A Minstrel in France. Sir Harry Lauder
through the voyage we were shut away from all news. The wireless is silenced in time of war, save for such work as the government allows. There is none of the free sending, from shore to ship, and ship to ship, of all the news of the world, such as one grows to welcome in time of peace. And so, from New York until we neared the British coast, we brooded, all of us. How fared it with Britain in the war? Had the Hun launched some new and terrible attack?
[ILLUSTRATION: "I did not stop at sending out my recruiting band. I went out myself.". (See Lauder02.jpg)]
But two days out from home we saw a sight to make us glad and end our brooding for a space.
"Eh, Harry—come and look you!" someone called to me. It was early in the morning, and there was a mist about us.
I went to the rail and looked in the direction I was told. And there, rising suddenly out of the mist, shattering it, I saw great, gray ships—warships—British battleships and cruisers. There they were, some of the great ships that are the steel wall around Britain that holds her safe. My heart leaped with joy and pride at the sight of them, those great, gray guardians of the British shores, bulwarks of steel that fend all foemen from the rugged coast and the fair land that lies behind it.
Now we were safe, ourselves! Who would not trust the British navy, after the great deeds it has done in this war? For there, mind you, is the one force that has never failed. The British navy has done what it set out to do. It has kept command of the seas. The submarines? The tin fish? They do not command the sea! Have they kept Canada's men, and America's, from reaching France?
When we landed my first inquiry was for my son John. He was well, and he was still in England, in training at Bedford with his regiment, the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders. But it was as we had feared. Our Christmas must be kept apart. And so the day before Christmas found us back in our wee hoose on the Clyde, at Dunoon. But we thought of little else but the laddie who was making ready to fight for us, and of the day, that was coming soon, when we should see him.
CHAPTER IV
It was a fitting place to train men for war, Bedford, where John was with his regiment, and where his mother and I went to see him so soon as we could after Christmas. It is in the British midlands, but before the factory towns begin. It is a pleasant, smiling country, farming country, mostly, with good roads, and fields that gave the boys chances to learn the work of digging trenches—aye, and living in them afterward.
Bedford is one of the great school towns of England. Low, rolling hills lie about it; the river Ouse, a wee, quiet stream, runs through it. Schooling must be in the air of Bedford! Three great schools for boys are there, and two for girls. And Liberty is in the air of Bedford, too, I think! John Bunyan was born two miles from Bedford, and his old house still stands in Elstow, a little village of old houses and great oaks. And it was in Bedford Jail that Bunyan was imprisoned because he would fight for the freedom of his own soul.
John was waiting to greet us, and he looked great. He had two stars now where he had one before—he had been promoted to first lieutenant. There were curious changes in the laddie I remembered. He was bigger, I thought, and he looked older, and graver. But that I could not wonder at. He had a great responsibility. The lives of other men had been entrusted to him, and John was not the man to take a responsibility like that lightly.
I saw him the first day I was at Bedford, leading some of his men in a practice charge. Big, braw laddies they were—all in their kilts. He ran ahead of them, smiling as he saw me watching them, but turning back to cheer them on if he thought they were not fast enough. I could see as I watched him that he had caught the habit of command. He was going to be a good officer. It was a proud thought for me, and again I was rejoiced that it was such a son that I was able to offer to my country.
They were kept busy at that training camp. Men were needed sore in France. Recruits were going over every day. What the retreat from Mons and the Battle of the Marne had left of that first heroic expeditionary force the first battle of Ypres had come close to wiping out. In the Ypres salient our men out there were hanging on like grim death. There was no time to spare at Bedford, where men were being made ready as quickly as might be to take their turn in the trenches.
But there was a little time when John and I could talk.
"What do you need most, son?" I asked him.
"Men!" he cried. "Men, Dad, men! They're coming in quickly. Oh, Britain has answered nobly to the call. But they're not coming in fast enough. We must have more men—more men!"
I had thought, when I asked my question, of something John might be needing for himself, or for his men, mayhap. But when he answered me so I said nothing. I only began to think. I wanted to go myself. But I knew they would not have me—yet awhile, at any rate. And still I felt that I must do something. I could not rest idle while all around me men were giving themselves and all they had and were.
Everywhere I heard the same cry that John had raised:
"Men! Give us men!"
It came from Lord Kitchener. It came from the men in command in France and Belgium—that little strip of Belgium the Hun had not been able to conquer. It came from every broken, maimed man who came back home to Britain to be patched up that he might go out again. There were scores of thousands of men in Britain who needed only the last quick shove to send them across the line of enlistment. And after I had thought a while I hit upon a plan.
"What stirs a man's fighting spirit quicker or better than the right sort of music?" I asked myself. "And what sort of music does it best of all?"
There can be only one answer to that last question! And so I organized my recruiting band, that was to be famous all over Britain before so very long. I gathered fourteen of the best pipers and drummers I could find in all Scotland. I equipped them, gave them the Highland uniform, and sent them out, to travel over Britain skirling and drumming the wail of war through the length and breadth of the land. They were to go everywhere, carrying the shrieking of the pipes into the highways and the byways, and so they did. And I paid the bills.
That was the first of many recruiting bands that toured Britain. Because it was the first, and because of the way the pipers skirled out the old hill melodies and songs of Scotland, enormous crowds followed my band. And it led them straight to the recruiting stations. There was a swing and a sway about those old tunes that the young fellows couldn't resist.
The pipers would begin to skirl and the drums to beat in a square, maybe, or near the railway station. And every time the skirling of the pipes would bring the crowd. Then the pipers would march, when the crowd was big enough, and lead the way always to the recruiting place. And once they were there the young fellows who weren't "quite ready to decide" and the others who were just plain slackers, willing to let better men die for them, found it mighty hard to keep from going on the wee rest of the way that the pipers had left them to make alone!
It was wonderful work my band did, and when the returns came to me I felt like the Pied Piper! Yes I did, indeed!
I did not travel with my band. That would have been a waste of effort. There was work for both of us to do, separately. I was booked for a tour of Britain, and everywhere I went I spoke, and urged the young men to enlist. I made as many speeches as I could, in every town and city that I visited, and I made special trips to many. I thought, and there were those who agreed with me, that I could, it might be, reach audiences another speaker, better trained than I, no doubt, in this sort of work, would not touch.
So there was I, without official standing, going about, urging every man who could to don khaki. I talked wherever and whenever I could get an audience together, and I began then the habit of making speeches in the theatres, after my performance, that I have not yet given up. I talked thus to the young men.
"If you don't do your duty now," I told them, "you may live to be old men. But even if you do, you will regret it! Yours will be a sorrowful old