsfar below zero. And my knees have never been cold yet. They do notsuffer from the cold any more than does my face, which is as littlecovered and protected as they--and for the same reason, I suppose. They are used to the weather. 

And when it comes to the general question of health, I am certain, from my own experience, that the kilt is best. Several times, for onereason or another, I have laid my kilts aside and put on trousers. And each time I have been seized by violent colds, and my life hasbeen made wretched. A good many soldiers of my acquaintance have hadthe same experience. 

Practical reasons aside, however, the Scots soldier loves his kilt, and would fight like a steer to keep from having it taken away fromhim, should anyone be so foolish as to try such a performance. Heloves it, not only because it is warm and comfortable, but because itis indistinguishably associated in his mind with some of the mostglorious pages of Scottish history. It is a sign and symbol of hishameland to him. There have been times, in Scotland, when all was notas peaceful in the country's relations with England as it now is, when the loyal Scot who wore the kilt did so knowing that he might betried for his life for doing so, since death had been the penaltyappointed for that "crime. "

Aye, it is peace and friendship now between Scot and Englishman. Butthat is not to say that there is no a friendly rivalry between themstill. English regiments and Scots regiments have a lot of fun withone another, and a bit rough it gets, too, at times. But it is all infun, and there is no harm done. I have in mind a tale an officer toldme--though the men of whom he told it did not know that an officerhad any inkling of the story. 

The English soldiers are very fond of harping on the old idea of thedifficulty of making a Scotsman see a joke. That is a base slander, I'll say, but no matter. There were two regiments in rest close toone another, one English and one Scots. They met at the estaminet orpub in the nearby town. And one day the Englishman put up a greatjoke on some of the Scots, and did get a little proof of that petidea of theirs, for the Scots were slow to see the joke. 

Ah, weel, that was enough! For days the English rang the changes onthat joke, teasing the Hielanders and making sport of them. But atlast, when the worst of the tormentors were all assembled together, two of the Scots came into the room where they were havin' a weedrappie. 

"Mon, Sandy, " said one of them, shaking his head, "I've been thinkingwhat a sad thing that would be! I hope it will no come to pass. "

"Aye, that would be a sore business, indeed, Tam, " said Sandy, andhe, too, shook his head. 

And so they went on. The Englishmen stood it as long as they couldand then one turned to Sandy. 

"What is it would be such a bad business?" he asked. 

"Mon-mon, " said Sandy. "We've been thinking, Tam and I, what wouldbecome of England, should Scotland make a separate peace?"

And it was generally conceded that the last laugh was with the Scotsin that affair!

My boy, John, had the same love for the kilt that I had. He was proudand glad to wear the kilt, and to lead men who did the same. While hewas in training at Bedford he organized a corps of cyclists fordispatch-bearing work. He was a crack cyclist himself, and it was asport of which he was passionately fond. So he took a great interestin the corps, and it soon gained wide fame for its efficiency. Sotrue was that that the authorities took note of the corps, and ofJohn, who was responsible for it, and he was asked to go to France totake charge of organizing a similar corps behind the front. But thatwould have involved a transfer to a different branch of the army, anddetachment from his regiment. And--it would have meant that he mustdoff his kilt. Since he had the chance to decline--it was an offer, not an order, that had come to him--he did, that he might keep hiskilt and stay with his own men. 

To my eyes there is no spectacle that begins to be so imposing as thesight of a parade of Scottish troops in full uniform. And it is theunanimous testimony of German prisoners that this war has broughtthem no more terrifying sight than the charge of a kilted regiment. The Highlanders come leaping forward, their bayonets gleaming, shouting old battle cries that rang through the glens years andcenturies ago, and that have come down to the descendants of thewarriors of an ancient time. The Highlanders love to use cold steel;the claymore was their old weapon, and the bayonet is its nearestequivalent in modern war. They are master hands with that, too--andthe bayonet is the one thing the Hun has no stomach for at all. 

Fritz is brave enough when he is under such cover and shelter as thetrenches give. And he has shown a sort of stubborn courage whenattacking in massed formations--the Germans have made terriblesacrifices, at times, in their offensive efforts. But his blood turnsto water in his veins when he sees the big braw laddies from theHielands come swooping toward him, their kilts flapping and theirbayonets shining in whatever light there is. Then he is mighty quickto throw up his hands and shout: "Kamerad! Kamerad!"

I might go on all night telling you some of the stories I heard alongthe front about the Scottish soldiers. They illustrate and explainevery phase of his character. They exploit his humor, despite thatbase slander to which I have already referred, his courage, hisstoicism. And, of course, a vast fund of stories has sprung up thatdeals with the proverbial thrift of the Scot! There was one tale thatwill bear repeating, perhaps. 

Two Highlanders had captured a chicken--a live chicken, notparticularly fat, it may be, even a bit scrawny, but still, a livechicken. That was a prize, since the bird seemed to have no owner whomight get them into trouble with the military police. One was forkilling and eating the fowl at once. But the other would have none ofsuch a summary plan. 

"No, no, Jimmy, " he said, pleadingly, holding the chickenprotectingly. "Let's keep her until morning, and may be we will ha'an egg as well!"

[ILLUSTRATION: "'Make us laugh again, Harry!' Though I remember myson and want to join the ranks, I have obeyed. " LAUDER ADDRESSINGBRITISH TROOPS BEHIND THE LINES IN FRANCE (See Lauder08. Jpg)]

The other British soldiers call the Scots Jock, invariably. TheEnglishman, or a soldier from Wales or Ireland, as a rule, is calledTommy--after the well-known M. Thomas Atkins. Sometimes, an Irishmanwill be Paddy and a Welshman Taffy. But the Scot is always Jock. 

Jock gave us a grand welcome at Aubigny. We were all pretty tired, but when they told me I could have an audience of seven thousandScots soldiers I forgot my weariness, and Hogge, Adam and I, to saynothing of Johnson and the wee piano, cleared for action, as youmight say. The concert was given in the picturesque grounds of thechateau, which had been less harshly treated by the war than manysuch beautiful old places. It was a great experience to sing to somany men; it was far and away the largest house we had had since wehad landed at Boulogne. 

After we left Aubigny, the chateau and that great audience, we droveon as quickly as we could, since it was now late, to the headquartersof General Mac----, commanding the Fifteenth Division--to which, ofcourse, the men whom we had just been entertaining belonged. I was tomeet the general upon my arrival. 

That was a strange ride. It was pitch dark, and we had some distanceto go. There were mighty few lights in evidence; you do not advertisea road to Fritz's airplanes when you are traveling roads anywherenear the front, for he has guns of long range, that can at timesmanage to strafe a road that is supposed to be beyond the zone offire with a good deal of effect I have seldom seen a blacker nightthan that. Objects along the side of the road were nothing butshapeless lumps, and I did not see how our drivers could manage atall to find their way. 

They seemed to have no difficulty, however, but got along swimmingly. Indeed, they traveled faster than they had in daylight. Perhaps thatwas because we were not meeting troops to hold us up along this road;I believe that, if we had, we should have stopped and given them aconcert, even though Johnson could not have seen the keys of his piano!

It was just as well, however. I was delighted at the reception thathad been given to the Reverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour all throughour first day in France. But I was also extremely tired, and thedinner and bed that loomed up ahead of us, at the end of our longride through the dark, took on an aspect of enchantment as we nearedthem. My voice, used as I was to doing a great deal of singing, wasfagged, and Hogge and Dr. Adam were so hoarse that they couldscarcely speak at all. Even Johnson was pretty well done up; he wasstill, theoretically, at least, on the sick list, of course. And Iha' no doot that the wee piano felt it was entitled to its rest, too!

So we were all mighty glad when the cars stopped at last. 

"Well, here we are!" said Captain Godfrey, who was the freshest of usall. "This is Tramecourt--General Headquarters for the Reverend HarryLauder, M. P. , Tour while you are in France, gentlemen. They havespecial facilities for visitors here, and unless one of Fritz'sairplanes feels disposed to drop a bomb or two, you won't be underfire, at night at least. Of course, in the daytime. . . "

He shrugged his shoulders. For our plans did not involve a search forsafe places. Still, it was pleasant to know that we might sleep infair comfort. 

General Mac---- was waiting to welcome us, and told us that dinnerwas ready and waiting, which we were all glad to hear. It had been along, hard day, although the most interesting one, by far, that I hadever spent. 

We made short work of dinner, and soon afterward they took us to ourrooms. I don't know what Hogge and Dr. Adam did, but I know I lookedhappily at the comfortable bed that was in my room. And I slepteasily and without being rocked to sleep that nicht!

CHAPTER XIX

Though we were out of the zone of fire--except for stray activitiesin which Boche airplanes might indulge themselves, as our hosts werefrequently likely to remind us, lest we fancy ourselves too secure, Isuppose--we were by no means out of hearing of the grim work that wasgoing on a few miles away. The big guns, of course, are placed wellbehind the front line trenches, and we could hear their sullen, constant quarreling with Fritz and his artillery. The rumble of theHun guns came to us, too. But that is a sound to which you soon getused, out there in France. You pay no more heed to it than you do tothe noise the 'buses make in London or the trams in Glasgow. 

In the morning I got my first chance really to see Tramecourt. Thechateau is a lovely one, a fine example of such places. It had notbeen knocked about at all, and it looked much as it must have done intimes of peace. Practically all the old furniture was still in therooms, and there were some fine old pictures on the walls that itgave me great delight to see. Indeed, the rare old atmosphere of thechateau was restful and delightful in a way that surprised me. 

I had been in the presence of real war for just one day. And yet Itook pleasure in seeing again the comforts and some of the luxuriesof peace! That gave me an idea of what this sort of place must meanto men from the trenches. It must seem like a bit of heaven to themto come back to Aubigny or Tramecourt! Think of the contrast. 

The chateau, which had been taken over by the British army, belongedto the Comte de Chabot, or, rather, to his wife, who had beenMarquise de Tramecourt, one of the French families of the old regime. Although the old nobility of France has ceased to have any legalexistence under the Republic the old titles are still used as amatter of courtesy, and they have a real meaning and value. This wasa pleasant place, this chateau of Tramecourt; I should like to see itagain in days of peace, for then it must be even more delightful thanit was when I came to know it so well. 

Tramecourt was to be our home, the headquarters of the Reverend HarryLauder, M. P. , Tour, during the rest of our stay at the front. We wereto start out each morning, in the cars, to cover the ground appointedfor that day, and to return at night. But it was understood thatthere would be days when we would get too far away to return at night, and other sleeping quarters would be provided on such occasions. 

I grew very fond of the place while I was there. The steady poundingof the guns did not disturb my peace of nights, as a rule. But therewas one night when I did lie awake for hours, listening. Even to myunpracticed ear there was a different quality in the sound of thecannon that night. It had a fury, an intensity, that went beyondanything I had heard. And later I learned that I had made no mistakein thinking that there was something unusual and portentous about thefire that night. What I had listened to was the preliminary drum fireand bombardment that prepared the way for the great attack atMessines, near Ypres--the most terrific bombardment recorded in allhistory, up to that time. 

The fire that night was like a guttural chant. It had a real rhythm;the beat of the guns could almost be counted. And at dawn there camethe terrific explosion of the great mine that had been prepared, which was the signal for the charge. Mr. Lloyd-George, I am told, knowing the exact moment at which the mine was to be exploded, wasawake, at home in England, and heard it, across the channel, and sodid many folk who did not have his exceptional sources ofinformation. I was one of them! And I wondered greatly until I wastold what had been done. That was one of the most brilliantly andsuccessfully executed attacks of the whole war, and vastly importantin its results, although it was, compared to the great battles on theSomme and up north, near Arras, only a small and minor operation. 

We settled down, very quickly indeed, into a regular routine. CaptainGodfrey was, for all the world, like the manager of a travelingcompany in America. He mapped out our routes, and he took care of allthe details. No troupe, covering a long route of one night stands inthe Western or Southern United States, ever worked harder than didHogge, Adam and I--to say nothing of Godfrey and our soldierchauffeurs. We did not lie abed late in the mornings, but were upsoon after daylight. Breakfast out of the way, we would find the carswaiting and be off. 

We had, always, a definite route mapped out for the day, but we neveradhered to it exactly. I was still particularly pleased with the ideaof giving a roadside concert whenever an audience appeared, and therewas no lack of willing listeners. Soon after we had set out fromTramecourt, no matter in which direction we happened to be going, wewere sure to run into some body of soldiers. 

There was no longer any need of orders. As soon as the chauffeur ofthe leading car spied a blotch of khaki against the road, on went hisbrakes, and we would come sliding into the midst of the troops andstop. Johnson would be out before his car had fairly stopped, and atwork upon the lashings of the little piano, with me to help him. AndHogge would already be clearing his throat to begin his speech. 

The Reverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour, employed no press agent, andit could not boast of a bill poster. No hoardings were covered withgreat colored sheets advertising its coming. And yet the whole frontseemed to know that we were about. The soldiers we met along theroads welcomed us gladly, but they were no longer, after the firstday or two, surprised to see us. They acted, rather, as if they hadbeen expecting us. Our advent was like that of a circus, coming to acountry town for a long heralded and advertised engagement. Yet allthe puffing that we got was by word of mouth. 

There were some wonderful choruses along those war-worn roads wetraveled. "Roamin' in the Gloamin'" was still my featured song, andall the soldiers seemed to know the tune and the words, and to take aparticular delight in coming in with me as I swung into the chorus. We never passed a detachment of soldiers without stopping to givethem a concert, no matter how it disarranged Captain Godfrey's plans. But he was entirely willing. It was these men, on their way to thetrenches, or on the way out of them, bound for rest billets, whom, ofcourse, I was most anxious to reach, since I felt that they were theones I was most likely to be able to help and cheer up. 

The scheduled concerts were practically all at the various restbillets we visited. These were, in the main, at chateaux. Always, atsuch a place, I had a double audience. The soldiers would make agreat ring, as close to me as they could get, and around them, again, in a sort of outer circle, were French villagers and peasants, vastlypuzzled and mystified, but eager to be pleased, and very ready withtheir applause. 

