or in America there was conscription frae the first.
In America they were wise in Washington at the verra beginning. They
knew the history of the war in Britain, and they were resolved to
profit by oor mistakes.

But what was needed, and sair needed, in America, was to mak' people
who were sae far awa' frae the spectacle o' war as the Hun waged it
understand what it meant. I'd been in France when I came back to
America in the autumn o' 1917. My boy was in France still; I'd knelt
beside his grave, hard by the Bapaume road. I'd seen the wilderness of
that 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' the
other places.

I told what I'd seen. I told the way the Hun worked. And I spoke for
the Liberty Loans and the other drives they were making to raise money
in America--the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., the Salvation Army, the
Knights of Columbus, and a score of others. I knew what it was like,
over yonder in France, and I could tell American faithers and mithers
what their boys maun see and do when the great transports took them
oversea.

It was for me, to whom folk would listen, tae tell the truth as I'd
seen it. It was no propaganda I was engaged in--there was nae need o'
propaganda. The truth was enow. Whiles, I'll be telling you, I found
trouble. There were places where folk of German blood forgot they'd
come to America to be free of kaisers and junkers. They stood by their
old country, foul as her deeds were. They threatened me, more than
once; they were angry enow at me to ha' done me a mischief had they
dared. But they dared not, and never a voice was raised against me
publicly--in a theatre or a hall where I spoke, I mean.

I went clear across America and back in that long tour. When I came
back it was just as the Germans began their last drive. Ye'll be
minding hoo black things looked for a while, when they broke our
British line, or bent it back, rather, where the Fifth Army kept the
watch? Mind you, I'd been over all that country our armies had
reclaimed frae the Hun in the long Battle o' the Somme. My boy John,
the wean I'd seen grow frae a nursling in his mither's arms, had focht
in that battle.

He'd been wounded, and come hame tae his mither to be nursed back to
health. She'd done that, and she'd blessed him, and kissed him gude
bye, and he'd gone oot there again. And--that time, he stayed. There's
a few words I can s