Was there, I wonder, any single thing that told more of the difference between the Germans and the allies than the way both treated women and children?  The Germans looked on their women as inferior beings.  That was why they could be guilty of such atrocities as disgraced their armies wherever they fought.  They were well suited with the Turks for their own allies.  The place that women hold in a country tells you much about it; a land in which women are not rated high is not one in which I’d want to live.

And if women wull be better off in Britain and America than they were, even before the war, that’s one of the ways in which the war has redeemed itself and helped to pay for itself.  I think they wull—­but I’ve no patience wi’ those who talk as if men and women had different interests, and maun fight it out to see which shall dominate.

They’re equal partners, men and women.  The war has shown us that; has proved to us men how we can depend upon our women to tak’ over as much of our work as maun be when the need comes.  And that’s a great thing to have learned.  We all pray there need be no more wars; we none of us expect a war again in our time.  But if it comes one of the first things we wull do wull be to tak’ advantage of what we’ve learned of late about the value and the splendor of our women.

CHAPTER XXVII

I’ve been pessimistic, you’ll think, maybe, in what I’ve just been saying to you.  And you’ll be wondering if I think I kept my promise—­ to prove that this can be a better, a bonnier world than it was before yon peacefu’ days of 1914 were blotted out.  I have’na done sae yet, but I’m in the way of doing it.  I’ve tried to mak’ you see that yon days were no sae bonny as we a’ thocht them.

But noo!  Noo we’ve come tae a new day.  This auld world has seen a great sacrifice—­a greater sacrifice than any it has known since Calvary.  The brawest, the noblest, the best of our men, have offered themselves, a’ they had and were, upon the altar of liberty and of conscience.

And I’ll ask you some questions.  Gie’n you’re asked, the noo, tae do something that’s no just for your ain benefit.  Whiles you would ha’ thought, maybe, and hesitated, and wondered.  But the noo?  Wull ye no be thinking of some laddie who gave up a’ the world held that was dear to him, when his country called?  Wull ye no be thinking that, after a’, ought that can be asked of you in the way of sacrifice and effort is but a sma’ trifle compared to what he had tae do?

I’m thinking that’ll be sae.  I’m thinking it’ll be sae of all of us.  I’m thinking that, sae lang as we live, we folk that ken what the war was, what it involved for the laddies who fought it, we’ll be comparing any hardship or privation that comes tae us wi’ what it was that they went through.  And it’s no likely, is it, that we’ll ha’ the heart and the conscience tae be saying ‘No!’ sae often and sae resolutely as used tae be our wont?