thought of trouble brewing. But other men, in Europe,
thousands of miles way, were laying plans that meant death and the
loss of hands and een for those braw laddies o' Australia and New
Zealand that I saw--those we came to ken sae weel as the gallant
Anzacs.

It makes you realize, seeing countries so far awa' frae a' the war,
and yet suffering so there from, how dependent we all are upon one
another. Distance makes no matter; differences make none. We cannot
escape the consequences of what others do. And so, can we no be
thinking sometimes, before we act, doing something that we think
concerns only ourselves, of all those who micht suffer for what we
did?

I maun think of labor when I think of the Anzacs. Yon is a country
different frae any I have known. There's no landed aristocracy in the
land of the Anzac. Yon's a country where all set out on even terms.
That's truer there, by far, than in America, even. It's a young
country and a new country, still, but it's grown up fast. It has the
strength and the cities of an old country, but it has a freshness of
its own.

And there labor rules the roost. It's one of the few places in the
world where a government of labor has been instituted. And yet, I'm
wondering the noo if those labor leaders in Australia have reckoned on
one or twa things I think of? They're a' for the richts of labor--and
so am I. I'd be a fine one, with the memory I have of unfairness and
exploitation of the miners in the coal pits at Hamilton, did I not
agree that the laboring man must be bound together with his fellows to
gain justice and fair treatment from his employers.

But there's a richt way and a wrong way to do all things. And there
was a wrong way that labor used, sometimes, during the war, to gain
its ends. There was sympathy for all that British labor did among
laboring men everywhere, I'm told--in Australia, too. But let's bide a
wee and see if labor didn't maybe, mak' some mistakes that it may be
threatening to mak' again noo that peace has come.

Here's what I'm afraid of. Labor used threats in the war. If the
government did not do thus and so there'd be a strike. That was
meanin' that guns would be lacking, or shell, or rifles, or hand
grenades, or what not in the way of munitions, on the Western front.
But the threat was sae vital that it won, tae often I'm no saying it
was used every time. Nor am I saying labor did not have a richt to
what it asked. It's just this--canna we get