It must have been hard for them to make up their minds about me, ifthey gave me much thought. My kilt confused them; most of themthought I was a soldier from some regiment they had not yet seen, wearing a new and strange uniform. For my kilt, I need not say, wasnot military, nor was the rest of my garb warlike!

I gave, during that time, as many as seven concerts in a day. I havesung as often as thirty-five times in one day, and on such occasionsI was thankful that I had a strong and durable voice, not easily wornout, as well as a stout physique. Hogge and Dr. Adam appeared asoften as I did, but they didn't have to sing!

Nearly all the songs I gave them were ditties they had known for along time. The one exception was the tune that had been so popular in"Three Cheers"--the one called "The Laddies Who Fought and Won. " Fewof the boys had been home since I had been singing that song, but ithas a catching lilt, and they were soon able to join in the chorusand send it thundering along. They took to it, too--and well theymight! It was of such as they that it was written. 

We covered perhaps a hundred miles a day during this period. Thatdoes not sound like a great distance for high-powered motor cars, butwe did a good deal of stopping, you see, here and there andeverywhere. We were roaming around in the backwater of war, you mightsay. We were out of the main stream of carnage, but it was not out ofour minds and our hearts. Evidences of it in plenty came to us eachday. And each day we were a little nearer to the front line trenchesthan we had come the day before. We were working gradually towardthat climax that I had been promised. 

I was always eager to talk to officers and men, and I found manychances to do so. It seemed to me that I could never learn enoughabout the soldiers. I listened avidly to every story that was toldto me, and was always asking for more. The younger officers, especially, it interested me to talk with. One day I was talkingto such a lieutenant. 

"How is the spirit of your men?" I asked him. I am going to tell youhis answer, just as he made it. 

"Their spirit?" he said, musingly. "Well, just before we came to thisbillet to rest we were in a tightish corner on the Somme. One of myyoungest men was hit--a shell came near to taking his arm clean off, so that it was left just hanging to his shoulders. He was only abouteighteen years old, poor chap. It was a bad wound, but, as sometimeshappens, it didn't make him unconscious--then. And when he realizedwhat had happened to him, and saw his arm hanging limp, so that hecould know he was bound to lose it, he began to cry. 

"'What's the trouble?' I asked him, hurrying over to him. I was sorryenough for him, but you've got to keep up the morale of your men. 'Soldiers don't cry when they're wounded, my lad. '

"'I'm not crying because I'm wounded, sir!' he fired back at me. AndI won't say he was quite as respectful as a private is supposed to bewhen he's talking to an officer! 'Just take a look at that, sir!' Andhe pointed to his wound. And then he cried out:

"'And I haven't killed a German yet!' he said, bitterly. 'Isn't thathard lines, sir?'

"That is the spirit of my men!"

I made many good friends while I was roaming around the country justbehind the front. I wonder how many of them I shall keep--how many ofthem death will spare to shake my hand again when peace is restored!There was a Gordon Highlander, a fine young officer, of whom I becameparticularly fond while I was at Tramecourt. I had a very long talkwith him, and I thought of him often, afterward, because he made methink of John. He was just such a fine young type of Briton as my boyhad been. 

Months later, when I was back in Britain, and giving a performance atManchester, there was a knock at the door of my dressing-room. 

"Come in!" I called. 

The door was pushed open and a man came in with great blue glassescovering his eyes. He had a stick, and he groped his way toward me. Idid not know him at all at first--and then, suddenly, with a shock, Irecognized him as my fine young Gordon Highlander of the rest billetnear Tramecourt. 

"My God--it's you, Mac!" I said, deeply shocked. 

"Yes, " he said, quietly. His voice had changed, greatly. "Yes, it'sI, Harry. "

He was almost totally blind, and he did not know whether his eyeswould get better or worse. 

"Do you remember all the lads you met at the billet where you came tosing for us the first time I met you, Harry?" he asked me. "Well, they're all gone--I'm the only one who's left--the only one!"

There was grief in his voice. But there was nothing like complaint, nor was there, nor self-pity, either, when he told me about his eyesand his doubts as to whether he would ever really see again. Hepassed his own troubles off lightly, as if they did not matter atall. He preferred to tell me about those of his friends whom I hadmet, and to give me the story of how this one and that one had gone. And he is like many another. I know a great many men who have beenmaimed in the war, but I have still to hear one of them complain. They were brave enough, God knows, in battle, but I think they arefar braver when they come home, shattered and smashed, and do naughtbut smile at their troubles. 

The only sort of complaining you hear from British soldiers is overminor discomforts in the field. Tommy and Jock will grouse when theyare so disposed. They will growl about the food and about thistrivial trouble and that. But it is never about a really seriousmatter that you hear them talking!

I have never yet met a man who had been permanently disabled who wasnot grieving because he could not go back. And it is strange but truethat men on leave get homesick for the trenches sometimes. They missthe companionships they have had in the trenches. I think it must bebecause all the best men in the world are in France that they feelso. But it is true, I know, because I have not heard it once, but adozen times. 

Men will dream of home and Blighty for weeks and months. They willgrouse because they cannot get leave--though, half the time, theyhave not even asked for it, because they feel that their place iswhere the fighting is! And then, when they do get that longed-forleave, they are half sorry to go--and they come back like boys cominghome from school!

A great reward awaits the men who fight through this war and emergealive and triumphant at its end. They will dictate the conduct of theworld for many a year. The men who stayed at home when they shouldhave gone may as well prepare to drop their voices to a very lowwhisper in the affairs of mankind. For the men who will be heard, whowill make themselves heard, are out there in France. 

CHAPTER XX

It was seven o'clock in the morning of a Godly and a beautiful daywhen we set out from Tramecourt for Arras. Arras, that town so famousnow in British history and in the annals of this war, had been one ofour principal objectives from the outset, but we had not known whenwe were to see it. Arras had been the pivot of the great northerndrive in the spring--the drive that Hindenburg had fondly supposed hehad spoiled by his "strategic" retreat in the region of the Somme, begun just before the British and the French were ready to attack. 

What a bonnie morning that was, to be sure! The sun was out, aftersome rainy days, and glad we all were to see it. The land was sprayedwith silver light; the air was as sweet and as soft and as warm as ababy's breath. And the cars seemed to leap forward, as if they, too, loved the day and the air. They ate up the road. They seemed to takehold of its long, smooth surface--they are grand roads, over you, inFrance--and reel it up in underneath their wheels as if it were a tape. 

This time we did little stopping, no matter how good the reason looked. We went hurtling through villages and towns we had not seen before. Our horn and our siren shrieked a warning as we shot through. And itseemed wrong. They looked so peaceful and so quiet, did those Frenchtowns, on that summer's morning! Peaceful, aye, and languorous, afterall the bustle and haste we had been seeing. The houses were set inpretty encasements of bright foliage and they looked as though they hadbeen painted against the background of the landscape with water colors. 

It was hard to believe that war had passed that way. It had; therewere traces everywhere of its grim visitation. But here its heavyhand had been laid lightly upon town and village. It was as if a waveof poison gas of the sort the Germans brought into war had beenturned aside by a friendly breeze, arising in the very nick of time. Little harm had been done along the road we traveled. But the thunderof the guns was always in our ears; we could hear the steady, throbbing rhythm of the cannon, muttering away to the north and east. 

It was very warm, and so, after a time, as we passed through avillage, someone--Hogge, I think--suggested that a bottle of gingerbeer all around would not be amiss. The idea seemed to be regarded asan excellent one, so Godfrey spoke to the chauffeur beside him, andwe stopped. We had not known, at first, that there were troops intown. But there were--Highlanders. And they came swarming out. I wasrecognized at once. 

"Well, here's old Harry Lauder!" cried one braw laddie. 

"Come on, Harry--gie us a song!" they shouted. "Let's have 'Roamin' inthe Gloamin', Harry! Gie us the Bonnie Lassie! We ha' na' heard 'TheLaddies Who Fought and Won, ' Harry. They tell us that's a braw song!"

We were not really supposed to give any roadside concerts that day, but how was I to resist them? So we pulled up into a tiny sidestreet, just off the market square, and I sang several songs forthem. We saved time by not unlimbering the wee piano, and I sang, without accompaniment, standing up in the car. But they seemed to beas well pleased as though I had had the orchestra of a big theater tosupport 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 wereally saved by not giving our full and regular programme. For, before I had done, they had me telling stories, too. Captain Godfreywas 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, nomatter how interesting it might be to stay. 

"I'll be good, " I promised, with a grin, as we drove on. "We shall gostraight on to Arras now!"

But we did not. We met a bunch of engineers on the road, after aspace, and they looked so wistful when we told them we maun begetting right along, without stopping to sing for them, that I hadnot the heart to disappoint them. So we got out the wee piano and Isang them a few songs. It seemed to mean so much to those boys alongthe roads! I think they enjoyed the concerts even more than did thegreat gatherings that were assembled for me at the rest camps. Aconcert was more of a surprise for them, more of a treat. The otherladdies liked them, too--aye, they liked them fine. But they wouldhave been prepared, sometimes; they would have been looking forwardto the fun. And the laddies along the roads took them as a man takesa grand bit of scenery, coming before his eyes, suddenly, as he turnsa bend in a road he does not ken. 

As for myself, I felt that I was becoming quite a proficient open-airperformer by now. My voice was standing the strain of singing undersuch novel and difficult conditions much better than I had thought itcould. And I saw that I must be at heart and by nature a minstrel! Iknow I got more pleasure from those concerts I gave as a minstrelwandering in France than did the soldiers or any of those who heard me!

I have been before the public for many years. Applause has alwaysbeen sweet to me. It is to any artist, and when one tells you it isnot you may set it down in your hearts that he or she is telling lessthan the truth. It is the breath of life to us to know that folks arepleased by what we do for them. Why else would we go on about ourtasks? I have had much applause. I have had many honors. I have toldyou about that great and overwhelming reception that greeted me whenI sailed into Sydney Harbor. In Britain, in America, I have hadgreetings that have brought tears into my eye and such a lump intomy throat that until it had gone down I could not sing or say a wordof thanks. 

But never has applause sounded so sweet to me as it did along thosedusty roads in France, with the poppies gleaming red and thecornflowers blue through the yellow fields of grain beside the roads!They cheered me, do you ken--those tired and dusty heroes of Britainalong the French roads! They cheered as they squatted down in acircle about us, me in my kilt, and Johnson tinkling away as if hisvery life depended upon it, at his wee piano! Ah, those wonderful, wonderful soldiers! The tears come into my eyes, and my heart is soreand heavy within me when I think that mine was the last voice many ofthem ever heard lifted in song! They were on their way to thetrenches, so many of those laddies who stopped for a song along theroad. And when men are going into the trenches they know, and all whosee them passing know, that some there are who will never come out. 

Despite all the interruptions, though, it was not much after noonwhen we reached Blangy. Here, in that suburb of Arras, were theheadquarters of the Ninth Division, and as I stepped out of the car Ithrilled to the knowledge that I was treading ground forever to befamous as the starting-point of the Highland Brigade in the attack ofApril 9, 1917. 

And now I saw Arras, and, for the first time, a town that had beensystematically and ruthlessly shelled. There are no words in anytongue I know to give you a fitting picture of the devastation ofArras. "Awful" is a puny word, a thin one, a feeble one. I pickimpotently at the cover-lid of my imagination when I try to framelanguage to make you understand what it was I saw when I came toArras on that bright June day. 

I think the old city of Arras should never be rebuilt. I doubt if itcan be rebuilt, indeed. But I think that, whether or no, a goldenfence should be built around it, and it should forever and for alltime be preserved as a monument to the wanton wickedness of the Hun. It should serve and stand, in its stark desolation, as a tribute, dedicated to the Kultur of Germany. No painter could depict thefrightfulness of that city of the dead. No camera could make you seeas it is. Only your eyes can do that for you. And even then youcannot realize it all at once. Your eyes are more merciful than thetruth and the Hun. 

The Germans shelled Arras long after there was any military reasonfor doing so. The sheer, wanton love of destruction must have movedthem. They had destroyed its military usefulness, but still theypoured shot and shell into the town. I went through its streets--theGermans had been pushed back so far by then that the city was nolonger under steady fire. But they had done their work!

Nobody was living in Arras. No one could have lived there. The houseshad been smashed to pieces. The pavements were dust and rubble. Butthere was life in the city. Through the ruins our men moved asceaselessly and as restlessly as the tenants of an ant hill suddenlyupturned by a plowshare. Soldiers were everywhere, and guns--guns, guns! For Arras had a new importance now. It was a center for manyroads. Some of the most important supply roads of this sector of thefront converged in Arras. 

Trains of ammunition trucks, supply carts and wagons of all sorts, great trucks laden with jam and meat and flour, all were passingevery moment. There was an incessant din of horses' feet and thesteady crunch--crunch of heavy boots as the soldiers marched throughthe rubble and the brickdust. And I knew that all this had gone onwhile the town was still under fire. Indeed, even now, an occasionalshell from some huge gun came crashing into the town, and there wouldbe a new cloud of dust arising to mark its landing, a new collapse ofsome weakened wall. Warning signs were everywhere about, bidding allwho saw them to beware of the imminent collapse of some heap of masonry. 

I saw what the Germans had left of the stately old Cathedral, and ofthe famous Cloth Hall--one of the very finest examples of the guildhalls of medieval times. Goths--Vandals--no, it is unfair to seeksuch names for the Germans. They have established themselves as themasters of all time in brutality and in destruction. There is no needto call them anything but Germans. The Cloth Hall was almost human inits pitiful appeal to the senses and the imagination. The German firehad picked it to pieces, so that it stood in a stark outline, likesome carcase picked bare by a vulture. 

Our soldiers who were quartered nearby lived outside the town inhuts. They were the men of the Highland Brigade, and the ones I hadhoped and wished, above all others, to meet when I came to France. They received our party with the greatest enthusiasm, and they wereespecially flattering when they greeted me. One of the Highlandofficers took me in hand immediately, to show me the battlefield. 

