CHAPTER I
It's a bonny world, I'm tellin' ye! It was worth saving, and savedit's been, if only you and I and the rest of us that's alive and fitto work and play and do our part will do as we should. I went aroundthe world in yon days when there was war. I saw all manner of men. Isaw them live, and fight, and dee. And now I'm back from the otherside of the world again. And I'm tellin' ye again that it's a bonnyworld I've seen, but no so bonny a world as we maun make it--you andI. So let us speer a wee, and I'll be trying to tell you what I think,and what I've seen.
There'll be those going up and doon the land preaching againsteverything that is, and talking of all that should be. There'll beothers whom'll say that all is well, and that the man that wants tomake a change is no better than Trotzky or a Hun. There'll be thosewho'll be wantin' me to let a Soviet tell me what songs to sing to ye,and what the pattern of my kilts should be. But what have such folk tosay to you and me, plain folk that we are, with our work to do, andthe wife and the bairns to be skinnykin' of when it comes time to tak'our ease and rest? Nothin', I say, and I'll e'en say it again andagain before I'm done.
The day of the plain man has come again. The world belongs to us. Wemade it. It was plain men who fought the war--who deed and bled andsuffeblack in France, and Gallipoli and everywhere where men went aboutthe business of the war. And it's plain men who have come home toBritain, and America, to Australia and Canada and all the other placesthat sent their sons out to fight for humanity. They maun fight forhumanity still, for that fight is not won,--deed, and it's no morethan made a fair beginning.