I've had much leisure to be thinking of late. A man has time to wonder
and to speculate concerning life and what he's seen o' it when he's
taking a long ocean voyage. And I've been meditating on some curious
contrasts. I was in Australia when I heard of the coming of the war.
My boy John was with me, then; he'd come there tae meet his mither and
me. He went hame, straight hame; I went to San Francisco.
Noo I'm on ma way hame frae Australia again, and again I've made the
lang journey by way of San Francisco and the States. And there's a
muckle to think upon in what I've seen. Sad sichts they were, a many
of them. In yon time when I was there before the world was a' at
peace. Men went aboot their business, you in Australia, underneath the
world, wi' no thought of trouble brewing. But other men, in Europe,
thousands of miles way, were laying plans that meant death and the
loss of hands and een for those braw laddies o' Australia and New
Zealand that I saw--those we came to ken sae weel as the gallant
Anzacs.
It makes you realize, seeing countries so far awa' frae a' the war,
and yet suffering so there from, how dependent we all are upon one
another. Distance makes no matter; differences make none. We cannot
escape the consequences of what others do. And so, can we no be
thinking sometimes, before we act, doing something that we think
concerns only ourselves, of all those who micht suffer for what we
did?
I maun think of labor when I think of the Anzacs. Yon is a country
different frae any I have known. There's no landed aristocracy in the
land of the Anzac. Yon's a country where all set out on even terms.
That's truer there, by far, than in America, even. It's a young
country and a new country, still, but it's grown up fast. It has the
strength and the cities of an old country, but it has a freshness of
its own.
And there labor rules the roost. It's one of the few places in the
world where a government of labor has been instituted. And yet, I'm
wondering the noo if those labor leaders in Australia have reckoned on
one or twa things I think of? They're a' for the richts of labor--and
so am I. I'd be a fine one, with the memory I have of unfairness and
exploitation of the miners in the coal pits at Hamilton, did I not
agree that the laboring man must be bound together with his fellows to
gain justice and fair treatment from his employers.
But there's a richt way and a wrong way to do all things. And there
was a wrong way that labor used, sometimes, during the war, to gain
its ends. There was sympathy for all that British labor did among
laboring men everywhere, I'm told--in Australia, too. But let's bide a
wee and see if labor didn't maybe, mak' some mistakes that it may be
threatening to mak' again noo that peace has come.
Here's what I'm afraid of. Labor used threats in the war. If the
government did not do thus and so there'd be a strike. That was
meanin' that guns would be lacking, or shell, or rifles, or hand
grenades, or what not in the way of munitions, on the Western front.
But the threat was sae vital that it won, tae often I'm no saying it
was used every time. Nor am I saying labor did not have a richt to
what it asked. It's just this--canna we get alang without making
threats, one to the other?
And there were some strikes that had serious consequences. There were
strikes that delayed the building of ships, and the making of cannon
and shell. And as a result of them men died, in France, and in
Gallipoli, and in other places, who need no have died. They were
laddies who'd dropped all, who'd gi'en up all that was dear to them,
all comfort and safety, when the country called.
They had nae voice in the matters that were in dispute. None thought,
when sic a strike was called, of hoo those laddies in the trenches wad
be affected. That's what I canna forgie. That's what makes me wonder
why the Anzacs, when they reach home, don't have a word to say
themselves aboot the troubles that the union leaders would seem to be
gaein' to bring aboot.
We're in a ficht still, even though peace has come. We're in a ficht
wi' poverty, and disease, and all the other menaces that still
threaten our civilization. We'll beat them, as we ha' beaten the other
enemies. But we'll no beat them by quarrelling amang oorselves, any
more than we'd ever have beaten the Hun if France and Britain had
stopped the war, every sae often, to hae oot an argument o' their own.
We had differences with our gude friends the French, fraw time to
time. Sae did the Americans, and whiles we British and our American
cousins got upon ane anither's nerves. But there was never real
trouble or difficulty, as the result and the winning of the war have
shown.