The ground over which we moved had literally been churned byshell-fire. It was neither dirt nor mud that we walked upon; it was asort of powder. The very soil had been decomposed into a fine dust bythe terrific pounding it had received. The dust rose and got into oureyes and mouths and nostrils. There was a lot of sneezing among themembers of the Reverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour that day at Arras!And the wire! It was strewn in every direction, with seemingaimlessness. Heavily barbed it was, and bad stuff to get caught in. One of the great reasons for the preliminary bombardment that usuallyprecedes an attack is to cut this wire. If charging men are caught ina bad tangle of wire they can be wiped out by machine gun-fire beforethey can get clear. 

I asked a Highlander, one day, how long he thought the war would last. 

"Forty years, " he said, never batting an eyelid. "We'll be fightinganother year, and then it'll tak us thirty-nine years more to wind upall the wire!"

Off to my right there was a network of steel strands, and as I gazedat it I saw a small dark object hanging from it and fluttering in thebreeze. I was curious enough to go over, and I picked my waycarefully through the maze-like network of wire to see what it mightbe. When I came close I saw it was a bit of cloth, and immediately Irecognized the tartan of the Black Watch--the famous Forty-second. Mud and blood held that bit of cloth fastened to the wire, as if by acement. Plainly, it had been torn from a kilt. 

I stood for a moment, looking down at that bit of tartan, flapping inthe soft summer breeze. And as I stood I could look out and over thelandscape, dotted with a very forest of little wooden crosses, thatmarked the last resting-place of the men who had charged across thismaze of wire and died within it. They rose, did those rough crosses, like sheathed swords out of the wild, luxurious jungle of grass thathad grown up in that blood-drenched soil. I wondered if the owner ofthe bit of tartan were still safe or if he lay under one of thecrosses that I saw. 

There was room for sad speculation here! Who had he been? Had heswept on, leaving that bit of his kilt as evidence of his passing?Had he been one of those who had come through the attack, gloriously, to victory, so that he could look back upon that day so long as helived? Or was he dead--perhaps within a hundred yards of where Istood and gazed down at that relic of him? Had he folks at hame inScotland who had gone through days of anguish on his account--suchdays of anguish as I had known?

[ILLUSTRATION: Berlin struck off this medal when the "Lusitania" wassunk: on one side the brutal catastrophe, on the other the grinningdeath's head Teutonically exultant. "And so now I preach the war onthe Hun my own way, " says Harry Lauder. (See Lauder09. Jpg)]

[ILLUSTRATION: HARRY LAUDER "Laird of Dunoon. " (See Lauder10. Jpg)]

I asked a soldier for some wire clippers, and I cut the wire oneither side of that bit of tartan, and took it, just as it was. Andas I put the wee bit of a brave man's kilt away I kissed theblood-stained tartan, for Auld Lang Syne, and thought of what a taleit could tell if it could only speak!

 "Ha' ye seen a' the men frae the braes and the glen, Ha' ye seen them a' marchin' awa'? Ha' ye seen a' the men frae the wee but-an'-ben, And the gallants frae mansion and ha'?"

I have said before that I do not want to tell you of the tales ofatrocities that I heard in France. I heard plenty--ayes and terriblethey were! But I dinna wish to harrow the feelings of those who readmore than I need, and I will leave that task to those who saw forthemselves with their eyes, when I had but my ears to serve me. Yetthere was one blood-chilling story that my boy John told to me, andthat the finding of that bit of Black Watch tartan brings to my mind. He told it to me as we sat before the fire in my wee hoose at Dunoon, just a few nights before he went back to the front for the last time. We were talking of the war--what else was there to talk aboot?

It was seldom that John touched on the harsher things he knew aboutthe war. He preferred, as a rule, to tell me stories of the courageand the devotion of his men, and of the light way that they turnedthings when there was so much chance for grief and care. 

"One night, Dad, " he said, "we had a battalion of the Black Watch onour right, and they made a pretty big raid on the German trenches. Itdeveloped into a sizable action for any other war, but one triflingenough and unimportant in this one. The Germans had been readier thanthe Black Watch had supposed, and had reinforcements ready, and sixtyof the Highlanders were captured. The Germans took them back intotheir trenches, and stripped them to the skin. Not a stitch or a ragof clothing did they leave them, and, though it was April, it was abitter night, with a wind to cut even a man warmly clad to the bone. 

"All night they kept them there, standing at attention, stark naked, so that they were half-frozen when the gray, cold light of the dawnbegan to show behind them in the east. And then the Germans laughed, and told their prisoners to go. 

"'Go on--go back to your own trenches, as you are!' they said. 

"The laddies of the Black Watch could scarcely believe their ears. There was about seventy-five yards between the two trench lines atthat point, and the No Man's Land was rough going--all shell-pittedas it was. By that time, too, of course, German repair parties hadmended all the wire before their trenches. So they faced a roughjourney, all naked as they were. But they started. 

"They got through the wire, with the Germans laughing fit to killthemselves at the sight of the streaks of blood showing on theirwhite skins as the wire got in its work. They laughed at them, Dad!And then, when they were halfway across the No Man's Land theyunderstood, at last, why the Germans had let them go. For fire wasopened on them with machine guns. Everyone was mowed down--everyoneof those poor, naked, bleeding lads was killed--murdered by thattreacherous fire from behind!

"We heard all the details of that dirty bit of treachery later. Wecaptured some German prisoners from that very trench. Fritz is adecent enough sort, sometimes, and there were men there whosestomachs were turned by that sight, so that they were glad to creepover, later, and surrender. They told us, with tears in their eyes. But we had known, before that. We had needed no witnesses except thebodies of the boys. It had been too dark for the men in our trenchesto see what was going on--and a burst of machine gun-fire, along thetrenches, is nothing to get curious or excited about. But those nakedbodies, lying there in the No Man's Land, had told us a good deal. 

"Dad--that was an awful sight! I was in command of one of the buryingparties we had to send out. "

That was the tale I thought of when I found that bit of the BlackWatch tartan. And I remembered, too, that it was with the Black Watchthat John Poe, the famous American football player from Princeton, met his death in a charge. He had been offered a commission, but hepreferred to stay with the boys in the ranks. 

CHAPTER XXI

We left our motor cars behind us in Arras, for to-day we were to goto a front-line trench, and the climax of my whole trip, so far as Icould foresee, was at hand. Johnson and the wee piano had to staybehind, too--we could not expect to carry even so tiny an instrumentas that into a front-line trench! Once more we had to don steelhelmets, but there was a great difference between these and the oneswe had had at Vimy Ridge. Mine fitted badly, and kept sliding downover my ears, or else slipping way down to the back of my head. Itmust have given me a grotesque look, and it was most uncomfortable. So I decided I would take it off and carry it for a while. 

"You'd better keep it on, Harry, " Captain Godfrey advised me. "Thisdistrict is none too safe, even right here, and it gets worse as we goalong. A whistling Percy may come along looking for you any minute. "

That is the name of a shell that is good enough to advertise itscoming by a whistling, shrieking sound. I could hear Percieswhistling all around, and see them spattering up the ground as theystruck, not so far away, but they did not seem to be coming in ourdirection. So I decided I would take a chance. 

"Well, " I said, as I took the steel hat off, "I'll just keep thisbonnet handy and slip it on if I see Percy coming. "

But later I was mighty glad of even an ill-fitting steel helmet!

Several staff officers from the Highland Brigade had joined theReverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour by now. Affable, pleasant gentlementhey were, and very eager to show us all there was to be seen. Andthey had more sights to show their visitors than most hosts have!

We were on ground now that had been held by the Germans before theBritish had surged forward all along this line in the April battle. Their old trenches, abandoned now, ran like deep fissures through thesoil. They had been pretty well blasted to pieces by the Britishbombardment, but a good many of their deep, concrete dugouts hadsurvived. These were not being used by the British here, but weresaved in good repair as show places, and the officers who were ourguides took us down into some of them. 

Rarely comfortable they must have been, too! They had been the homesof German officers, and the Hun officers did themselves very wellindeed when they had the chance. They had electric light in theircave houses. To be sure they had used German wall paper, andatrociously ugly stuff it was, too. But it pleased their taste, nodoubt. Mightily amazed some of Fritz's officers must have been, backin April, as they sat and took their ease in these luxuriousquarters, to have Jock come tumbling in upon them, a grenade in eachhand!

Our men might have used these dugouts, and been snug enough in them, but they preferred air and ventilation, and lived in little hutsabove the ground. I left our party and went around among them and, tomy great satisfaction, found, as I had been pretty sure I would, anumber of old acquaintances and old admirers who came crowding aroundme to shake hands. I made a great collection of souvenirs here, forthey insisted on pressing trophies upon me. 

"Tak them, Harry, " said one after another. "We can get plenty morewhere they came from!"

One laddie gave me a helmet with a bullet hole through the skip, andanother presented me with one of the most interesting souvenirs ofall I carried home from France. That was a German sniper's outfit. Itconsisted of a suit of overalls, waterproofed. If a man had it on hewould be completely covered, from head to foot, with just a pair ofslits for his eyes to peep out of, and another for his mouth, so thathe could breathe. It was cleverly painted the color of a tree--partof it like the bark, part green, like leaves sprouting from it. 

"Eh, Jock, " I asked the laddie who gave it to me. "A thing like yon'shard to be getting, I'm thinking?"

"Oh, not so very hard, " he answered, carelessly. "You've got to be agood shot. " And he wore medals that showed he was! "All you've got todo, Harry, is to kill the chap inside it before he kills you! Thefellow who used to own that outfit you've got hid himself in the forkof a tree, and, as you may guess, he looked like a branch of the treeitself. He was pretty hard to spot. But I got suspicious of him, fromthe way bullets were coming over steadily, and I decided that thattree hid a sniper. 

"After that it was just a question of being patient. It was no solong before I was sure, and then I waited--until I saw that branchmove as no branch of a tree ever did move. I fired then--and got him!He was away outside of his lines, and that nicht I slipped out andbrought back this outfit. I wanted to see how it was made. "

An old, grizzled sergeant of the Black Watch gave me a German revolver. 

"How came you to get this?" I asked him. 

"It was an acceedent, Harry, " he said. "We were raiding a trench, doyou ken, and I was in a sap when a German officer came along, and webumped into one another. He looked at me, and I at him. I think hewas goin' to say something, but I dinna ken what it was he had on hismind. That _was_ his revolver you've got in your hand now. "

And then he thrust his hand into his pocket. 

"Here's the watch he used to carry, too, " he said. It was a thick, fat-bellied affair, of solid gold. "It's a bit too big, but it's arare good timekeeper. "

Soon after that an officer gave me another trophy that is, perhaps, even more interesting than the sniper's suit. It is rarer, at least. It is a small, sweet-toned bell that used to hang in a wee church inthe small village of Athies, on the Scarpe, about a mile and a halffrom Arras. The Germans wiped out church and village, but in some oddway they found the bell and saved it. They hung it in their trenches, and it was used to sound a gas alarm. On both sides a signal is givenwhen the sentry sees that there is to be a gas attack, in order thatthe men may have time to don the clumsy gas masks that are the onlyprotection against the deadly fumes. The wee bell is eight incheshigh, maybe, and I have never heard a lovelier tone. 

"That bell has rung men to worship, and it has rung them to death, "said the officer who gave it to me. 

Presently I was called back to my party, after I had spent some timewith the lads in their huts. A general had joined the party now, andhe told me, with a smile, that I was to go up to the trenches, if Icared to do so. I will not say I was not a bit nervous, but I wasglad to go, for a' that! It was the thing that had brought me toFrance, after a'. 

So we started, and by now I was glad to wear my steel hat, fit or nofit. I was to give an entertainment in the trenches, and so we setout. Pretty soon I was climbing a steep railroad embankment, and whenwe slid down on the other side we found the trenches--wide, deep gapsin the earth, and all alive with men. We got into the trenchesthemselves by means of ladders, and the soldiers came swarming aboutme with yells of "Hello, Harry! Welcome, Harry!"

They were told that I had come to sing for them, and so, with nofurther preliminaries, I began my concert. I started with my favoriteopening song, as usual--"Roamin' in the Gloamin', " and then went onwith the other old favorites. I told a lot of stories, too, and thenI came to "The Laddies Who Fought and Won. " None of the men had heardit, but there were officers there who had seen "Three Cheers" duringthe winter when they had had a short leave to run over to London. 

I got through the first verse all right, and was just swinging intothe first chorus when, without the least warning, hell popped open inthat trench. A missile came in that some officer at once hailed as awhizz bang. It is called that, for that is just exactly the sound itmakes. It is like a giant firecracker, and it would be amusing if onedid not know it was deadly. These missiles are not fired by the bigguns behind the lines, but by the small trench cannon--worked, as arule, by compressed air. The range is very short, but they arecapable of great execution at that range. 

Was I frightened? I must have been! I know I felt a good deal as Ihave done when I have been seasick. And I began to think at once ofall sorts of places where I would rather have been than in thattrench! I was standing on a slight elevation at the back, or parados, of the trench, so that I was raised a bit above my audience, and Ihad a fine view of that deadly thing, wandering about, spitting fireand metal parts. It traveled so that the men could dodge it, but itwas throwing oft slugs that you could neither see nor dodge, and itwas a poor place to be!

And the one whizz bang was not enough to suit Fritz. It was followedimmediately by a lot more, that came popping in and making themselvesas unpleasant as you could imagine. I watched the men about me, andthey seemed to be unconcerned, and to be thinking much more of me andmy singing than of the whizz bangs. So, no matter how I felt, therewas nothing for me to do but to keep on with my song. I decided thatI must really be safe enough, no matter how I felt. But I had certainmisgivings on the subject. Still, I managed to go on with my song, and I think I was calm enough to look at--though, if I was, myappearance wholly belied my true inward feelings. 

I struggled through to the end of the chorus--and I think I sangpretty badly, although I don't know. But I was pretty sure the end ofthe world had come for me, and that these laddies were taking thingsas calmly as they were simply because they were used to it, and itwas all in the day's work for them. The Germans were fairly sluicingthat trench by now. The whizz bangs were popping over us like giantfire-crackers, going off one and two and three at a time. And thetrench was full of flying slugs and chunks of dirt, striking againstour faces and hurtling all about us. 

