It was as great a surprise tae me as it could ha' been to anyone else
when I discovered that I could move men and women by speakin' tae
them. In the beginning, in Britain, I made speeches to help the
recruiting. My boy John had gone frae the first, and through him I
knew much about the army life, and the way of it in those days. Sae I
began to mak' a bit speech, sometimes, after the show.
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.
I went clear across America and back in that long tour. When I came
back it was just as the Germans began their last drive. Ye'll be
minding hoo black things looked for a while, when they broke our
British line, or bent it back, rather, where the Fifth Army kept the
watch? Mind you, I'd been over all that country our armies had
reclaimed frae the Hun in the long Battle o' the Somme. My boy John,
the wean I'd seen grow frae a nursling in his mither's arms, had focht
in that battle.
He'd been wounded, and come hame tae his mither to be nursed back to
health. She'd done that, and she'd blessed him, and kissed him gude
bye, and he'd gone oot there again. And--that time, he stayed. There's
a few words I can see, written on a bit o' yellow paper, each time I
close ma een.
"Captain John Lauder, killed, December 28. Official."
Aye, I'd gone all ower that land in which he'd focht. I'd seen the
spot where he was killed. I'd lain doon beside his grave. And then, in
the spring of 1918, as I travelled back toward New York, across
America, the Hun swept doon again through Peronne and Bapaume. He took
back a' that land British blood had been spilled like watter to regain
frae him.
The pity of it! Sae I was thinking each day as I read the bulletins!
Had America come in tae late? I'd read the words of Sir Douglas Haig,
that braw and canny Scot wha held the British line in France, when he
said Britain was fichtin' wi' her back tae the wall. Was Ypres to be
lost, after four years? Was the Channel to be laid open to the Hun? It
lookit sae, for a time.
I was like a man possessed by a de'il, I'm thinking, in you days. I
couldna think of ought but the way the laddies were suffering in
France. And it filled me wi' rage tae see those who couldna or wouldna
understand. They'd sit there when I begged them to buy Liberty Bonds,
and they'd be sae slow to see what I was driving at. I lost ma temper,
sometimes. Whiles I'd say things to an audience that were no so, that
were unfair. If I was unjust to any in those days, I'm sorry. But they
maun understand that ma heart was in France, wi' them that was deein'
and suffering new tortures every day. I'd seen what I was talking of.
Whiles, in America, I was near to bein' ashamed, for the way I was
always seekin' to gain the siller o' them that came to hear me sing. I
was raising money for ma fund for the Scotch wounded. I'd a bit poem
I'd written that was printed on a card to be sold, and there were some
wee stamps. Mrs. Lauder helped me. Each day, as an audience went oot,
she'd be in the lobby, and we raised a grand sum before we were done.
And whiles, too, when I spoke on the stage, money would come raining
doon, so that it looked like a green snowstorm.
I maun no be held to account too strictly, I'm thinking, for the hard
things I sometimes said on that tour. I tak' back nothing that was
deserved; there were toons, and fine they'll ken themselves wi'oot ma
naming them, that ought to be ashamed of themselves. There was the
book I wrote. Every nicht I'd auction off a copy to the highest
bidder--the money tae gae tae the puir wounded laddies in Scotland. A
copy went for five thousand dollars ane nicht in New York!
That was a grand occasion, I'm tellin' ye. It was in the Metropolitan
Opera Hoose, that great theatre where Caruso and Melba and a' the
stars of the opera ha' sung sae often. Aye, Harry Lauder had sung
there tae--sung there that nicht! The hoose was fu', and I made my
talk.
And then I held up my book, "A Minstrel in France." I asked that they
should buy a copy. The bidding started low. But up and up it ran. And
when I knocked it doon at last it was for twenty-five hundred dollars
--five hundred poonds! But that wasna a'. I was weel content. But the
gentleman that bocht it lookit at it, and then sent it back, and tauld
me to auction it all ower again. I did, and this time, again, it went
for twenty-five hundred dollars. So there was five thousand dollars--a
thousand poonds--for ma wounded laddies at hame in Scotland.
