This was a Scots division, I was glad to find.  I heard good Scots talk all around me when I arrived, and it was Scottish hospitality, mingled with French, that awaited us.  I know no finer combination, nor one more warming to the cockles of a man’s heart.

Here there was luxury, compared to what I had seen that day.  As Godfrey had warned me, the idea of resting that the troops had was a bit more strenuous than mine would be.  There was no lying and lolling about.  Hot though the weather was a deal of football was played, and there were games of one sort and another going on nearly all the time when the men were off duty.

This division, I learned, had seen some of the hardest and bloodiest fighting of the whole war.  They had been through the great offensive that had pivoted on Arras, and had been sorely knocked about.  They had well earned such rest as was coming to them now, and they were getting ready, in the most cheerful way you can imagine, for their next tour of duty in the trenches.  They knew about how much time they would have, and they made the best use they could of it.

New drafts were coming out daily from home to fill up their sadly depleted ranks.  The new men were quickly drawn in and assimilated into organizations that had been reduced to mere skeletons.  New officers were getting acquainted with their men; that wonderful thing that is called esprit de corps was being made all around me.  It is a great sight to watch it in the making; it helps you to understand the victories our laddies have won.

I was glad to see the kilted men of the Scots regiments all about me.  It was them, after all, that I had come to see.  I wanted to talk to them, and see them here, in France.  I had seen them at hame, flocking to the recruiting offices.  I had seen them in their training camps.  But this was different.  I love all the soldiers of the Empire, but it is natural, is it no, that my warmest feeling should be for the laddies who wear the kilt.

They were the most cheerful souls, as I saw them when we reached their rest camp, that you could imagine.  They were laughing and joking all about us, and when they heard that the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour had arrived they crowded about us to see.  They wanted to make sure that I was there, and I was greeted in all sorts of dialect that sounded enough, I’ll be bound, to Godfrey and some of the rest of our party.  There were even men who spoke to me in the Gaelic.

I saw a good deal, afterward, of these Scots troops.  My, how hard they did work while they rested!  And what chances they took of broken bones and bruises in their play!  Ye would think, would ye no, that they had enough of that in the trenches, where they got lumps and bruises and sorer hurts in the run of duty?  But no.  So soon as they came back to their rest billets they must begin to play by knocking the skin and the hair off one another at sports of various sorts, of which football was among the mildest, that are not by any means to be recommended to those of a delicate fiber.