They’ve put shame into us, those laddies who went awa’.  They ha’ taught us the real values o’ things again.  They ha’ shown us that i’ this world, after a’, it’s men, not things, that count.  They helped to prove that the human spirit was a greater, grander thing than any o’ the works o’ man.  The Germans had all that a body could ask.  They had numbers, they had guns, they had their devilish inventions.  What beat them, then?  What held them back till we could match them in numbers and in a’ the other things?

Why, something Krupp could not manufacture at Essen nor the drillmasters of the Kaiser create!  The human will—­the spirit that is God’s creature, and His alone.

I was in France, you’ll mind.  I remember weel hoo I went ower the ground where the Canadians stood the day the first clouds of poison gas were loosed.  There were sae few o’ them—­sae pitifully few!  As it was they were ootmatched; they were hanging on because they were the sort o’ men wha wouldna gie in.  French Colonials were supporting them on one side.

And across the No Man’s Land there came a sort o’ greenish yellow cloud.  No man there knew what it meant.  There was a hissing and a writhing, as of snakes, and like a snake the gas came toward them.  It reached them, and men began to cough and choke.  And other men fell doon, and their faces grew black, and they deed, in an agony such as the man wha hasna seen it canna imagine—­and weel it is, if he would sleep o’ nichts, that he canna.

The French Colonials broke and ran.  The line was open.  The Canadians were dying fast, but not a man gave way.  And the Hun came on.  His gas had broken the line.  It was open.  The way was clear to Ypres.  That auld, ruined toon, that had gi’en a new glory to British history in November o’ the year before, micht ha’ been ta’en that day.  And, aye, the way was open further than that.  The Germans micht ha’ gone on.  Calais would ha’ fallen tae them, and Dunkirk.  They micht ha’ cut the British army awa’ frae it’s bases, and crumpled up the whole line along the North Sea.

But they stopped, wi’ the greatest victory o’ the war within their grasp.  They stopped.  They waited.  And the line was formed again.  Somehow, new men were found tae tak’ the places of those who had deed.  Masks against the gas were invented ower nicht.  And the great chance o’ the Germans tae win the war was gone.

Why?  It was God’s will?  Aye, it was His will that the Hun should be beaten.  But God works wi’ human instruments.  And His help is aye for they that help themselves—­that’s an auld saying, but as true a one as ever it was.

I will tell you why the Germans stopped.  It was for the same reason that they stopped at Verdun, later in the war.  It was for the same reason that they stopped again near Chateau Thierry and gave the Americans time to come up.  They stopped because they couldna imagine that men would stand by when they were beaten.