There I was. I had a good "house. " I wanted to please my audience. Was it no a trying situation? I thought Fritz might have had mannersenough to wait until I had finished my concert, at least! But the Hunhas no manners, as all the world knows. 

Along that embankment we had climbed to reach the trenches, and notvery far from the bit of trench in which I was singing, there was arailroad bridge of some strategic importance. And now a shell hitthat bridge--not a whizz bang, but a real, big shell. It explodedwith a hideous screech, as if the bridge were some human thing beingstruck, and screaming out its agony. The soldiers looked at me, and Isaw some of them winking. They seemed to be mighty interested in theway I was taking all this. I looked back at them, and then at aHighland colonel who was listening to my singing as quietly and ascarefully as if he had been at a stall in Covent Garden during theopera season. He caught my glance. 

"I think they're coming it a bit thick, Lauder, old chap, " heremarked, quietly. 

"I quite agree with you, colonel, " I said. I tried to ape his voiceand manner, but I wasn't so quiet as he. 

Now there came a ripping, tearing sound in the air, and a veritablecloudburst of the damnable whizz bangs broke over us. That settledmatters. There were no orders, but everyone turned, just as if itwere a meeting, and a motion to adjourn had been put and carriedunanimously. We all ran for the safety holes or dugouts in the sideof the embankment. And I can tell ye that the Reverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour were no the last ones to reach those shelters! No, we wereby no means the last!

I ha' no doot that I might have improved upon the shelter that Ifound, had I had time to pick and choose. But any shelter was goodjust then, and I was glad of mine, and of a chance to catch mybreath. Afterward, I saw a picture by Captain Bairnsfather that mademe laugh a good deal, because it represented so exactly the way Ifelt. He had made a drawing of two Tommies in a wee bit of a hole ina field that was being swept by shells and missiles of every sort. One was grousing to his mate, and the other said to him:

"If you know a better 'ole go 'ide in it!"

I said we all turned and ran for cover. But there was one braw laddiewho did nothing of the sort. He would not run--such tricks were notfor him!

He was a big Hie'land laddie, and he wore naught but his kilt and hissemmet--his undershirt. He had on his steel helmet, and it shaded aface that had not been shaved or washed for days. His great, brawnyarms were folded across his chest, and he was smoking his pipe. Andhe stood there as quiet and unconcerned as if he had been a villagesmith gazing down a quiet country road. I watched him, and he saw me, and grinned at me. And now and then he glanced at me, quizzically. 

"It's all right, Harry, " he said, several times. "Dinna fashyoursel', man. I'll tell ye in time for ye to duck if I see onecoming your way!"

We crouched in our holes until there came a brief lull in thebombardment. Probably the Germans thought they had killed us all andcleared the trench, or maybe it had been only that they hadn't likedmy singing, and had been satisfied when they had stopped it. So wecame out, but the firing was not over at all, as we found out atonce. So we went down a bit deeper, into concrete dugouts. 

This trench had been a part of the intricate German defensive systemfar back of their old front line, and they had had the pains ofbuilding and hollowing out the fine dugout into which I now went forshelter. Here they had lived, deep under the earth, like animals--andwith animals, too. For when I reached the bottom a dog came to meetme, sticking out his red tongue to lick my hand, and wagging his tailas friendly as you please. 

He was a German dog--one of the prisoners of war taken in the greatattack. His old masters hadn't bothered to call him and take him withthem when the Highlanders came along, and so he had stayed behind aspart of the spoils of the attack. 

That wasn't much of a dog, as dogs go. He was a mongrel-lookingcreature, but he couldn't have been friendlier. The Highlanders hadadopted him and called him Fritz, and they were very fond of him, andhe of them. He had no thought of war. He behaved just as dogs do at hame. 

But above us the horrid din was still going on, and bits of shellswere flying everywhere--anyone of them enough to kill you, if itstruck you in the right spot. I was glad, I can tell ye, that I wasso snug and safe beneath the ground, and I had no mind at all to goout until the bombardment was well over. I knew now what it wasreally to be under fire. The casual sort of shelling I had had tofear at Vimy Ridge was nothing to this. This was the real thing. 

And then I thought that what I was experiencing for a few minutes wasthe daily portion of these laddies who were all aboot me--not for afew minutes, but for days and weeks and months at a time. And it camehome to me again, and stronger than ever, what they were doing for usfolks at hame, and how we ought to be feeling for them. 

The heavy firing went on for three-quarters of an hour, at least. Wecould hear the chugging of the big guns, and the sorrowful swishingof the shells, as if they were mournful because they were notwreaking more destruction than they were. It all moved me greatly, but I could see that the soldiers thought nothing of it, and werequite unperturbed by the fearful demonstration that was going onabove. They smoked and chatted, and my own nerves grew calmer. 

Finally there seemed to come a real lull in the row above, and Iturned to the general. 

"Isn't it near time for me to be finishing my concert, sir?" I askedhim. 

"Very good, " he said, jumping up. "Just as you say, Lauder. "

So back we went to where I had begun to sing. My audiencereassembled, and I struck up "The Laddies Who Fought and Won" again. It seemed, somehow, the most appropriate song I could have picked tosing in that spot! I finished, this time, but there was some discordin the closing bars, for the Germans were still at their shelling, sporadically. 

So I finished, and I said good-by to the men who were to stay in thetrench, guarding that bit of Britain's far flung battleline. And thenthe Reverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour was ready to go back--not tosafety, at once, but to a region far less infested by the Hun thanthis one where we had been such warmly received visitors!

CHAPTER XXII

I was sorry to be leaving the Highland laddies in that trench. Aye!But for the trench itself I had nae regrets--nae, none whatever! Iknow no spot on the surface of this earth, of all that I havevisited, and I have been in many climes, that struck me as lesssalubrious than you bit o' trench. There were too many other visitorsthere that day, along with the Reverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour. They were braw laddies, yo, but no what you might callover-particular about the company they kept! I'd thank them, if they'dbe havin' me to veesit them again, to let me come by my ain!

Getting away was not the safest business in the world, either, although it was better than staying in yon trench. We had to make ourway back to the railway embankment, and along it for a space, and theembankment was being heavily shelled. It was really a trench lineitself, full of dugouts, and as we made our way along heads popped inall directions, topped by steel helmets. I was eager to be on theother side of you embankment, although I knew well enough that therewas no sanctuary on either side of it, nor for a long space behind it. 

That was what they called the Frenchy railway cutting, and itoverlooked the ruined village of Athies. And not until after I hadcrossed it was I breathing properly. I began, then, to feel more likemyself, and my heart and all my functions began to be more normal. 

All this region we had to cross now was still under fire, but thefire was nothing to what it had been. The evidences of the terrificbombardments there had been were plainly to be seen. Every scrap ofexposed ground had been nicked by shells; the holes were as closetogether as those in a honeycomb. I could not see how any livingthing had come through that hell of fire, but many men had. Now theembankment fairly buzzed with activity. The dugouts were everywhere, and the way the helmeted heads popped out as we passed, inquiringly, made me think of the prairie dog towns I had seen in Canada and thewestern United States. 

The river Scarpe flowed close by. It was a narrow, sluggish stream, and it did not look to me worthy of its famous name. But often, thatspring, its slow-moving waters had been flecked by a bloody froth, and the bodies of brave men had been hidden by them, and washed cleanof the trench mud. Now, uninviting as its aspect was, and sinister aswere the memories it must have evoked in other hearts beside my own, it was water. And on so hot a day water was a precious thing to menwho had been working as the laddies hereabout had worked and labored. 

So either bank was dotted with naked bodies, and the stream itselfshowed head after head, and flashing white arms as men went swimming. Some were scrubbing themselves, taking a Briton's keen delight in abath, no matter what the circumstances in which he gets it; otherswere washing their clothes, slapping and pounding the soaked garmentsin a way to have wrung the hearts of their wives, had they seen themat it. The British soldier, in the field, does many things forhimself that folks at hame never think of! But many of the men werejust lying on the bank, sprawled out and sunning themselves likealligators, basking in the warm sunshine and soaking up rest andgood cheer. 

It looked like a good place for a concert, and so I quickly gatheredan audience of about a thousand men from the dugouts in theembankment and obeyed their injunctions to "Go it, Harry! Gie us asong, do now!"

As I finished my first song my audience applauded me and cheered memost heartily, and the laddies along the banks of the Scarpe heardthem, and came running up to see what was afoot. There were no ladiesthereabout, and they did not stand on a small matter like gettingdressed! Not they! They came running just as they were, and Adam, garbed in his fig leaf, was fully clad compared to most of them. Itwas the barest gallery I ever saw, and the noisiest, too, and themost truly appreciative. 

High up above us airplanes were circling, so high that we could nottell from which side they came, except when we saw some of them beingshelled, and so knew that they belonged to Fritz. They looked likeblack pinheads against the blue cushion of the sky, and no doubt thatthey were vastly puzzled as to the reason of this gathering of nakedmen. What new tricks were the damned English up to now? So I have nodoubt, they were wondering! It was the business of their observers, of course, to spot just such gatherings as ours, although I did notthink of that just then--except to think that they might drop a bombor two, maybe. 

But scouting airplanes, such as those were, do not go in for bombdropping. There are three sorts of airplanes. First come the scoutingplanes--fairly fast, good climbers, able to stay in the air a longtime. Their business is just to spy out the lay of the land over theenemy's trenches--not to fight or drop bombs. Then come the swift, powerful bombing planes, which make raids, flying long distances todo so. The Huns use such planes to bomb unprotected towns and killwomen and babies; ours go in for bombing ammunition dumps and trainsand railway stations and other places of military importance, although, by now, they may be indulging in reprisals for some ofFritz's murderous raids, as so many folk at hame in Britain haveprayed they would. 

Both scouting and bombing planes are protected by the fastest flyersof all--the battle planes, as they are called. These fight otherplanes in the air, and it is the men who steer them and fight theirguns who perform the heroic exploits that you may read of every day. But much of the great work in the air is done by the scouting planes, which take desperate chances, and find it hard to fight back whenthey are attacked. And it was scouts who were above us now--and, doubtless, sending word back by wireless of a new and mysteriousconcentration of British forces along the Scarpe, which it might be agood thing for the Hun artillery to strafe a bit!

So, before very long, a rude interruption came to my songs, in theway of shells dropped unpleasantly close. The men so far above us hadgiven their guns the range, and so, although the gunners could notsee us, they could make their presence felt. 

I have never been booed or hissed by an audience, since I have beenon the stage. I understand that it is a terrible and a disconcertingexperience, and one calculated to play havoc with the stoutest ofnerves. It is an experience I am by no means anxious to have, I cantell you! But I doubt if it could seem worse to me than theinterruption of a shell. The Germans, that day, showed no ear formusic, and no appreciation of art--my art, at least!

And so it seemed well to me to cut my programme, to a certain extent, at least, and bid farewell to my audience, dressed and undressed. Itwas a performance at which it did not seem to me a good idea to takeany curtain calls. I did not miss them, nor feel slighted becausethey were absent. I was too glad to get away with a whole skin!

The shelling became very furious now. Plainly the Germans meant totake no chances. They couldn't guess what the gathering theirairplanes had observed might portend, but, if they could, they meantto defeat its object, whatever that might be. Well, they did notsucceed, but they probably had the satisfaction of thinking that theyhad, and I, for one, do not begrudge them that. They forced theReverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour to make a pretty wide detour, awayfrom the river, to get back to the main road. But they fired a powerof shells to do so!

When we finally reached the road I heard a mad sputtering behind. Ilooked around in alarm, because it sounded, for all the world, likeone of those infernal whizz bangs, chasing me. But it was not. Thenoise came from a motor cycle, and its rider dashed up to me anddropped one foot to the ground. 

"Here's a letter for you, Harry, " he said. 

It was a package that he handed me. I was surprised--I was notexpecting to have a post delivered to me on the battlefield of Arras!It turned out that the package contained a couple of ugly-lookingbits of shell, and a letter from my friends the Highlanders on theother side of the railway embankment. They wrote to thank me forsinging for them, and said they hoped I was none the worse for thebombardment I had undergone. 

"These bits of metal are from the shell that was closest to you whenit burst, " their spokesman wrote. "They nearly got you, and wethought you'd like to have them to keep for souvenirs. "

It seemed to me that that was a singularly calm and phlegmaticletter! My nerves were a good deal overwrought, as I can see now. 

Now we made our way slowly back to division headquarters, and there Ifound that preparations had been made for very much the mostambitious and pretentious concert that I had yet had a chance to givein France. There was a very large audience, and a stage or platformhad been set up, with plenty of room on it for Johnson and his piano. It had been built in a great field, and all around me, when I mountedit, I could see kilted soldiers--almost as far as my eye could reach. There were many thousands of them there--indeed, all of the HighlandBrigade that was not actually on duty at the moment was present, anda good many other men beside, for good measure. 

Here was a sight to make a Scots heart leap with pride! Here, beforeme, was the flower of Scottish manhood. These regiments had beenthrough a series of battles, not so long since, that had sadlythinned their ranks. Many a Scottish grave had been filled thatspring; many a Scottish heart at hame had been broken by sad newsfrom this spot. But there they were now, before me--their ranksfilled up again, splendid as they stretched out, eager to welcome meand cheer me. There were tears in my eyes as I looked around at them. 

Massed before me were all the best men Scotland had had to offer! Allthese men had breathed deep of the hellish air of war. All hadmarched shoulder to shoulder and skirt to skirt with death. All wereof my country and my people. My heart was big within me with pride ofthem, and that I was of their race, as I stood up to sing for them. 

Johnson was waiting for me to be ready. Little "Tinkle Tom, " as wecalled the wee piano, was not very large, but there were times whenhe had to be left behind. I think he was glad to have us back again, and to be doing his part, instead of leaving me to sing alone, without his stout help. 

Many distinguished officers were in that great assemblage. They allturned out to hear me, as well as the men, and among them I saw manyfamiliar faces and old friends from hame. But there were many faces, too, alas, that I did not see. And when I inquired for them later Ilearned that many of them I had seen for the last time. Oh, the sadnews I learned, day after day, oot there in France! Friend afterfriend of whom I made inquiry was known, to be sure. They could tellme where, and when, and how, they had been killed. 

