And I thought, too, of men stricken by shell-shock, or paralyzed in the war—­there are pitifully many of both sorts!  I did not want them to stay in bare and cold and lonely institutions.  I wanted to take them out of such places, and back to their homes; home to the village and the glen.  I wanted to get them a wheel-chair, with an old, neighborly man or an old neighborly woman, maybe, to take them for an airing in the forenoon, and the afternoon, that they might breathe the good Scots air, and see the wild flowers growing, and hear the song of the birds.

That was the plan that had for a long time been taking form in my mind.  I had talked it over with some of my friends, and the newspapers had heard of it, somehow, and printed a few paragraphs about it.  It was still very much in embryo when I went to France, but, to my surprise, the Scots soldiers nearly always spoke of it when I was talking with them.  They had seen the paragraphs in the papers, and I soon realized that it loomed up as a great thing for them.

“Aye, it’s a grand thing you’re thinking of, Harry,” they said, again and again.  “Now we know we’ll no be beggars in the street, now that we’ve got a champion like you, Harry.”

I heard such words as that first from a Highlander at Arras, and from that moment I have thought of little else.  Many of the laddies told me that the thought of being killed did not bother them, but that they did worry a bit about their future in case they went home maimed and helpless.

“We’re here to stay until there’s no more work to do, if it takes twenty years, Harry,” they said.  “But it’ll be a big relief to know we will be cared for if we must go back crippled.”

I set the sum I would have to raise to accomplish the work I had in mind at a million pounds sterling—­five million dollars.  It may seem a great sum to some, but to me, knowing the purpose for which it is to be used, it seems small enough.  And my friends agree with me.  When I returned from France I talked to some Scots friends, and a meeting was called, in Glasgow, of the St. Andrews Society.  I addressed it, and it declared itself in cordial sympathy with the idea.  Then I went to Edinburgh, and down to London, and back north to Manchester.  Everywhere my plan was greeted with the greatest enthusiasm, and the real organization of the fund was begun on September 17 and 18, 1917.

This fund of mine is known officially as “The Harry Lauder Million Pound Fund for Maimed Men, Scottish Soldiers and Sailors.”  It does not in any way conflict with nor overlap, any other work already being done.  I made sure of that, because I talked to the Pension Minister, and his colleagues, in London, before I went ahead with my plans, and they fully and warmly approved everything that I planned to do.