years. Applause has always
been sweet to me. It is to any artist, and when one tells you it is
not you may set it down in your hearts that he or she is telling less
than the truth. It is the breath of life to us to know that folks are
pleased by what we do for them. Why else would we go on about our
tasks? I have had much applause. I have had many honors. I have told
you about that great and overwhelming reception that greeted me when
I sailed into Sydney Harbor. In Britain, in America, I have had
greetings that have brought tears into my eye and such a lump into
my throat that until it had gone down I could not sing or say a word
of thanks.

But never has applause sounded so sweet to me as it did along those
dusty roads in France, with the poppies gleaming red and the
cornflowers blue through the yellow fields of grain beside the roads!
They cheered me, do you ken--those tired and dusty heroes of Britain
along the French roads! They cheered as they squatted down in a
circle about us, me in my kilt, and Johnson tinkling away as if his
very life depended upon it, at his wee piano! Ah, those wonderful,
wonderful soldiers! The tears come into my eyes, and my heart is sore
and heavy within me when I think that mine was the last voice many of
them ever heard lifted in song! They were on their way to the
trenches, so many of those laddies who stopped for a song along the
road. And when men are going into the trenches they know, and all who
see them passing know, that some there are who will never come out.

Despite all the interruptions, though, it was not much after noon
when we reached Blangy. Here, in that suburb of Arras, were the
headquarters of the Ninth Division, and as I stepped out of the car I
thrilled to the knowledge that I was treading ground forever to be
famous as the starting-point of the Highland Brigade in the attack of
April 9, 1917.

And now I saw Arras, and, for the first time, a town that had been
systematically and ruthlessly shelled. There are no words in any
tongue I know to give you a fitting picture of the devastation of
Arras. "Awful" is a puny word, a thin one, a feeble one. I pick
impotently at the cover-lid of my imagination when I try to frame
language to make you understand what it was I saw when I came to
Arras on that bright June day.

I think the old city of Arras should never be rebuilt. I doubt if it
can be rebuilt, indeed. But I think that, whether or no, a golden
fence should be