Do you ken what it is we've a' got to think of the noo? It's
production. We must produce more than we ha' ever done before. It's no
a steady raise in wages that will help. Every time wages gang up a
shilling or twa, everything else is raised in proportion. The
workingman maun mak' more money; everyone understands that. But the
only way he can safely get more siller is to earn more--to increase
production as fast as he knows how.
It's the only way oot--and it's true o' both Britain and America. The
more we mak' the more we'll sell. There's a market the noo for all we
English speaking folk can produce. Germany is barred, for a while at
least; France, using her best efforts and brains to get back upon her
puir, bruised feet, canna gae in avily for manufactures for a while
yet. We, in Britain, have only just begun to realize that the war is
over. It took us a long time to understand what we were up against at
the beginning, and what sort of an effort we maun mak' if we were to
win the war.
And then, before we'd done, we were doing things we'd never ha dreamed
it was possible for us tae do before the need was upon us. We in
Britain had to do without things we'd regarded as necessities and we
throve without them. For the sake of the wee bairns we went without
milk for our tea and coffee, and scarce minded it. Aye, in a thousand
little ways that had not seemed to us to matter at all we were
deprived and harried and hounded.
Noo, what I'm thinking sae often is just this. We had a great problem
to meet in the winning of the war. We solved it, though it was greater
than any of those we were wont to call insoluble. Are there no
problems left? There's the slum. There's the sort of poverty that
afflicts a man who's willing tae work and can nicht find work enough
tae do tae keep himself and his family alive and clad. There's all
sorts of preventible disease. We used to shrug our shoulders and speak
of such things as the act of God. But I'll no believe they're acts of
God. He doesna do things in such a fashion. They're acts of man, and
it's for man to mak' them richt and end what's wrong wi' the world he
dwells in.
They used to shrug their shoulders in Russia, did those who had enough
to eat and a warm, decent hoose tae live in. They'd hear of the
sufferings of the puir, and they'd talk of the act of God, and how
he'd ordered it that i' this world there maun always be some
suffering.
And see what's come o' that there! The wrong sort of man has set to
work to mak' a wrong thing richt, and he's made it worse than it ever
was. But how was it he had the chance to sway the puir ignorant bodies
in Russia? How was it that those who kenned a better way were not at
work long agane? Ha' they anyone but themselves to blame that Trotzky
and the others had the chance to persuade the Russian people tae let
them ha' power for a little while'?
Oh, we'll no come to anything like that in Britain and America. I've
sma' patience wi' those that talk as if the Bolsheviki would be ruling
us come the morrow. We're no that sort o' folk, we Britons and
Americans. We've settled our troubles our ain way these twa thousand
years, and we'll e'en do sae again. But we maun recognize that there
are things we maun do tae mak' the lot of the man that's underneath a
happier and a better one.
He maun help, tae. He maun realize that there's a chance for him. I'm
haulding mysel' as one proof of that--it's why I've told you sae
muckle in this book of myself and the way that I've come frae the pit
tae the success and the comfort that I ken the noo.
I had to learn, lang agane, that my business was not only mine. Maybe
you'll think that I'm less concerned with others and their affairs
than maist folk, and maybe that's true, tae. But I. canna forget
others, gi'en I would. When I'm singing I maun have a theatre i' which
to appear. And I canna fill that always by mysel'. I maun gae frae
place to place, and in the weeks of the year when I'm no appearing
there maun be others, else the theatre will no mak' siller enough for
its owners to keep it open.
And then, let's gie a thought to just the matter of my performance.
There must be an orchestra. It maun play wi' me; it maun be able to
accompany me. An orchestra, if it is no richt, can mak' my best song
sound foolish and like the singing o' some one who dinna ken ane note
of music frae the next. So I'm dependent on the musicians--and they on
me. And then there maun be stage hands, to set the scenes. Folk
wouldna like it if I sang in a theatre wi'oot scenery. There maun be
those that sell tickets, and tak' them at the doors, and ushers to
show the folk their seats.
