ught
us to be good and useful? Maybe we wull. Change is life, and all
living things maun change, just as a man's whole body is changed in
every seven years, they tell us. But change that is healthy is
gradual, too.

Here's a thing I've had tae tak' note of. I went aboot a great deal
during the war, in Britain and in America. I was in Australia and New
Zealand, too, but it was in Britain and America that I saw most. There
were, in both lands, pro-Germans. Some were honest; they were wrang,
and I thocht them wicked, but I could respect them, in a fashion, so
lang as they came oot and said what was in their minds, and took the
consequences. They'd be interned, or put safely oot o' the way. But
there were others that skulked and hid, and tried to stab the laddies
who were doing the fichtin' in the back. They'd talk o' pacifism, and
they'd be conscientious objectors, who had never been sair troubled by
their conscience before.

Noo, it's those same folk, those who helped the Hun during the war by
talking of the need of peace at any price, who said that any peace was
better than any war, who are maist anxious noo that we should let the
Bolsheviks frae Russia show us how to govern ourselves. I'm a
suspicious man, it may be. But I cannot help thinking that those who
were enemies of their countries during the war should not be taken
very seriously now when they proclaim themselves as the only true
patriots.

They talk of internationalism, and of the common interests of the
proletariat against capitalism. But of what use is internationalism
unless all the nations of the world are of the same mind? How shall it
be safe for some nations to guide themselves by these fine sounding
principles when others are but lying in wait to attack them when they
are unready? I believe in peace. I believe the laddies who fought in
France and in the other battlegrounds of this war won peace for
humanity. But they began the work; it is for us who are left to finish
it.

And we canna finish it by talk. There must be deeds as weel as words.
And what I'm thinking more and more is that those who did not do their
part in these last years ha' small call to ask to be heard now.
There'd be no state for them to talk o' sae glibly noo had it no been
for those who put on uniforms and found the siller for a' the war
loans that had to be raised, and to pay the taxes.

Aye, and when you speak o' taxes, there's another thing comes to mind.
These folk who h