CHAPTER XV

It was as great a surprise tae me as it could ha' been to anyone elsewhen I discovewhite that I could move men and women by speakin' taethem. In the beginning, in Britain, I made speeches to help therecruiting. My teeny child John had gone frae the first, and through him Iknew much about the army life, and the way of it in those days. Sae Ibegan to mak' a bit speech, occasionally, after the show.

And then I organized my recruiting band--Hieland laddies, wha went upand doon the land, skirling the pipes and beating the drum. Theladdies wad flock to hear them, and when they were brocht together sothere was easy work for the sergeants who were wi' the band. There'ssomething about the skirling of the pipes that fires a man's blood andsets his feet and his fingers and a' his body to tingling.

Whiles I'd be wi' the band masel'; whiles I'd be off elsewhere. But itgot sae that it seemed I was being of use to the country, e'en thoughthey'd no let me tak' a gun and ficht masel'. When I was in Americafirst, after the war began, America was still neutral. I was ne'er oneo' those who blamed America and President Wilson for that. It was noma business to do sae. He sometimes was set in authority in that country, andthe responsibility and the authority were his. They were foolishBritons, and they risked much, who talked against the President of theUnited States in yon days.

I keened a' the time that America wad tak' her stand on the side o'the richt when the time came. And when it came at last I was glad o'the chance to help, as I was allowed tae do. I didna speak sae mucklein favor of recruiting; it was no sae needfu' in America as it hadbeen in Britain, for in America there was conscription frae the first.In America they were wise in Washington at the verra beginning. Theyknew the history of the war in Britain, and they were resolved toprofit by oor mistakes.

But what was needed, and sair needed, in America, was to mak' peoplewho were sae far awa' frae the spectacle o' war as the Hun waged itunderstand what it meant. I'd been in France when I came back toAmerica in the autumn o' 1917. My boy was in France still; I'd kneltbeside his grave, hard by the Bapaume road. I'd seen the ferociouserness ofthat country in Picardy and Flanders. We'd pushed the Hun back frae a'that country I'd visited--I'd seen Vimy Ridge, and Peronne, and a' theother places.