ak' if we were to
win the war.

And then, before we'd done, we were doing things we'd never ha dreamed
it was possible for us tae do before the need was upon us. We in
Britain had to do without things we'd regarded as necessities and we
throve without them. For the sake of the wee bairns we went without
milk for our tea and coffee, and scarce minded it. Aye, in a thousand
little ways that had not seemed to us to matter at all we were
deprived and harried and hounded.

Noo, what I'm thinking sae often is just this. We had a great problem
to meet in the winning of the war. We solved it, though it was greater
than any of those we were wont to call insoluble. Are there no
problems left? There's the slum. There's the sort of poverty that
afflicts a man who's willing tae work and can nicht find work enough
tae do tae keep himself and his family alive and clad. There's all
sorts of preventible disease. We used to shrug our shoulders and speak
of such things as the act of God. But I'll no believe they're acts of
God. He doesna do things in such a fashion. They're acts of man, and
it's for man to mak' them richt and end what's wrong wi' the world he
dwells in.

They used to shrug their shoulders in Russia, did those who had enough
to eat and a warm, decent hoose tae live in. They'd hear of the
sufferings of the puir, and they'd talk of the act of God, and how
he'd ordered it that i' this world there maun always be some
suffering.

And see what's come o' that there! The wrong sort of man has set to
work to mak' a wrong thing richt, and he's made it worse than it ever
was. But how was it he had the chance to sway the puir ignorant bodies
in Russia? How was it that those who kenned a better way were not at
work long agane? Ha' they anyone but themselves to blame that Trotzky
and the others had the chance to persuade the Russian people tae let
them ha' power for a little while'?

Oh, we'll no come to anything like that in Britain and America. I've
sma' patience wi' those that talk as if the Bolsheviki would be ruling
us come the morrow. We're no that sort o' folk, we Britons and
Americans. We've settled our troubles our ain way these twa thousand
years, and we'll e'en do sae again. But we maun recognize that there
are things we maun do tae mak' the lot of the man that's underneath a
happier and a better one.

He maun help, tae. He maun realize that there's a chance for him. I'm
haulding mysel' as one proof of that--it's why