Here were free peoples, not held, not bound, free to choose their way.  Britain could not make their sons come to her aid.  If they came they must come freely, joyously, knowing that it was a right cause, a holy cause, a good cause, that called them.  I think of the way they came—­of the way I saw them rising to the summons, in New Zealand, in Australia, later in Canada.  Aye, and I saw more—­I saw Americans slipping across the border, putting on Britain’s khaki there in Canada, because they knew that it was the fight of humanity, of freedom, that they were entering.  And that, too, gave me comfort later in dark times, for it made me know that when the right time came America would take her place beside old Britain and brave France.

New Zealand is a bonnie land.  It made me think, sometimes, of the Hielands of Scotland.  A bonnie land, and braw are its people.  They made me happy there, and they made much of me.

At Christchurch they did a strange thing.  They were selling off, at auction, a Union Jack—­the flag of Britain.  Such a thing had never been done before, or thought of.  But here was a reason and a good one.  Money was needed for the laddies who were going—­needed for all sorts of things.  To buy them small comforts, and tobacco, and such things as the government might not be supplying them.  And so they asked me to be their auctioneer.

I played a fine trick upon them there in Christchurch.  But I was not ashamed of myself, and I think they have forgi’en me—­those good bodies at Christchurch!

Here was the way of it.  I was auctioneer, you ken—­but that was not enough to keep me from bidding myself.  And so I worked them up and on—­and then I bid in the flag for myself for a hundred pounds—­five hundred dollars of American money.

I had my doots about how they’d be taking it to have a stranger carry their flag away.  And so I bided a wee.  I stayed that night in Christchurch, and was to stay longer.  I could wait.  Above yon town of Christchurch stretch the Merino Hills.  On them graze sheep by the thousand—­and it is from those sheep that the true Merino wool comes.  And in the gutters of Christchurch there flows, all day long, a stream of water as clear and pure as ever you might hope to see.  And it should be so, for it is from artesian wells that it is pumped.

Aweel, I bided that night and by next day they were murmuring in the town, and their murmurs came to me.  They thought it wasna richt for a Scotsman to be carrying off their flag—­though he’d bought it and paid for it.  And so at last they came to me, and wanted to be buying back the flag.  And I was agreeable.

“Aye-I’ll sell it back to ye!” I told them.  “But at a price, ye ken—­ at a price!  Pay me twice what I paid for it and it shall be yours!”

There was a Scots bargain for you!  They must have thought me mean and grasping that day.  But out they went.  They worked for the money.  It was but just a month after war had been declared, and money was still scarce and shy of peeping out and showing itself.  But, bit by bit, they got the siller.  A shilling at a time they raised, by subscription.  But they got it all, and brought it to me, smiling the while.