And e'en before a'body comes tae the hoose to pay his siller for a
ticket there's others I'm dependent upon. How do they ken I'm in the
toon at a'? They've read it in the papers, maybe--and there's
reporters and printers I've tae thank. Or they've seen my name and my
picture on a hoarding, and I've to think o' the men who made the
lithograph sheets, and the billposters who put them up. Sae here's
Harry Lauder and a' the folk he maun have tae help him mak' a living
and earn his bit siller! More than you'd thought' Aye, and more than
I'd thought, sometimes.
There's a michty few folk i' this world who can say they're no
dependant upon others in some measure. I ken o' none, myself. It's a
fine thing to mind one's ain business, but if one gies the matter
thought one will find, I think, that a man's business spreads oot more
than maist folk reckon it does.
Here, again. In the States there's been trouble about the men that
work on the railways. Can I say it's no my business? Is it no? Suppose
they gae oot on strike? How am I to mak' my trips frae one toon the
the next? And should I no be finding oot, if there's like that
threatening to my business, where the richt lies? You will be finding
it's sae, too, in your affairs; there's little can come that willna
affect you, soon or late.
We maun all stand together, especially we plain men and women. It was
sae that we won the war--and it is sae that we can win the peace noo
that it's come again, and mak' it a peace sae gude for a' the world
that it can never be broken again by war. There'd be no wars i' the
world if peace were sae gude that all men were content. It's
discontented men who stir up trouble in the world, and sae mak' wars
possible.
We talk much, in these days, of classes. There's a phrase it sickens
me tae hear--class consciousness. It's ane way of setting the man who
works wi' his hands against him who works wi' his brain. It's no the
way a man works that ought to count--it's that he works at all. Both
sorts of work are needful; we canna get along without either sort.
Is no humanity a greater thing than any class? We are all human. We
maun all be born, and we maun all die in the end. That much we ken,
and there's nae sae much more we can be siccar of. And I've often
thought that the trouble with most of our hatreds an' our envy and
malice is that folk do not know one another well enough. There's fewer
quarrels among folk that speak the same tongue. Britain and America
dwelt at peace for mair than a hundred years before they took the
field together against a common enemy. America and Canada stand side
by side--a great strong nation and a small one. There's no fort
between them; there are no fichting ships on the great lakes, ready to
loose death and destruction.
It's easier to have a good understanding when different peoples speak
the same language. But there's a hint o' the way things must be done,
I'm thinking, in the future. Britain and France used tae have their
quarrels. They spoke different tongues. But gradually they built up a
gude understanding of one another, and where's the man in either
country the noo that wadna laugh at you if you said there was danger
they micht gae tae war?
It's harder, it may be, to promote a gude understanding when there's a
different language for a barrier. But walls can be climbed, and
there's more than the ane way of passing them. We've had a great
lesson in that respect in the war. It's the first time that ever a
coalition of nations held together. Germany and Austria spoke one
language. But we others, with a dozen tongues or mair to separate us,
were forged into one mighty confederation by our peril and our
consciousness of richt, and we beat doon that barrier of various
languages, sae that it had nae existence.
And it's not only foreign peoples that speak a different tongue at
times. Whiles you'll find folk of the same family, the same race, the
same country, who gie the same words different meanings, and grow
confused and angry for that reason. There's a way they can overcome
that, and reach an understanding. It's by getting together and talking
oot all that confuses and angers them. Speech is a great solvent if a
man's disposed any way at all to be reasonable, and I've found, as
I've gone about the world, that most men want to be reasonable.
They'll call me an optimist, maybe. I'll no be ashamed of that title.
There was a saying I've heard in America that taught me a lot. They've
a wee cake there they call a doughnut--awfu' gude eating, though no
quite sae gude as Mrs. Lauder's scones. There's round hole in the
middle of a doughnut, always. And the Americans have a way of saying:
"The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist sees the hole." It's a
wise crack, you, and it tells you a good deal, if you'll apply it.
There's another way we maun be thinking. We've spent a deal of blood
and siller in these last years. We maun e'en have something to show
for all we've spent. For a muckle o' the siller we've spent we've just
borrowed and left for our bairns and their bairns to pay when the time
comes. And we maun leave the world better for those that are coming,
or they'll be saying it's but a puir bargain we've made for them, and
what we bought wasna worth the price.