ing a large coasting ship. People
informed him, with an almost evangelical anxiety as to his commercial
salvation, that he was a lunatic. But the big ship was a success. He
built more and bigger. Then, in 1896 he said to himself, "Why shouldn't
steam be used in the coasting trade?" and he went into steam. Again
there were inquiries after his mental health, but the steamer flourished
like the big sailing ship. At the beginning of what the curate called
"this so-called twentieth century" the firm of Andrew Weir and Co. flew
its flag in all the ports under heaven, and controlled the largest fleet
of sailing ships in the world.

There is this fact to be noticed in particular. Mr. Andrew Weir's
inquisitive mind had not merely mastered the grammar of shipowning but
had crammed the cells of his brain with the whole encyclopaedia of
commercial geography. He knew each season what the least of the islands
of the world was producing, and the crops, manufactures, and financial
condition of every country across the sea. He knew, also, the way in
which the various nations conducted the business of transport. From his
office in Glasgow he could see the whole vast labours of industrious and
mercantile man, that Brobdingnagian ant of this revolving globe, merely
by closing his eyes. The map of the world's commerce was cinematographed
upon his brain.

One thing more remains to be said. Mr. Andrew Weir inherited the moral
traditions of Scotch industry. He grew rich, but not ostentatious. His
increasing fortune went back and back into trade. He never dreamed
either of cutting a figure in plutocratic society or making himself a
public character. A quiet, rather shy, and not often articulate person,
he lived a frugal life, loving his business because it occupied all his
time and satisfied nearly every curiosity of his inquiring mind.

War came, and Mr. Weir was busier than ever with his ships. Not until
1917 did it occur to the Government that the work of buying supplies for
its gigantic armies was something only to be mastered by a man of
business. The nation may be grateful to Mr. Lloyd George for having
discovered in Glasgow perhaps the one man in the British Isles who knew
everything there was to know about commercial geography.

Mr. Andrew Weir entered the War Office in March, 1917, as Surveyor
General of Supply. The position was not merely difficult in its nature,
but difficult in its circumstances. Soldiers are jealous animals, and