Up above us, as I began to sing, our airplanes were circling. NoBoche planes were in sight now, I had been told, but there were manyof ours. And sometimes one came swooping down, its occupants curious, no doubt, as to what might be going on, and the hum of its hugepropeller would make me falter a bit in my song. And once or twiceone flew so low and so close that I was almost afraid it would strikeme, and I would dodge in what I think was mock alarm, much to theamusement of the soldiers. 

I had given them two songs when a big man arose, far back in thecrowd. He was a long way from me, but his great voice carried to meeasily, so that I could hear every word he said. 

"Harry, " he shouted, "sing us 'The Wee Hoose Amang the Heather' andwe'll a' join in the chorus!"

For a moment I could only stare out at them. Between that sea offaces, upraised to mine, and my eyes, there came another face--thesmiling, bonnie face of my boy John, that I should never see againwith mortal eyes. That had been one of his favorite songs for manyyears. I hesitated. It was as if a gentle hand had plucked at my veryheart strings, and played upon them. Memory--memories of my boy, swept over me in a flood. I felt a choking in my throat, and thetears welled into my eyes. 

But then I began to sing, making a signal to Johnson to let me singalone. And when I came to the chorus, true to the big Highlander'spromise, they all did join in the chorus! And what a chorus that was!Thousands of men were singing. 

 "There's a wee hoose amang the heather, There's a wee hoose o'er the sea. There's a lassie in that wee hoose Waiting patiently for me. She's the picture of perfection-- I would na tell a lee If ye saw her ye would love her Just the same as me!"

My voice was very shaky when I came to the end of that chorus, butthe great wave of sound from the kilted laddies rolled out, true andfull, unshaken, unbroken. They carried the air as steadily as a shipis carried upon a rolling sea. 

I could sing no more for them, and then, as I made my way, unsteadilyenough, from the platform, music struck up that was the sweetest Icould have heard. Some pipers had come together, from twa or threeregiments, unknown to me, and now, very softly, their pipes began toskirl. They played the tune that I love best, "The Drunken Piper. " Icould scarcely see to pick my way, for the tears that blinded me, butin my ears, as I passed away from them, there came, gently wailing onthe pipes, the plaintive plea--

 "Will ye no come back again?"

CHAPTER XXIII

Now it was time to take to the motor cars again, and I was glad ofthe thought that we would have a bracing ride. I needed something ofthe sort, I thought. My emotions had been deeply stirred, in manyways, that day. I felt tired and quite exhausted. This was by allodds the most strenuous day the Reverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour hadput in yet in France. So I welcomed the idea of sitting backcomfortably in the car and feeling the cool wind against my cheeks. 

First, however, the entertainers were to be entertained. They tookus, the officers of the divisional staff, to a hut, where we wereoffered our choice of tea or a wee hauf yin. There was good Scotswhisky there, but it was the tea I wanted. It was very hot in thesun, and I had done a deal of clambering about. So I was glad, afterall, to stay in the shade a while and rest my limbs. 

Getting out through Arras turned out to be a ticklish business. TheGermans were verra wasteful o' their shells that day, considering howmuch siller they cost! They were pounding away, and more shells, by agood many, were falling in Arras than had been the case when wearrived at noon. So I got a chance to see how the ruin that had beenwrought had been accomplished. 

Arras is a wonderful sight, noble and impressive even in itsdestruction. But it was a sight that depressed me. It had angered me, at first, but now I began to think, at each ruined house that I saw:"Suppose this were at hame in Scotland!" And when such thoughts cameto me I thanked God for the brave lads I had seen that day who stood, out here, holding the line, and so formed a bulwark between Scotlandand such black ruin as this. 

We were to start for Tramecourt now, but on the way we were to make acouple of stops. Our way was to take us through St. Pol and Hesdin, and, going so, we came to the town of Le Quesnoy. Here some of the11th Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders were stationed. My heartleaped at the sight of them. That had been my boy's regiment, although he had belonged to a different battalion, and it was withthe best will in the world that I called a halt and gave them aconcert. 

I gave two more concerts, both brief ones, on the rest of thejourney, and so it was quite dark when we approached the chateau atTramecourt. As we came up I became aware of a great stir and movementthat was quite out of the ordinary routine there. In the grounds Icould see tiny lights moving about, like fireflies--lights that came, I thought, from electric torches. 

"Something extraordinary must be going on here, " I remarked to CaptainGodfrey. "I wonder if General Haig has arrived, by any chance?"

"We'll soon know what it's all about, " he said, philosophically. ButI expect he knew already. 

Before the chateau there was a brilliant spot of light, standing outvividly against the surrounding darkness. I could not account forthat brilliantly lighted spot then. But we came into it as the carstopped; it was a sort of oasis of light in an inky desert ofsurrounding gloom. And as we came full into it and I stood up todescend from the car, stretching my tired, stiff legs, the silenceand the darkness were split by three tremendous cheers. 

It wasn't General Haig who was arriving! It was Harry Lauder!

"What's the matter here?" I called, as loudly as I could. 

"Been waitin' for ye a couple of 'ours, 'Arry, " called a loud cockneyvoice in answer. "Go it now! Get it off your chest!" Then cameexplanations. It seemed that a lot of soldiers, about four hundredstrong, who were working on a big road job about ten miles fromTramecourt, had heard of my being there, and had decided to come overin a body and beg for a concert. They got to the chateau early, andwere told it might be eleven o'clock before I got back. But they didn'tcare--they said they'd wait all night, if they had to, to get a chanceto hear me. And they made some use of the time they had to wait. 

They took three big acetylene headlights from motor cars, andconnected them up. There was a little porch at the entrance of thechateau, with a short flight of steps leading up to it, and then wedecided that that would make an excellent makeshift theater. Since itwould be dark they decided they must have lights, so that they couldsee me--just as in a regular theater at hame! That was where theheadlights they borrowed from motor cars came in. They put one oneach side of the porch and one off in front, so that all the lightwas centered right on the porch itself, and it was bathed in asstrong a glare as ever I sang in on the stage. It was almostblinding, indeed, as I found when I turned to face them and to singfor them. Needless to say, late though it was and tired as I was, Inever thought of refusing to give them the concert they wanted!

I should have liked to eat my dinner first, but I couldn't think ofsuggesting it. These boys had done a long, hard day's work. Then theyhad marched ten miles, and, on top of all that, had waited two hoursfor me and fixed up a stage and a lighting system. They were quite astired as I, I decided--and they had done a lot more. And so I toldthe faithful Johnson to bring wee Tinkle Tom along, and get him up tothe little stage, and I faced my audience in the midst of a storm ofthe ghostliest applause I ever hope to hear!

I could hear them, do you ken, but I could no see a face before me!In the theater, bright though the footlights are, and greatly as theydim what lies beyond them, you can still see the white faces of youraudience. At least, you do see something--your eyes help you to knowthe audience is there, and, gradually, you can see perfectly, andpick out a face, maybe, and sing to some one person in the audience, that you may be sure of your effects. 

It was utter, Stygian darkness that lay beyond the pool of blindinglight in which I stood. Gradually I did make out a little of what laybeyond, very close to me. I could see dim outlines of human bodiesmoving around. And now I was sure there were fireflies about. Butthen they stayed so still that I realized, suddenly, with a smile, just what they were--the glowing ends of cigarettes, of course!

There were many tall poplar trees around the chateau. I knew where tolook for them, but that night I could scarcely see them. I tried tofind them, for it was a strange, weird sensation to be there as Iwas, and I wanted all the help fixed objects could give me. I managedto pick out their feathery lines in the black distance--the darknessmade them seem more remote than they were, really. Their branches, when I found them, waved like spirit arms, and I could hear the windwhispering and sighing among the topmost branches. 

Now and then what we call in Scotland a "batty bird" skimmed past myface, attracted, I suppose, by the bright light. I suppose that batsthat have not been disturbed before for generations have been arousedby the blast of war through all that region and have come out of darkcavernous hiding-places, as those that night must have done, to seewhat it is all about, the tumult and the shouting!

They were verra disconcertin', those bats! They bothered me almost asmuch as the whizz bangs had done, earlier in the day! They swishedsuddenly out of the darkness against my face, and I would start back, and hear a ripple of laughter run through that unseen audience ofmine. Aye, it was verra funny for them, but I did not like that partof it a bit! No man likes to have a bat touch his skin. And I had toduck quickly to evade those winged cousins of the mouse--and thenhear a soft guffaw arising as I did it. 

I have appeared, sometimes, in theaters in which it was prettydifficult to find the audience. And such audiences have been nearlyimpossible to trace, later, in the box-office reports. But that isthe first time in my life, and, up to now, the last, that I ever sangto a totally invisible audience! I did not know then how many menthere might have been forty, or four hundred, or four thousand. And, save for the titters that greeted my encounters with the bats, theywere amazingly quiet as they waited for me to sing. 

It was just about ten minutes before eleven when I began to sing, andthe concert wasn't over until after midnight. I was distinctlynervous as I began the verse of my first song. It was a great reliefwhen there was a round of applause; that helped to place my audienceand give me its measure, at once. 

But I was almost as disconcerted a bit later as I had been by thefirst incursion of the bats. I came to the chorus, and suddenly, outof the darkness, there came a perfect gale of sound. It was the mentaking up the chorus, thundering it out. They took the song cleanaway from me--I could only gasp and listen. The roar from that unseenchorus almost took my feet from under me, so amazing was it, and sounexpected, somehow, used as I was to having soldiers join in achorus with me, and disappointed as I should have been had they everfailed to do so. 

But after that first song, when I knew what to expect, I soon grewused to the strange surroundings. The weirdness and the mystery woreoff, and I began to enjoy myself tremendously. The conditions weresimply ideal; indeed, they were perfect, for the sentimental songsthat soldiers always like best. Imagine how "Roamin' in the Gloamin'"went that nicht!

I had meant to sing three or four songs. But instead I sang nearlyevery song I knew. It was one of the longest programmes I gave duringthe whole tour, and I enjoyed the concert, myself, better than any Ihad yet given. 

My audience was growing all the time, although I did not know that. The singing brought up crowds from the French village, who gatheredin the outskirts of the throng to listen--and, I make no doubt, topass amazed comments on these queer English!

At last I was too tired to go on. And so I bade the lads good-nicht, and they gave me a great cheer, and faded away into the blackness. And I went inside, rubbing my eyes, and wondering if it was no alla dream!

"It wasn't Sir Douglas Haig who arrived, was it, Harry?" Godfreysaid, slyly. 

CHAPTER XXIV

The next morning I was tired, as you may believe. I ached in everylimb when I went to my room that night, but a hot bath and a goodsleep did wonders for me. No bombardment could have kept me awakethat nicht! I would no ha' cared had the Hun begun shellingTramecourt itself, so long as he did not shell me clear out of mybed. 

Still, in the morning, though I had not had so much sleep as I wouldhave liked, I was ready to go when we got the word. We made about asearly a start as usual--breakfast soon after daylight, and then outthe motor cars and to wee Tinkle Tom. Our destination that day, ourfirst, at least, was Albert--a town as badly smashed and battered asArras or Ypres. These towns were long thinly held by the British--that is, they were just within our lines, and the Hun could rake themwith his fire at his own evil will. 

It did him no good to batter them to pieces as he did. He wastedshells upon them that must have been precious to him. His treatmentof them was but a part of his wicked, wanton spirit ofdestructiveness. He could not see a place standing that he did notwant to destroy, I think. It was not war he made, as the world hadknown war; it was a savage raid against every sign and evidence ofcivilization, and comfort and happiness. But always, as I think Ihave said before, one thing eluded him. It was the soul of that whichhe destroyed. That was beyond his reach, and sore it must havegrieved him to come to know it--for come to know it he has, inFrance, and in Belgium, too. 

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

There is some life in that wee place now. There are no more Germans, and no more shells come there. The battle line has been carried on. To the East by the British; here they have redeemed a bit of Francefrom the German yoke. And so we could stop there, in the heat of themorning, for a bit of refreshment at a cafe that was once, I suppose, quite a place in that sma' toon. It does but little business now;passing soldiers bring it some trade, but nothing like what it usedto have. For this is not a town much frequented by troops--or wasnot, just at that time. 

There was some trouble, too, with one of the cars, so we went for ashort walk through the town. It was then that we met that old Frenchnun. Her face and her hands were withered, and deeply graven with thelines of the years that had bowed her head. Her back was bent, andshe walked slowly and with difficulty. But in her eyes was a soft, young light that I have often seen in the eyes of priests and nuns, and that their comforting religion gives them. But as we talked Ispoke of the Germans. 

Gone from her eyes was all their softness. They flashed a bitter andcontemptuous hatred. 

"The Germans!" she said. She spat upon the ground, scornfully, andwith a gesture of infinite loathing. And every time she uttered thathated word she spat again. It was a ceremony she used; she felt, Iknow, that her mouth was defiled by that word, and she wished tocleanse it. It was no affectation, as, with some folk, you might havethought it. It was not a studied act. She did it, I do believe, unconsciously. And it was a gesture marvelously expressive. It spokemore eloquently of her feelings than many words could have done. 

She had seen the Germans! Aye! She had seen them come, in 1914, inthe first days of the war, rolling past in great, gray waves, fordays and days, as if the flood would never cease to roll. She hadseen them passing, with their guns, in those first proud days of thewar, when they had reckoned themselves invincible, and been so sureof victory. She knew what cruelties, what indignities, they had putupon the helpless people the war had swept into their clutch. Sheknew the defilements of which they had been guilty. 

Nor was that the first time she had seen Germans. They had comebefore she was so old, though even then she had not been a younggirl--in the war of 1870, when Europe left brave France to her fate, because the German spirit and the German plan were not appreciated orunderstood. Thank God the world had learned its lesson by 1914, whenthe Hun challenged it again, so that the challenge was met and takenup, and France was not left alone to bear the brunt of German greedand German hate. 

She hated the Germans, that old French nun. She was religious; sheknew the teachings of her church. She knew that God says we must loveour enemies. But He could not expect us to love His enemies. 

