other times, after other wars than this one. We've let the men who
fought for us, and were wounded, depend on charity. And then, we've
forgotten the way they served us, and we've become impatient with
them. We've seen them begging, almost, in the street. And we've seen
that because sentimentalists, in the beginning, when there was still
time and chance to give them real help, said it was a black shame to
ask such men to do anything in return for what was given to them.

"A grateful country must care for our heroes," they'd say. "What--
teach a man blinded in his country's service a trade that he can work
at without his sight? Never! Give him money enough to keep him!"

And then, as time goes on, they forget his service--and he becomes
just another blind beggar!

Is it no better to do as my Fund does? Through it the blind man learns
to read. He learns to do something useful--something that will enable
him to _earn_ his living. He gets all the help he needs while he is
learning, and, maybe, an allowance, for a while, after he has learnt
his new trade. But he maun always be working to help himself.

I've talked to hundreds and hundreds of such laddies--blind and
maimed. And they all feel the same way. They know they need help, and
they feel they've earned it. But it's help they want not coddling and
alms. They're ashamed of those that don't understand them better than
the folk who talk of being ashamed to make them work.

CHAPTER XXVI

In all the talk and thought about what's to be, noo that the war's
over with and done, I hear a muckle of different opinions aboot what
the women wull be doing. They're telling me that women wull ne'er be
the same again; that the war has changed them for good--or for bad!--
and that they'll stay the way the war has made them.

Weel, noo, let's be talking that over, and thinking about it a wee
bit. It's true that with the war taking the men richt and left, women
were called on to do new things; things they'd ne'er thought about
before 1914. In Britain it was when the shells ran short that we first
saw women going to work in great numbers. It was only richt that they
should. The munitions works were there; the laddies across the Channel
had to have guns and shells. And there were not men enough left in
Britain to mak' all that were needed.

I ken fine that all that has brocht aboot a great change. When a
lassie's grown used to the feel of her ain siller, that's she's earned
by t