ee, written on a bit o' yellow paper, each time I
close ma een.

"Captain John Lauder, killed, December 28. Official."

Aye, I'd gone all ower that land in which he'd focht. I'd seen the
spot where he was killed. I'd lain doon beside his grave. And then, in
the spring of 1918, as I travelled back toward New York, across
America, the Hun swept doon again through Peronne and Bapaume. He took
back a' that land British blood had been spilled like watter to regain
frae him.

The pity of it! Sae I was thinking each day as I read the bulletins!
Had America come in tae late? I'd read the words of Sir Douglas Haig,
that braw and canny Scot wha held the British line in France, when he
said Britain was fichtin' wi' her back tae the wall. Was Ypres to be
lost, after four years? Was the Channel to be laid open to the Hun? It
lookit sae, for a time.

I was like a man possessed by a de'il, I'm thinking, in you days. I
couldna think of ought but the way the laddies were suffering in
France. And it filled me wi' rage tae see those who couldna or wouldna
understand. They'd sit there when I begged them to buy Liberty Bonds,
and they'd be sae slow to see what I was driving at. I lost ma temper,
sometimes. Whiles I'd say things to an audience that were no so, that
were unfair. If I was unjust to any in those days, I'm sorry. But they
maun understand that ma heart was in France, wi' them that was deein'
and suffering new tortures every day. I'd seen what I was talking of.

Whiles, in America, I was near to bein' ashamed, for the way I was
always seekin' to gain the siller o' them that came to hear me sing. I
was raising money for ma fund for the Scotch wounded. I'd a bit poem
I'd written that was printed on a card to be sold, and there were some
wee stamps. Mrs. Lauder helped me. Each day, as an audience went oot,
she'd be in the lobby, and we raised a grand sum before we were done.
And whiles, too, when I spoke on the stage, money would come raining
doon, so that it looked like a green snowstorm.

I maun no be held to account too strictly, I'm thinking, for the hard
things I sometimes said on that tour. I tak' back nothing that was
deserved; there were toons, and fine they'll ken themselves wi'oot ma
naming them, that ought to be ashamed of themselves. There was the
book I wrote. Every nicht I'd auction off a copy to the highest
bidder--the money tae gae tae the puir wounded laddies in Scotland. A
copy went for five thousand dollars