Albert, when we came to it, we found a ruin indeed. The German gunshad beaten upon it until it was like a rubbish heap in the backyardof hell. Their malice had wrought a ruin here almost worse than thatat Arras. Only one building had survived although it was crumbling toruin. That was a church, and, as we approached it, we could see, fromthe great way off, a great gilded figure of the Holy Virgin, holdingin her arms the infant Christ. 

The figure leaned at such an angle, high up against the totteringwall of the church, that it seemed that it must fall at the nextmoment, even as we stared at it. But--it does not fall. Every breathof wind that comes sets it to swaying, gently. When the wind rises toa 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 toyou, if you ask them, that when it falls at last the war will beover, and France will be victorious. 

That is rank superstition, you say? Aye, it may be! But in the regionof the front everyone you meet has become superstitious, if that isthe word you choose. That is especially true of the soldiers. Everyman at the front, it seemed to me, was a fatalist. What is to be willbe, they say. It is certain that this feeling has helped to make themindifferent to danger, almost, indeed, contemptuous of it. And inFrance, I was told, almost everywhere there were shrines in whichfigures of Christ or of His Mother had survived the most furiousshelling. All the world knows, too, how, at Rheims, where the greatCathedral has been shattered in the wickedest and most wanton of allthe crimes of that sort that the Germans have to their account, thestatue of Jeanne d'Arc, who saved France long ago, stands untouched. 

How is a man to account for such things as that? Is he to put themdown to chance, to luck, to a blind fate? I, for one, cannot do so, nor will I try to learn to do it. 

Fate, to be sure, is a strange thing, as my friends the soldiers knowso well. But there is a difference between fate, or chance, and thesort of force that preserves statues like those I have named. A mannever knows his luck; he does well not to brood upon it. I rememberthe case of a chap I knew, who was out for nearly three years, takingpart in great battles from Mons to Arras. He was scratched once ortwice, but was never even really wounded badly enough to go tohospital. He went to London, at last, on leave, and within an hour ofthe time when he stepped from his train at Charing Cross he wasstruck by a 'bus and killed. And there was the strange ease of myfriend, Tamson, the baker, of which I told you earlier. No--a mannever knows his fate!

So it seemed to me, as we drove toward Arras, and watched thatmysterious figure, that God Himself had chosen to leave it there, asa sign and a warning and a promise all at once. There was no sign oflife, at first, when we came into the town. Silence brooded over theruins. We stopped to have a look around in that scene of desolation, and as the motors throbbed beneath the hoods it seemed to me thenoise they made was close to being blasphemous. We were right underthat hanging figure of the Virgin and of Christ, and to have left thesilence unbroken would have been more seemly. 

But it was not long before the silence of the town was broken byanother sound. It was marching men we heard, but they were scufflingwith their feet as they came; they had not the rhythmic tread of mostof the British troops we had encountered. Nor were these men, whenthey swung into sight, coming around a pile of ruins, just like anyBritish troops we had seen. I recognized them as once as Australians--Kangaroos, as their mates in other divisions called them--by the waytheir campaign hats were looped up at one side. These were the firstAustralian troops I had seen since I had sailed from Sydney, in theearly days of the war, nearly three years before. Three years! Tothink of it--and of what those years had seen!

"Here's a rare chance to give a concert!" I said, and held up my handto the officer in command. 

"Halt!" he cried, and then: "Stand at ease!" I was about to tell himwhy I had stopped them, and make myself known to them when I saw agrin rippling its way over all those bronzed faces--a grin ofrecognition. And I saw that the officer knew me, too, even before aloud voice cried out:

"Good old Harry Lauder!"

That was a good Scots voice--even though its owner wore theAustralian uniform. 

"Would the boys like to hear a concert?" I asked the officer. 

"That they would! By all means!" he said. "Glad of the chance! Andso'm I! I've heard you just once before--in Sydney, away back in thesummer of 1914. "

Then the big fellow who had called my name spoke up again. 

"Sing us 'Calligan, '" he begged. "Sing us 'Calligan, ' Harry! I heardyou sing it twenty-three years agone, in Motherwell Toon Hall!"

"Calligan!" The request for that song took me back indeed, throughall the years that I have been before the public. It must have beenat least twenty-three years since he had heard me sing that song--allof twenty-three years. "Calligan" had been one of the very earliestof my successes on the stage. I had not thought of the song, muchless sung it, for years and years. In fact, though I racked mybrains, I could not remember the words. And so, much as I should haveliked to do so, I could not sing it for him. But if he wasdisappointed, he took it in good part, and he seemed to like some ofthe newer songs I had to sing for them as well as he could ever haveliked old "Calligan. "

I sang for these Kangaroos a song I had not sung before in France, because it seemed to be an especially auspicious time to try it. Iwrote it while I was in Australia, with a view, particularly, topleasing Australian audiences, and so repaying them, in some measure, for the kindly way in which they treated me while I was there. I callit "Australia Is the Land for Me, " and this is the way it goes:

 There's a land I'd like to tell you all about It's a land in the far South Sea. It's a land where the sun shines nearly every day It's the land for you and me. It's the land for the man with the big strong arm It's the land for big hearts, too. It's a land we'll fight for, everything that's right for Australia is the real true blue!

 Refrain:

 It's the land where the sun shines nearly every day Where the skies are ever blue. Where the folks are as happy as the day is long And there's lots of work to do. Where the soft winds blow and the gum trees grow As far as the eye can see, Where the magpie chaffs and the cuckoo-burra laughs Australia is the land for me!

Those Kangaroos took to that song as a duck takes to water! Theyraised the chorus with me in a swelling roar as soon as they hadheard it once, to learn it, and their voices roared through the ruinslike vocal shrapnel. You could hear them whoop "Australia Is the Landfor Me!" a mile away. And if anything could have brought down thattottering statue above us it would have been the way they sang. Theyput body and soul, as well as voice, into that final patrioticdeclaration of the song. 

We had thought--I speak for Hogge and Adam and myself, and not forGodfrey, who did not have to think and guess, but know--we hadthought, when we rolled into Albert, that it was a city of the dead, utterly deserted and forlorn. But now, as I went on singing, we foundthat that idea had been all wrong. For as the Australians whooped uptheir choruses other soldiers popped into sight. They came pouringfrom all directions. 

I have seen few sights more amazing. They came from cracks andcrevices, as it seemed; from under tumbled heaps of ruins, anddropping down from shells of houses where there were certainly nostairs. As I live, before I had finished my audience had been swollento a great one of two thousand men! When they were all roaring out ina chorus you could scarce hear Johnson's wee piano at all--it soundedonly like a feeble tinkle when there was a part for it alone. 

I began shaking hands, when I had finished singing. That was averrainjudeecious thing for me to attempt there! I had not reckonedwith the strength of the grip of those laddies from the underside ofthe world. But I had been there, and I should have known. 

Soon came the order to the Kangaroos: "Fall in!"

At once the habit of stern discipline prevailed. They swung offagain, and the last we saw of them they were just brown men, disappearing along a brown road, bound for the trenches. 

Swiftly the mole-like dwellers in Albert melted away, until only afew officers were left beside the members of the Reverend HarryLauder, M. P. , Tour. And I grew grave and distraught myself. 

CHAPTER XXV

One of the officers at Albert was looking at me in a curiously intentfashion. I noticed that. And soon he came over to me. "Where do yougo next, Harry?" he asked me. His voice was keenly sympathetic, andhis eyes and his manner were very grave. 

"To a place called Ovilliers, " I said. 

"So I thought, " he said. He put out his hand, and I gripped it, hard. "I know, Harry. I know exactly where you are going, and I will send aman with you to act as your guide, who knows the spot you want to reach. "

I couldn't answer him. I was too deeply moved. For Ovilliers is thespot where my son, Captain John Lauder, lies in his soldier's grave. That grave had been, of course, from the very first, the final, theultimate objective of my journey. And that morning, as we set outfrom Tramecourt, Captain Godfrey had told me, with grave sympathy, that at last we were coming to the spot that had been so constantlyin my thoughts ever since we had sailed from Folkestone. 

And so a private soldier joined our party as guide, and we took tothe road again. The Bapaume road it was--a famous highway, bitterlycontested, savagely fought for. It was one of the strategic roads ofthat whole region, and the Hun had made a desperate fight to keepcontrol of it. But he had failed--as he has failed, and is failingstill, in all his major efforts in France. 

There was no talking in our car, which, this morning, was the secondin the line. I certainly was not disposed to chat, and I suppose thatsympathy for my feelings, and my glumness, stilled the tongues of mycompanions. And, at any rate, we had not traveled far when the carahead of us stopped, and the soldier from Albert stepped into theroad and waited for me. I got out when our car stopped, and joinedhim. 

"I will show you the place now, Mr. Lauder, " he said, quietly. So weleft the cars standing in the road, and set out across a field that, like all the fields in that vicinity, had been ripped and torn byshell-fire. All about us, as we crossed that tragic field, there werelittle brown mounds, each with a white wooden cross upon it. June wasout that day in full bloom. All over the valley, thickly sown withthose white crosses, wild flowers in rare profusion, and thicklymatted, luxuriant grasses, and all the little shrubs that God Himselflooks after were growing bravely in the sunlight, as though they weretrying to hide the work of the Hun. 

It was a mournful journey, but, in some strange way, the peacefulbeauty of the day brought comfort to me. And my own grief was alteredby the vision of the grief that had come to so many others. Thosecrosses, stretching away as far as my eye could reach, attested tothe fact that it was not I alone who had suffered and lost and laid asacrifice upon the altar of my country. And, in the presence of somany evidences of grief and desolation a private grief sank into itstrue proportions. It was no less keen, the agony of the thought of myboy was as sharp as ever. But I knew that he was only one, and that Iwas only one father. And there were so many like him--and so manylike me, God help us all! Well, He did help me, as I have told, and Ihope and pray that He has helped many another. I believe He has;indeed, I know it. 

Hogge and Dr. Adam, my two good friends, walked with me on that sadpilgrimage. I was acutely conscious of their sympathy; it was sweetand precious to have it. But I do not think we exchanged a word as wecrossed that field. There was no need of words. I knew, withoutspeech from them, how they felt, and they knew that I knew. So wecame, when we were, perhaps, half a mile from the Bapaume road, to aslight eminence, a tiny hill that rose from the field. A littlemilitary cemetery crowned it. Here the graves were set in orderedrows, and there was a fence set around them, to keep them apart, andto mark that spot as holy ground, until the end of time. Five hundredBritish boys lie sleeping in that small acre of silence, and amongthem is my own laddie. There the fondest hopes of my life, the hopesthat sustained and cheered me through many years, lie buried. 

No one spoke. But the soldier pointed, silently and eloquently, toone brown mound in a row of brown mounds that looked alike, each likethe other. Then he drew away. And Hogge and Adam stopped, and stoodtogether, quiet and grave. And so I went alone to my boy's grave, andflung myself down upon the warm, friendly earth. My memories of thatmoment are not very clear, but I think that for a few minutes I wasutterly spent, that my collapse was complete. 

He was such a good boy!

I hope you will not think, those of you, my friends, who may readwhat I am writing here, that I am exalting my lad above all the otherBritons who died for King and country--or, and aye, above the braveladdies of other races who died to stop the Hun. But he was such agood boy!

As I lay there on that brown mound, under the June sun that day, allthat he had been, and all that he had meant to me and to his mothercame rushing back afresh to my memory, opening anew my wounds ofgrief. I thought of him as a baby, and as a wee laddie beginning torun around and talk to us. I thought of him in every phase and bit ofhis life, and of the friends that we had been, he and I! Such chumswe were, always!

And as I lay there, as I look back upon it now, I can think of butthe one desire that ruled and moved me. I wanted to reach my armsdown into that dark grave, and clasp my boy tightly to my breast, andkiss him. And I wanted to thank him for what he had done for hiscountry, and his mother, and for me. 

Again there came to me, as I lay there, the same gracious solace thatGod had given me after I heard of his glorious death. And I knew thatthis dark grave, so sad and lonely and forlorn, was but the temporarybivouac of my boy. I knew that it was no more than a trench of refugeagainst the storm of battle, in which he was resting until that hourshall sound when we shall all be reunited beyond the shadowyborderland of Death. 

How long did I lie there? I do not know. And how I found the strengthat last to drag myself to my feet and away from that spot, thedearest and the saddest spot on earth to me, God only knows. It wasan hour of very great anguish for me; an hour of an anguishdifferent, but only less keen, than that which I had known when theyhad told me first that I should never see my laddie in the fleshagain. But as I took up the melancholy journey across that field, with its brown mounds and its white crosses stretching so far away, they seemed to bring me a sort of tragic consolation. 

I thought of all the broken-hearted ones at home, in Britain. Howmany were waiting, as I had waited, until they, too, --they, too, --might come to France, and cast themselves down, as I had done, uponsome brown mound, sacred in their thoughts? How many were praying forthe day to come when they might gaze upon a white cross, as I haddone, and from the brown mound out of which it rose gather a fewcrumbs of that brown earth, to be deposited in a sacred corner of asacred place yonder in Britain?

While I was in America, on my last tour, a woman wrote to me from atown in the state of Maine. She was a stranger to me when she satdown to write that letter, but I count her now, although I have neverseen her, among my very dearest friends. 

"I have a friend in France, " she wrote. "He is there with ourAmerican army, and we had a letter from him the other day. I thinkyou would like to hear what he wrote to us. 

"'I was walking in the gloaming here in France the other evening, ' hewrote. 'You know, I have always been very fond of that old song ofHarry Lauder's, 'Roamin' in the Gloamin'. '

"'Well, I was roamin' in the gloamin' myself, and as I went I hummedthat very song, under my breath. And I came, in my walk to a littlecemetery, on a tiny hill. There were many mounds there and many smallwhite crosses. About one of them a Union Jack was wrapped so tightlythat I could not read the inscription upon it. And something led meto unfurl that weather-worn flag, so that I could read. And what doyou think? It was the grave of Harry Lauder's son, Captain JohnLauder, of the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders, and his littlefamily crest was upon the cross. 