Noo, think o' the contrast. There's a toon--I'll no be writing doon
its name--where they wadna bid but twelve dollars--aboot twa poond ten
shillings--for the book! Could ye blame me for being vexed? Maybe I
said more than I should, but I dinna think so. I'm thinking still
those folk were mean. But I was interested enough to look to see what
that toon had done, later, and I found oot that its patriotism must
ha' been awakened soon after, for it bocht its share and more o'
bonds, and it gave its siller freely to all the bodies that needed
money for war work. They were sair angry at old Harry Lauder that
nicht he tauld them what he thocht of their generosity, but it maybe
he did them gude, for a' that!
I'd be a dead man the noo, e'en had I as many lives as a dozen nine
lived cats, had a' the threats that were made against me in America
been carried oot. They'd tell me, in one toon after anither, that it
wadna be safe tae mak' ma talk against the Hun. But I was never
frightened. You know the old saying that threatened men live longest,
and I'm a believer in that. And, as it was, the towns where there were
most people of German blood were most cordial to me.
I ken fine how it was that that was so. All Germans are not Huns. And
in America the decent Germans, the ones who were as filled with horror
when the Lusitania was sunk as were any other decent bodies, were
anxious to do all they could to show that they stood with the land of
their adoption.
I visited many an American army camp. I've sung for the American
soldiers, as well as the British, in America, and in France as well.
And I've never seen an American regiment yet that did not have on its
muster rolls many and many a German name. They did well, those
American laddies wi' the German names. They were heroes like the rest.
It's a strange thing, the way it fell to ma lot tae speak sae much as
I did during the war. I canna quite believe yet that I was as usefu'
as my friends ha' told me I was. Yet they've come near to making me
believe it. They've clapped a Sir before my name to prove they think
so, and I've had the thanks of generals and ministers and state. It's
a comfort to me to think it's so. It was a sair grief tae me that when
my boy was dead I couldna tak' his place. But they a' told me I'd be
wasted i' the trenches.
A man must do his duty as he's made to see it. And that's what I tried
to do in the war. If I stepped on any man's toes that didna deserve
it, I'm sorry. I'd no be unfair to any man. But I think that when I
said hard things to the folk of a toon they were well served, as a
rule, and I know that it's so that often and often folk turned to
doing the things I'd blamed them for not doing even while they were
most bitter against me, and most eager to see me ridden oot o' toon
upon a rail, wi' a coat o' tar and feathers to cover me! Sae I'm not
minding much what they said, as long as what they did was a' richt.
All's well that ends well, as Wull Shakespeare said. And the war's
well ended. It's time to forget our ain quarrels the noo as to the way
o' winning; we need dispute nae mair as to that. But there's ane thing
we maun not forget, I'm thinking. The war taught us many and many a
thing, but none that was worth mair to us than this. It taught us that
we were invincible sae lang as we stood together, we folk who speak
the common English tongue.
Noo, there's something we knew before, did we no? Yet we didna act
upon our knowledge. Shall we ha' to have anither lesson like the one
that's past and done wi', sometime in the future? Not in your lifetime
or mine, I mean, but any time at a'? Would it no be a sair pity if
that were so? Would it no mak' God feel that we were a stupid lot, not
worth the saving?
None can hurt us if we but stand together, Britons and Americans.
We've a common blood and a common speech. We've our differences, true
enough. We do not do a' things i' the same way. But what matter's
that, between friends? We've learned we can be the best o' friends.
Our laddies learned that i' France, when Englishman and Scot, Yankee
and Anzac, Canadian and Irishman and Welshman, broke the Hindenburg
line together.
We've the future o' the world, that those laddies saved, to think o'
the noo. And we maun think of it together, and come to the problems
that are still left together, if we would solve them in the richt way,
and wi'oot havin' to spill more blood to do so.
When men ha' fought together and deed together against a common foe
they should be able to talk together aboot anything that comes up
between them, and mak' common cause against any foe that threatens
either of them. And I'm thinking that no foe will ever threaten any of
the nations that fought against the Hun that does no threaten them a'!