Here’s what there is for us tae do.  It’s tae see that the change is in the richt direction.  We canna stand still the noo.  We’ll move.  We’ll move one way or the other—­forward or back.

And I say we dare not move back.  We dare not, because of the graves that have been filled in France and Gallipoli and dear knows where beside in these last five years.  We maun move forward.  They’ve left sons behind them, many of the laddies that died to save us.  Aye, there’s weans in Britain and America, and in many another land, that will ne’er know a faither.

We owe something to those weans whose faithers deed for this world’s salvation.  We owe it to them and to their faithers tae see that they have a better world to grow up in than we and their faithers knew.  It can be a better world.  It can be a bonnier world than any of us have ever dreamed of.  Dare I say that, ye’ll be asking me, wi’ the tears of the widow and the orphan still flowing fresh, wi’ the groans of those that ha’ suffered still i’ our ears?

Aye, I dare say it.  And I’ll be proving it, tae, if ye’ll ha’ patience wi’ me.  For it’s in your heart and mine that we’ll find the makings of the bonnier world I can see, for a’ the pain.

Let’s stop together and think a bit.  We were happy, many of us, in yon days before the war.  Our loved yins were wi’ us.  There was peace i’ a’ the world.  We had no thought that any wind could come blowing frae ootside ourselves that would cast down the hoose of our happiness.  Wasna that sae?  Weel, what was the result?

I think we were selfish folk, many, too many, of us.  We had no thought, or too little, for others.  We were so used to a’ we had and were in the habit of enjoying that we forgot that we owed much of what we had to others.  We were becoming a very fierce sort of individualists.  Our life was to ourselves.  We were self-sufficient.  One of the prime articles of our creed was Cain’s auld question: 

“Am I my brother’s keeper?”

We answered that question wi’ a ringing “No!” The day was enow for the day.  We’d but to gae aboot our business, and eat and drink, and maybe be merry.  Oh, aye—­I ken fine it was sae wi’ me.  Did I have charity, Weel, it may be that the wife and I did our wee bit tae be helping some that was less fortunate than ourselves.  But here I’ll be admitting why I did that.  It was for my ain selfish satisfaction and pleasure.  It was for the sake of the glow of gude feeling, the warmth o’ heart, that came wi’ the deed.

And in a’ the affairs of life, it seems to me, we human folk were the same.  We took too little thought of God.  Religion was a failing force in the world.  Hame ties were loosening; we’d no the appreciation of what hame meant that our faithers had had.  Not all of us, maybe, but too many.  And a’ the time, God help us, we were like those folk that dwell in their wee hooses on the slopes of Vesuvius—­puir folk and wee hooses that may be swept awa’ any day by an eruption of the volcano.