’Well, I’m a shop steward.  We represent the rank and file against office-bearers that have lost the confidence o’ the workingman.  But I’m no socialist, and I would have ye keep mind of that.  I’m yin o’ the old Border radicals, and I’m not like to change.  I’m for individual liberty and equal rights and chances for all men.  I’ll no more bow down before a Dagon of a Goavernment official than before the Baal of a feckless Tweedside laird.  I’ve to keep my views to mysel’, for thae young lads are all drucken-daft with their wee books about Cawpital and Collectivism and a wheen long senseless words I wouldna fyle my tongue with.  Them and their socialism!  There’s more gumption in a page of John Stuart Mill than in all that foreign trash.  But, as I say, I’ve got to keep a quiet sough, for the world is gettin’ socialism now like the measles.  It all comes of a defective eddication.’

‘And what does a Border radical say about the war?’ I asked.

He took off his spectacles and cocked his shaggy brows at me.  ’I’ll tell ye, Mr Brand.  All that was bad in all that I’ve ever wrestled with since I cam to years o’ discretion—­Tories and lairds and manufacturers and publicans and the Auld Kirk—­all that was bad, I say, for there were orra bits of decency, ye’ll find in the Germans full measure pressed down and running over.  When the war started, I considered the subject calmly for three days, and then I said:  “Andra Amos, ye’ve found the enemy at last.  The ones ye fought before were in a manner o’ speakin’ just misguided friends.  It’s either you or the Kaiser this time, my man!"’

His eyes had lost their gravity and had taken on a sombre ferocity.  ’Ay, and I’ve not wavered.  I got a word early in the business as to the way I could serve my country best.  It’s not been an easy job, and there’s plenty of honest folk the day will give me a bad name.  They think I’m stirrin’ up the men at home and desertin’ the cause o’ the lads at the front.  Man, I’m keepin’ them straight.  If I didna fight their battles on a sound economic isshue, they would take the dorts and be at the mercy of the first blagyird that preached revolution.  Me and my like are safety-valves, if ye follow me.  And dinna you make ony mistake, Mr Brand.  The men that are agitating for a rise in wages are not for peace.  They’re fighting for the lads overseas as much as for themselves.  There’s not yin in a thousand that wouldna sweat himself blind to beat the Germans.  The Goavernment has made mistakes, and maun be made to pay for them.  If it were not so, the men would feel like a moose in a trap, for they would have no way to make their grievance felt.  What for should the big man double his profits and the small man be ill set to get his ham and egg on Sabbath mornin’?  That’s the meaning o’ Labour unrest, as they call it, and it’s a good thing, says I, for if Labour didna get its leg over the traces now and then, the spunk o’ the land would be dead in it, and Hindenburg could squeeze it like a rotten aipple.’