tes. Our route had called
for a fairly steady progress from Vimy Ridge to Peronne--like
Bapaume, one of the great unreached objectives of the Somme
offensive, and, again like Bapaume, ruined and abandoned by the
Germans in the retreat of the spring of 1917. But we made many side
trips and gave many and many an unplanned, extemporaneous roadside
concert, as I have told.

For all of us it had been a labor of love. I will always believe that
I sang a little better on that tour than I have ever sung before or
ever shall again, and I am sure, too, that Hogge and Dr. Adam spoke
more eloquently to their soldier hearers than they ever did in
parliament or church. My wee piano, Tinkle Tom, held out staunchly.
He never wavered in tune, though he got some sad jouncings as he
clung to the grid of a swift-moving car. As for Johnson, my
Yorkshireman, he was as good an accompanist before the tour ended as
I could ever want, and he took the keenest interest and delight in
his 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 Only
signs they would have been called into use every day. And his company
got a wonderful reception wherever it showed! He had everything a
manager could have to make his heart rejoice. And he did not, like
many managers, have to be continually trying to patch up quarrels in
the company! He had no petty professional jealousies with which to
contend; such things were unknown in our troupe!

All the time while I was singing in France I was elaborating an idea
that had for some time possessed me, and that was coming now to
dominate me utterly. I was thinking of the maimed soldiers, the boys
who had not died, but had given a leg, or an arm, or their sight to
the cause, and who were doomed to go through the rest of their lives
broken and shattered and incomplete. They were never out of my
thoughts. I had seen them before I ever came to France, as I traveled
the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, singing for the men in
the camps and the hospitals, and doing what I could to help in the
recruiting. And I used to lie awake of nights, wondering what would
become of those poor broken laddies when the war was over and we were
all setting to work again to rebuild our lives.

And especially I thought of the brave laddies of my ain Scotland.
They mu