I felt as if I were in a dream.  The people were unreal—­stretching away from me in long, sloping rows, their white faces staring at me from the darkness beyond the great lights.  And there was a little ripple that ran through them as I went out, as if a great many people, all at the same moment, had caught their breath.

I stood and faced them, and the music sounded in my ears.  For just a moment they were still.  And then they were shaken by a mighty roar.  They cheered and cheered and cheered.  They stood up and waved to me.  I could hear their voices rising, and cries coming to me, with my own name among them.

“Bravo, Harry!” I heard them call.  And then there were more cheers, and a great clapping of hands.  And I have been told that everywhere in that great audience men and women were crying, and that the tears were rolling down their cheeks without ever an attempt by any of them to hide them or to check them.  It was the most wonderful and the most beautiful demonstration I have ever seen, in all the years that I have been upon the stage.  Many and many a time audiences have been good to me.  They have clapped me and they have cheered me, but never has an audience treated me as that one did.  I had to use every bit of strength and courage that I had to keep from breaking down.

To this day I do not know how I got through with that first song that night.  I do not even know whether I really sang it.  But I think that, somehow, blindly, without knowing what I was doing, I did get through; I did sing it to the end.  Habit, the way that I was used to it, I suppose, helped me to carry on.  And when I left the stage the whole company, it seemed to me, was waiting for me.  They were crying and laughing, hysterically, and they crowded around me, and kissed me, and hugged me, and wrung my hand.

It seemed that the worst of my ordeal was over.  But in the last act I had to face another test.

There was a song for me in that last act that was the great song in London that season.  I have sung it all over America since then “The Laddies Who Fought and Won.”  It has been successful everywhere—­that song has been one of the most popular I have ever sung.  But it was a cruel song for me to sing that night!

It was the climax of the last act and of the whole piece.  In “Three Cheers” soldiers were brought on each night to be on the stage behind me when I sang that song.  They were from the battalion of the Scots Guards in London, and they were real soldiers, in uniform.  Different men were used each night, and the money that was paid to the Tommies for their work went into the company fund of the men who appeared, and helped to provide them with comforts and luxuries.  And the war office was glad of the arrangement, too, for it was a great song to stimulate recruiting.

There were two lines in the refrain that I shall never forget.  And it was when I came to those two lines that night that I did, indeed, break down.  Here they are: