Well, I agreed to appear.  Some of my friends were afraid it would be what they called a frost.  But when the time came for me to make my way to the platform the hall was filled.  Aye—­that mighty hall!  I dinna ken how many thousand were there, but there were more than any theatre in the world could hold—­more than any two theatres, I’m thinking.  And they didna come to hear me sing or crack a joke.  They came to hear me talk—­to hear me preach, if you’ll be using that same word that my wife is sae fond of teasing me with.

I’m thinking I did preach to them, maybe.  I told them things aboot the war they’d no heard before, nor thought of, maybe, as seriously as they micht.  I made them see the part they, each one of them, man, and woman, and child, had to play.  I talked of their president, and of the way he needed them to be upholding him, as their fathers and mothers had upheld President Lincoln.

And they rose to me—­aye, they cheered me until the tears stood in my een, and my voice was so choked that I could no go on for a space.  So that’s what I’m meaning when I say it’s no all my fault if I preach, sometimes, on the stage, or when I’m writing in a book.  It’s true, too, I’m thinking, that I’m no a real author.  For when I sit me doon to write a book I just feel that I maun talk wi’ some who canna be wi’ me to hear my voice, and I write as I talk.  They’ll be telling me, perhaps, that that’s no the way to write a book, but it’s the only way I ken.

Oh, I’ve had arguments aboot a’ this!  Arguments, and to spare!  They’ll come tae me, good friends, good advisers.  They’ll be worried when I’m in some place where there’s strong feeling aboot some topic I’m thinking of discussing wi’ my friends in the audience.

“Now, Harry, go easy here,” I mind a Scots friend told me, once during the war.  I was in a town I’ll no be naming.  “This is a queer place.  There are a lot of good Germans here.  They’re unhappy about the war, but they’re loyal enough.  They don’t want to take any great part in fighting their fatherland, but they won’t help against their new country, either.  They just want to go about their business and forget that there’s a war.”

Do you ken what I did in that town I talked harder and straighter about the war than I had in any place I’d talked in up to then!  And I talked specially to the Germans, and told them what their duty was, and how they could no be neutral.

I’ve small use for them that would be using the soft pedal always, and seeking to offend no one.  If you’re in the richt the man who takes offence at what you say need not concern you.  Gi’en you hold a different opinion frae mine.  Suppose I say what’s in my mind, and that I think that I am richt and you are wrong.  Wull ye be angry wi’ me because of that?  Not if you know you’re richt!  It’s only the man who is’na sure of his cause who loses his temper and flies into a rage when he heard any one disagree wi’ him.