; there's little can come that willna
affect you, soon or late.

We maun all stand together, especially we plain men and women. It was
sae that we won the war--and it is sae that we can win the peace noo
that it's come again, and mak' it a peace sae gude for a' the world
that it can never be broken again by war. There'd be no wars i' the
world if peace were sae gude that all men were content. It's
discontented men who stir up trouble in the world, and sae mak' wars
possible.

We talk much, in these days, of classes. There's a phrase it sickens
me tae hear--class consciousness. It's ane way of setting the man who
works wi' his hands against him who works wi' his brain. It's no the
way a man works that ought to count--it's that he works at all. Both
sorts of work are needful; we canna get along without either sort.

Is no humanity a greater thing than any class? We are all human. We
maun all be born, and we maun all die in the end. That much we ken,
and there's nae sae much more we can be siccar of. And I've often
thought that the trouble with most of our hatreds an' our envy and
malice is that folk do not know one another well enough. There's fewer
quarrels among folk that speak the same tongue. Britain and America
dwelt at peace for mair than a hundred years before they took the
field together against a common enemy. America and Canada stand side
by side--a great strong nation and a small one. There's no fort
between them; there are no fichting ships on the great lakes, ready to
loose death and destruction.

It's easier to have a good understanding when different peoples speak
the same language. But there's a hint o' the way things must be done,
I'm thinking, in the future. Britain and France used tae have their
quarrels. They spoke different tongues. But gradually they built up a
gude understanding of one another, and where's the man in either
country the noo that wadna laugh at you if you said there was danger
they micht gae tae war?

It's harder, it may be, to promote a gude understanding when there's a
different language for a barrier. But walls can be climbed, and
there's more than the ane way of passing them. We've had a great
lesson in that respect in the war. It's the first time that ever a
coalition of nations held together. Germany and Austria spoke one
language. But we others, with a dozen tongues or mair to separate us,
were forged into one mighty confederation by our peril and our
consciousness of ri