"'I stood there, looking down at that grave, and I said a littleprayer, all by myself. And then I rewound the Union Jack about thecross. I went over to some ruins nearby, and there I found a red rosegrowing. I do believe it was the last rose of summer. And I took itup, very carefully, roots and all, and carried it over to CaptainLauder's grave, and planted it there. '"

What a world of comfort those words brought me!

It was about eight o'clock one morning that Captain Lauder waskilled, between Courcellete and Poizieres, on the Ancre, in theregion that is known as the Somme battlefield. It was soon afterbreakfast, and John was going about, seeing to his men. His companywas to be relieved that day, and to go back from the trenches to restbillets, behind the lines. We had sent our laddie a braw lot ofChristmas packages not long before, but he had had them kept at therest billet, so that he might have the pleasure of opening them whenhe was out of the trenches, and had a little leisure, even though itmade his Christmas presents a wee bit late. 

There had been a little mist upon the ground, as, at that damp andchilly season of the year, there nearly always was along the riverAncre. At that time, on that morning, it was just beginning to riseas the sun grew strong enough to banish it. I think John trusted toomuch to the mist, perhaps. He stepped for just a moment into theopen; for just a moment he exposed himself, as he had to do, nodoubt, to do his duty. And a German sniper, watching for just suchchances, caught a glimpse of him. His rifle spoke; its bullet piercedJohn's brave and gentle heart. 

Tate, John's body-servant, a man from our own town, was the firstto reach him. Tate was never far from John's side, and he washeart-broken when he reached him that morning and found that therewas nothing he could do for him. 

Many of the soldiers who served with John and under him have writtento me, and come to me. And all of them have told me the same thing:that there was not a man in his company who did not feel his death asa personal loss and bereavement. And his superior officers have toldme the same thing. In so far as such reports could comfort us hismother and I have taken solace in them. All that we have heard ofJohn's life in the trenches, and of his death, was such a report aswe or any parents should want to have of their boy. 

John never lost his rare good nature. There were times when thingswere going very badly indeed, but at such times he could always becounted upon to raise a laugh and uplift the spirits of his men. Heknew them all; he knew them well. Nearly all of them came from hishome region near the Clyde, and so they were his neighbors and hisfriends. 

I have told you earlier that John was a good musician. He played thepiano rarely well, for an amateur, and he had a grand singing voice. And one of his fellow-officers told me that, after the fight atBeaumont-Hamul, one of the phases of the great Battle of the Somme, John's company found itself, toward evening, near the ruins of an oldchateau. After that fight, by the way, dire news, sad news, came toour village of the men of the Argyle and Sutherland regiment, andthere were many stricken homes that mourned brave lads who wouldnever come home again. 

John's men were near to exhaustion that night. They had done terriblework that day, and their losses had been heavy. Now that there was aninterlude they lay about, tired and bruised and battered. Many hadbeen killed; many had been so badly wounded that they lay somewherebehind, or had been picked up already by the Red Cross men whofollowed them across the field of the attack. But there were manymore who had been slightly hurt, and whose wounds began to pain themgrievously now. The spirit of the men was dashed. 

John's friend and fellow-officer told me of the scene. 

"There we were, sir, " he said. "We were pretty well done in, I cantell you. And then Lauder came along. I suppose he was just as tiredand worn out as the rest of us--God knows he had as much reason tobe, and more! But he was as cocky as a little bantam. And he wassmiling. He looked about. 

"'Here--this won't do!' he said. 'We've got to get these lads feelingbetter!' He was talking more to himself than to anyone else, I think. And he went exploring around. He got into what was left of thatchateau--and I can tell you it wasn't much! The Germans had beenusing it as a point d'appui--a sort of rallying-place, sir--and ourguns had smashed it up pretty thoroughly. I've no doubt the Fritzieshad taken a hack at it, too, when they found they couldn't hold itany longer--they usually did. 

"But, by a sort of miracle, there was a piano inside that had comethrough all the trouble. The building and all the rest of thefurniture had been knocked to bits, but the piano was all right, although, as I say, I don't know how that had happened. Lauder spiedit, and went clambering over all the debris and wreckage to reach it. He tried the keys, and found that the action was all right. So hebegan picking out a tune, and the rest of us began to sit up a bit. And pretty soon he lifted his voice in a rollicking tune--one of yoursongs it was, sir--and in no time the men were all sitting up tolisten to him. Then they joined in the chorus--and pretty soon you'dnever have known they'd been tired or worn out! If there'd been achance they'd have gone at Fritz and done the day's work all overagain!"

After John was killed his brother officers sent us all his personalbelongings. We have his field-glasses, with the mud of the trenchesdried upon them. We have a little gold locket that he always worearound his neck. His mother's picture is in it, and that of thelassie he was to have married had he come home, after New Year's. Andwe have his rings, and his boots, and his watch, and all the othersmall possessions that were a part of his daily life out there inFrance. 

Many soldiers and officers of the Argyle and Sutherlanders pass thehoose at Dunoon on the Clyde. None ever passes the hoose, though, without dropping in, for a bite and sup if he has time to stop, andto tell us stories of our beloved boy. 

No, I would no have you think that I would exalt my boy above all theothers who have lived and died in France in the way of duty. But hewas such a good boy! We have heard so many tales like those I havetold you, to make us proud of him, and glad that he bore his part asa man should. 

He will stay there, in that small grave on that tiny hill. I shallnot bring his body back to rest in Scotland, even if the time comeswhen I might do so. It is a soldier's grave, and an honorable placefor him to be, and I feel it is there that he would wish to lie, withhis men lying close about him, until the time comes for the greatreunion. 

But I am going back to France to visit again and again that gravewhere he lies buried. So long as I live myself that hill will be theshrine to which my many pilgrimages will be directed. The time willcome again when I may take his mother with me, and when we may kneeltogether at that spot. 

And meanwhile the wild flowers and the long grasses and all thelittle shrubs will keep watch and ward over him there, and over allthe other brave soldiers who lie hard by, who died for God and fortheir flag. 

CHAPTER XXVI

So at last, I turned back toward the road, and very slowly, withbowed head and shoulders that felt very old, all at once, I walkedback toward the Bapaume highway. I was still silent, and when wereached the road again, and the waiting cars, I turned, and lookedback, long and sorrowfully, at that tiny hill, and the grave itsheltered. Godfrey and Hogge and Adam, Johnson and the soldiers ofour party, followed my gaze. But we looked in silence; not one of ushad a word to say. There are moments, as I suppose we have all had tolearn, that are beyond words and speech. 

And then at last we stepped back into the cars, and resumed ourjourney on the Bapaume road. We started slowly, and I looked backuntil a turn in the road hid that field with its mounds and itscrosses, and that tiny cemetery on the wee hill. So I said good-by tomy boy again, for a little space. 

Our road was by way of Poizieres, and this part of our journey tookus through an area of fearful desolation. It was the country that wasmost bitterly fought over in the summer long battle of the Somme in1916, when the new armies of Britain had their baptism of fire andsounded the knell of doom for the Hun. It was then he learned thatBritain 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 thingin its path. The trees were mown down, clean to the ground. The veryearth was blasted out of all semblance to its normal kindly look. Thescene was like a picture of Hell from Dante's Inferno; there is nothingupon this earth that may be compared with it. Death and pain and agonyhad ruled this whole countryside, once so smiling and fair to see. 

After we had driven for a space we came to something that lay by theroadside that was a fitting occupant of such a spot. It was like theskeleton of some giant creature of a prehistoric age, incrediblysavage even in its stark, unlovely death. It might have been theframe of some vast, metallic tumble bug, that, crawling ominouslyalong this road of death, had come into the path of a Colossus, andbeen stepped upon, and then kicked aside from the road to die. 

"That's what's left of one of our first tanks, " said Godfrey. "Weused them first in this battle of the Somme, you remember. And thatmust have been one of the very earliest ones. They've been improvedand perfected since that time. "

"How came it like this?" I asked, gazing at it, curiously. 

"A direct hit from a big German shell--a lucky hit, of course. That'sabout the only thing that could put even one of the first tanks outof action that way. Ordinary shells from field pieces, machine-gunfire, that sort of thing, made no impression on the tanks. But, ofcourse----"

I could see for myself. The in'ards of the monster had been prettythoroughly knocked out. Well, that tank had done its bit, I have nodoubt. And, since its heyday, the brain of Mars has spawned so manynew ideas that this vast creature would have been obsolete, and readyfor the scrap heap, even had the Hun not put it there before itstime. 

At the Butte de Marlincourt, one of the most bitterly contested bitsof the battlefield, we passed a huge mine crater, and I made aninspection of it. It was like the crater of an old volcano, a hugeold mountain with a hole in its center. Here were elaborate dugouts, too, and many graves. 

Soon we came to Bapaume. Bapaume was one of the objectives theBritish failed to reach in the action of 1916. But early in 1917 theGermans, seeing they had come to the end of their tether there, retreated, and gave the town up. But what a town they left! Bapaumewas nearly as complete a ruin as Arras and Albert. But it had notbeen wrecked by shell-fire. The Hun had done the work in cold blood. The houses had been wrecked by human hands. Pictures still hungcrazily upon the walls. Grates were falling out of fire-places. Bedsstood on end. Tables and chairs were wantonly smashed and there wasblack ruin everywhere. 

We drove on then to a small town where the skirling of pipes heraldedour coming. It was the headquarters of General Willoughby and theFortieth Division. Highlanders came flocking around to greet uswarmly, and they all begged me to sing to them. But the officer incommand called them to attention. 

"Men, " he said, "Harry Lauder comes to us fresh from the saddestmission of his life. We have no right to expect him to sing for usto-day, but if it is God's will that he should, nothing could give usgreater pleasure. "

My heart was very heavy within me, and never, even on the night whenI went back to the Shaftesbury Theater, have I felt less likesinging. But I saw the warm sympathy on the faces of the boys. 

"If you'll take me as I am, " I told them, "I will try to sing foryou. I will do my best, anyway. When a man is killed, or a battalionis killed, or a regiment is killed, the war goes on, just the same. And if it is possible for you to fight with broken ranks, I'll try tosing for you with a broken heart. "

And so I did, and, although God knows it must have been a feebleeffort, the lads gave me a beautiful reception. I sang my older songsfor them--the songs my own laddie had loved. 

They gave us tea after I had sung for them, with chocolate eclairs asa rare treat! We were surprised to get such fare upon thebattlefield, but it was a welcome surprise. 

We turned back from Bapaume, traveling along another road on thereturn journey. And on the way we met about two hundred Germanprisoners--the first we had seen in any numbers. They were working onthe road, under guard of British soldiers. They looked sleek andwell-fed, and they were not working very hard, certainly. Yet Ithought there was something about their expression like that ofneglected animals. I got out of the car and spoke to an intelligent-looking little chap, perhaps about twenty-five years old--a sergeant. He looked rather suspicious when I spoke to him, but he salutedsmartly, and stood at attention while we talked, and he gave me readyand civil answers. 

"You speak English?" I asked. "Fluently?"

"Yes, sir!"

"How do you like being a prisoner?"

"I don't like it. It's very degrading. "

"Your companions look pretty happy. Any complaints?"

"No, sir! None!"

"What are the Germans fighting for? What do you hope to gain?"

"The freedom of the seas!"

"But you had that before the war broke out!"

"We haven't got it now. "

I laughed at that. 

"Certainly not, " I said. "Give us credit for doing something! But howare you going to get it again?"

"Our submarines will get it for us. "

"Still, " I said, "you must be fighting for something else, too?"

"No, " he said, doggedly. "Just for the freedom of the seas. "

I couldn't resist telling him a bit of news that the censor waskeeping very carefully from his fellow-Germans at home. 

"We sank seven of your submarines last week, " I said. 

He probably didn't believe that. But his face paled a bit, and hislips puckered, and he scowled. Then, as I turned away, he whipped hishand to his forehead in a stiff salute, but I felt that it was notthe most gracious salute I had ever seen! Still, I didn't blame himmuch!

Captain Godfrey meant to show us another village that day. 

"Rather an interesting spot, " he said. "They differ, these Frenchvillages. They're not all alike, by any means. "

Then, before long, he began to look puzzled. And finally he calleda halt. 

"It ought to be right here, " he said. "It was, not so long ago. "

But there was no village! The Hun had passed that way. And thevillage for which Godfrey was seeking had been utterly wiped off theface of the earth! Not a trace of it remained. Where men and womenand little children had lived and worked and played in quiethappiness the abominable desolation that is the work of the Hunhad come. There was nothing to show that they or their villagehad ever been. 

The Hun knows no mercy!

CHAPTER XXVII

There had been, originally, a perfectly definite route for theReverend Harry Lauder, M. P. , Tour--as definite a route as is mappedout for me when I am touring the United States. Our route had calledfor a fairly steady progress from Vimy Ridge to Peronne--likeBapaume, one of the great unreached objectives of the Sommeoffensive, and, again like Bapaume, ruined and abandoned by theGermans in the retreat of the spring of 1917. But we made many sidetrips and gave many and many an unplanned, extemporaneous roadsideconcert, as I have told. 

For all of us it had been a labor of love. I will always believe thatI sang a little better on that tour than I have ever sung before orever shall again, and I am sure, too, that Hogge and Dr. Adam spokemore eloquently to their soldier hearers than they ever did inparliament or church. My wee piano, Tinkle Tom, held out staunchly. He never wavered in tune, though he got some sad jouncings as heclung to the grid of a swift-moving car. As for Johnson, myYorkshireman, he was as good an accompanist before the tour ended asI could ever want, and he took the keenest interest and delight inhis work, from start to finish. 

Captain Godfrey, our manager, must have been proud indeed of the"business" his troupe did. The weather was splendid; the "houses"everywhere were so big that if there had been Standing Room Onlysigns they would have been called into use every day. And his companygot a wonderful reception wherever it showed! He had everything amanager could have to make his heart rejoice. And he did not, likemany managers, have to be continually trying to patch up quarrels inthe company! He had no petty professional jealousies with which tocontend; such things were unknown in our troupe!

