And then I organized my recruiting band—­Hieland laddies, wha went up and doon the land, skirling the pipes and beating the drum.  The laddies wad flock to hear them, and when they were brocht together so there was easy work for the sergeants who were wi’ the band.  There’s something about the skirling of the pipes that fires a man’s blood and sets his feet and his fingers and a’ his body to tingling.

Whiles I’d be wi’ the band masel’; whiles I’d be off elsewhere.  But it got sae that it seemed I was being of use to the country, e’en though they’d no let me tak’ a gun and ficht masel’.  When I was in America first, after the war began, America was still neutral.  I was ne’er one o’ those who blamed America and President Wilson for that.  It was no ma business to do sae.  He was set in authority in that country, and the responsibility and the authority were his.  They were foolish Britons, and they risked much, who talked against the President of the United States in yon days.

I keened a’ the time that America wad tak’ her stand on the side o’ the richt when the time came.  And when it came at last I was glad o’ the chance to help, as I was allowed tae do.  I didna speak sae muckle in favor of recruiting; it was no sae needfu’ in America as it had been in Britain, for in America there was conscription frae the first.  In America they were wise in Washington at the verra beginning.  They knew the history of the war in Britain, and they were resolved to profit by oor mistakes.

But what was needed, and sair needed, in America, was to mak’ people who were sae far awa’ frae the spectacle o’ war as the Hun waged it understand what it meant.  I’d been in France when I came back to America in the autumn o’ 1917.  My boy was in France still; I’d knelt beside his grave, hard by the Bapaume road.  I’d seen the wilderness of that country in Picardy and Flanders.  We’d pushed the Hun back frae a’ that country I’d visited—­I’d seen Vimy Ridge, and Peronne, and a’ the other places.

I told what I’d seen.  I told the way the Hun worked.  And I spoke for the Liberty Loans and the other drives they were making to raise money in America—­the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., the Salvation Army, the Knights of Columbus, and a score of others.  I knew what it was like, over yonder in France, and I could tell American faithers and mithers what their boys maun see and do when the great transports took them oversea.

It was for me, to whom folk would listen, tae tell the truth as I’d seen it.  It was no propaganda I was engaged in—­there was nae need o’ propaganda.  The truth was enow.  Whiles, I’ll be telling you, I found trouble.  There were places where folk of German blood forgot they’d come to America to be free of kaisers and junkers.  They stood by their old country, foul as her deeds were.  They threatened me, more than once; they were angry enow at me to ha’ done me a mischief had they dared.  But they dared not, and never a voice was raised against me publicly—­in a theatre or a hall where I spoke, I mean.