All the time while I was singing in France I was elaborating an ideathat had for some time possessed me, and that was coming now todominate me utterly. I was thinking of the maimed soldiers, the boyswho had not died, but had given a leg, or an arm, or their sight tothe cause, and who were doomed to go through the rest of their livesbroken and shattered and incomplete. They were never out of mythoughts. I had seen them before I ever came to France, as I traveledthe length and breadth of the United Kingdom, singing for the men inthe camps and the hospitals, and doing what I could to help in therecruiting. And I used to lie awake of nights, wondering what wouldbecome of those poor broken laddies when the war was over and we wereall setting to work again to rebuild our lives. 

And especially I thought of the brave laddies of my ain Scotland. They must have thought often of their future. They must have wonderedwhat was to become of them, when they had to take up the strugglewith the world anew--no longer on even terms with their mates, buthandicapped by grievous injuries that had come to them in the noblestof ways. I remembered crippled soldiers, victims of other wars, whomI had seen selling papers and matches on street corners, objects ofcharity, almost, to a generation that had forgotten the service tothe country that had put them in the way of having to make theirliving so. And I had made a great resolution that, if I could doaught to prevent it, no man of Scotland who had served in this warshould ever have to seek a livelihood in such a manner. 

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

A man might need a hundred pounds, I thought, or two hundred pounds, to get him started properly again. And I wanted to be able to hand aman what money he might require. I did not want to lend it to him, taking his note or his promise to pay. Nor did I want to give it tohim as charity. I wanted to hand it to him as a freewill offering, asa partial payment of the debt Scotland owed him for what he had donefor her. 

And I thought, too, of men stricken by shell-shock, or paralyzed inthe war--there are pitifully many of both sorts! I did not want themto stay in bare and cold and lonely institutions. I wanted to takethem out of such places, and back to their homes; home to the villageand the glen. I wanted to get them a wheel-chair, with an old, neighborly man or an old neighborly woman, maybe, to take them for anairing in the forenoon, and the afternoon, that they might breathethe good Scots air, and see the wild flowers growing, and hear thesong of the birds. 

That was the plan that had for a long time been taking form in my mind. I had talked it over with some of my friends, and the newspapers hadheard of it, somehow, and printed a few paragraphs about it. It wasstill very much in embryo when I went to France, but, to my surprise, the Scots soldiers nearly always spoke of it when I was talking withthem. They had seen the paragraphs in the papers, and I soon realizedthat it loomed up as a great thing for them. 

"Aye, it's a grand thing you're thinking of, Harry, " they said, againand again. "Now we know we'll no be beggars in the street, now thatwe've got a champion like you, Harry. "

I heard such words as that first from a Highlander at Arras, and fromthat moment I have thought of little else. Many of the laddies toldme that the thought of being killed did not bother them, but thatthey did worry a bit about their future in case they went home maimedand helpless. 

"We're here to stay until there's no more work to do, if it takestwenty years, Harry, " they said. "But it'll be a big relief to knowwe will be cared for if we must go back crippled. "

I set the sum I would have to raise to accomplish the work I had inmind at a million pounds sterling--five million dollars. It may seema great sum to some, but to me, knowing the purpose for which it isto be used, it seems small enough. And my friends agree with me. WhenI returned from France I talked to some Scots friends, and a meetingwas called, in Glasgow, of the St. Andrews Society. I addressed it, and it declared itself in cordial sympathy with the idea. Then I wentto Edinburgh, and down to London, and back north to Manchester. Everywhere my plan was greeted with the greatest enthusiasm, and thereal organization of the fund was begun on September 17 and 18, 1917. 

This fund of mine is known officially as "The Harry Lauder MillionPound Fund for Maimed Men, Scottish Soldiers and Sailors. " It doesnot in any way conflict with nor overlap, any other work alreadybeing done. I made sure of that, because I talked to the PensionMinister, and his colleagues, in London, before I went ahead with myplans, and they fully and warmly approved everything that I plannedto do. 

The Earl of Rosebery, former Prime Minister of Britain, is HonoraryPresident of the Fund, and Lord Balfour of Burleigh is its treasurer. And as I write we have raised an amount well into six figures inpounds sterling. One of the things that made me most willing toundertake my last tour of America was my feeling that I could securethe support and cooperation of the Scottish people in America for myfund better by personal appeals than in any other way. At the end ofevery performance I gave during the tour, I told my audience what Iwas doing and the object of the fund, and, although I addressedmyself chiefly to the Scots, there has been a most generous andtouching response from Americans as well. 

We distributed little plaid-bordered envelopes, in which folk wereinvited to send contributions to the bank in New York that was theAmerican depository. And after each performance Mrs. Lauder stood inthe lobby and sold little envelopes full of stamps, "sticky backs, "as she called them, like the Red Cross seals that have been sold solong in America at Christmas time. She sold them for a quarter, orfor whatever they would bring, and all the money went to the fund. 

I had a novel experience sometimes. Often I would no sooner haveexplained what I was doing than I would feel myself the target of asort of bombardment. At first I thought Germans were shooting at me, but I soon learned that it was money that was being thrown! And everyday my dressing-table would be piled high with checks and moneyorders and paper money sent direct to me instead of to the bank. ButI had to ask the guid folk to cease firing--the money was too apt tobe lost!

Folk of all races gave liberally. I was deeply touched at HotSprings, Arkansas, where the stage hands gave me the money they hadreceived for their work during my engagement. 

CHAPTER XXVIII

I have stopped for a wee digression about my fund. I saw manyinteresting things in France, and dreadful things. And it wasimpressed upon me more and more that the Hun knows no mercy. Thewicked, wanton things he did in France, and that I saw!

There was Mont St. Quentin, one of the very strongest of thepositions out of which the British turned him. There was a chateauthere, a bonnie place. And hard by was a wee cemetery. The Hun hadsmashed its pretty monuments, and he had reached into that sacredsoil with his filthy claws, and dragged out the dead from theirresting-place, and scattered their helpless bones about. 

He ruined Peronne in wanton fury because it was passing from hisgrip. He wrecked its old cathedral, once one of the loveliest sightsin France. He took away the old fleurs-de-lis from the great gates ofPeronne. He stole and carried away the statues that used to stand inthe old square. He left the great statue of St. Peter, still standingin the churchyard, but its thumb was broken off. I found it, as Irummaged about idly in the debris at the statue's foot. 

It was no casual looting that the Huns did. They did their workmethodically, systematically. It was a sight to make the angels weep. 

As I left the ruined cathedral I met a couple of French poilus, andtried to talk with them. But they spoke "very leetle" English, and Ifired all my French words at them in one sentence. 

"Oui, oui, madame, " I said. "Encore pomme du terre. Fini!"

They laughed, but we did no get far with our talk! Not in French. 

"You can't love the Hun much, after this, " I said. 

"Ze Hun? Ze bloody Boche?" cried one of them. "I keel heem all mylife!"

I was glad to quit Peronne. The rape of that lovely church saddenedme more than almost any sight I saw in France. I did not care to lookat it. So I was glad when we motored on to the headquarters of theFourth Army, where I had the honor of meeting one of Britain'sgreatest soldiers, General Sir Henry Rawlinson, who greeted us mostcordially, and invited us to dinner. 

After dinner we drove on toward Amiens. We were swinging back now, toward Boulogne, and were scheduled to sleep that night at Amiens--which the Germans held for a few days, during their first rush towardParis, before the Marne, but did not have time to destroy. 

Adam knew Amiens, and was made welcome, with the rest of us, at anexcellent hotel. Von Kluck had made its headquarters when he swungthat way from Brussels, and it was there he planned the dinner hemeant to eat in Paris with the Kaiser. Von Kluck demanded anindemnity of a million dollars from Amiens to spare its famous oldcathedral. 

It was late when we arrived, but before I slept I called for theboots and ordered a bottle of ginger ale. I tried to get him to tellme about old von Kluck and his stay but he couldn't talk English, andwas busy, anyway, trying to open the bottle without cutting the wire. Adam and Hogge are fond, to this day, of telling how I shouted athim, finally:

"Well, how do you expect to open that bottle when you can't even talkthe English language?"

Next day was Sunday, and we went to church in the cathedral, whichvon Kluck didn't destroy, after all. There were signs of war; thewindows and the fine carved doors were banked with sand bags as ameasure of protection from bombing airplanes. 

I gave my last roadside concert on the road from Amiens to Boulogne. It was at a little place called Ouef, and we had some trouble infinding it and more in pronouncing its name. Some of us called itOff, some Owf! I knew I had heard the name somewhere, and I wasracking my brains to think as Johnson set up our wee piano and Ibegan to sing. Just as I finished my first song a rooster set up aviolent crowing, in competition with me, and I remembered!

"I know where I am!" I cried. "I'm at Egg!"

And that is what Oeuf means, in English!

The soldiers were vastly amused. They were Gordon Highlanders, and Ifound a lot of chaps among them frae far awa' Aberdeen. Not many ofthem are alive to-day! But that day they were a gay lot and a bonnielot. There was a big Highlander who said to me, very gravely:

"Harry, the only good thing I ever saw in a German was a Britishbayonet! If you ever hear anyone at hame talking peace--cut off theirheads! Or send them out to us, and we'll show them. There's a job todo here, and we'll do it. 

"Look!" he said, sweeping his arm as if to include all France. "Lookat yon ruins! How would you like old England or auld Scotland to belooking like that? We're not only going to break and scatter the Hunrule, Harry. If we do no more than that, it will surely be reassembledagain. We're going to destroy it. "

On the way from Oeuf to Boulogne we visited a small, out of the wayhospital, and I sang for the lads there. And I was going around, afterward, talking to the boys on their cots, and came to a youngchap whose head and face were swathed in bandages. 

"How came you to be hurt, lad?" I asked. 

"Well, sir, " he said, "we were attacking one morning. I went over theparapet with the rest, and got to the German trench all right. Iwasn't hurt. And I went down, thirty feet deep, into one of theirdugouts. You wouldn't think men could live so--but, of course, they're not men--they're animals! There was a lighted candle on ashelf, and beside it a fountain pen. It was just an ordinary-lookingpen, and it was fair loot--I thought some chap had meant to write aletter, and forgotten his pen when our attack came. So I slipped itin my pocket. 

"Two days later I was going to write a few lines to my mother andtell her I was all right, so I thought I'd try my new pen. And when Iunscrewed the cap it exploded--and, well, you see me, Harry! It blewhalf of my face away!"

The Hun knows no mercy. 

I was glad to see Boulogne again--the white buildings on the whitehills, and the harbor beyond. Here the itinerary of the ReverendHarry Lauder, M. P. , Tour, came to its formal end. But, since therewere many new arrivals in the hospitals--the population of a baseshifts quickly--we were asked to give a couple more concerts in thehospitals where we had first appeared on French soil. 

A good many thousand Canadians had just come in, so I sang at BaseHospital No. 1, and then gave another and farewell concert at thegreat convalescent camp on the hill. And then we said good-by toCaptain Godfrey, and the chauffeurs, and to Johnson, my accompanist, ready to go back to his regiment now. I told them all I hoped thatwhen I came to France again to sing we could reassemble all theoriginal cast, and I pray that we may!

On Monday we took boat again for Folkestone. The boat was crowdedwith men going home on leave, and I wandered among them. I heard manya tale of heroism and courage, of splendid sacrifice and sufferingnobly borne. Destroyers, as before, circled about us, and there wasno hint of trouble from a Hun submarine. 

On our boat was Lord Dalmeny, a King's Messenger, carrying dispatchesfrom the front. He asked me how I had liked the "show. " It is so thatnearly all British soldiers refer to the war. 

They had earned their rest, those laddies who were going home toBritain. But some of them were half sorry to be going! I talked toone of them. 

"I don't know, Harry, " he said. "I was looking forward to this leavefor a long time. I've been oot twa years. My heart jumped with joy atfirst at the thought of seeing my mother and the auld hame. But nowthat I'm started, and in a fair way to get there, I'm no so happy. You see--every young fellow frae my toon is awa'. I'm the only onegoing back. Many are dead. It won't be the same. I've a mind just tostay on London till my leave is up, and then go back. If I went homemy mother would but burst out greetin', an' I think I could no standthat. "

But, as for me, I was glad, though I was sorry, too, to be goinghome. I wanted to go back again. But I wanted to hurry to my wife, and tell her what I had seen at our boy's grave. And so I did, sosoon as I landed on British ground once more. 

I felt that I was bearing a message to her. A message from our boy. Ifelt--and I still feel--that I could tell her that all was well withhim, and with all the other soldiers of Britain, who sleep, like him, in the land of the bleeding lily. They died for humanity, and Godwill not forget. 

And I think there is something for me to say to all those who are toknow a grief such as I knew. Every mother and father who loves a sonin 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 giveway to grief. Instead, keep your gaze and your faith firmly fixed onthe world beyond, and regard your boy's absence as though he were buton a journey. By keeping your faith you will help to win this war. For if you lose it, the war and your personal self are lost. 

My whole perspective was changed by my visit to the front. Neveragain shall I know those moments of black despair that used to cometo me. In my thoughts I shall never be far away from the littlecemetery hard by the Bapaume road. And life would not be worth theliving for me did I not believe that each day brings me nearer toseeing him again. 

I found a belief among the soldiers in France that was almostuniversal. I found it among all classes of men at the front; amongmen who had, before the war, been regularly religious, alongwell-ordered lines, and among men who had lived just according totheir own lights. Before the war, before the Hun went mad, the youngmen of Britain thought little of death or what might come after death. They were gay and careless, living for to-day. Then war came, and withit death, astride of every minute, every hour. And the young men beganto think of spiritual things and of God. 

Their faces, their deportments, may not have shown the change. But itwas in their hearts. They would not show it. Not they! But I havetalked with hundreds of men along the front. And it is my convictionthat they believe, one and all, that if they fall in battle they onlypass on to another. And what a comforting belief that is!

"It is that belief that makes us indifferent to danger and to death, "a soldier said to me. "We fight in a righteous cause and a holy war. God is not going to let everything end for us just because the mortallife quits the shell we call the body. You may be sure of that. "

And I am sure of it, indeed!