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"IS IT YOU, MOTHER?"
Since the opening of hostilities in the present war the Scottish
regiments have given repeated proofs of a valour which adds new lustre
to the great traditions of Scottish soldiership. Through all the early
operations--on the retreat from Mons and at the battles of the Marne and
the Aisne--the Royal Scots Guards, the Scots Greys, the Gordon, the
Seaforth and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the King's Own
Scottish Borderers gained many fresh laurels by their heroism and
undaunted spirit. The London Scottish Territorials, too, have shown a
prowess as signal as that of the Scots of the Regular Army; while the
mettle of men of Scottish descent has made glorious contribution in
France and elsewhere to the fine records of the Overseas armies.
It is the inevitable corollary that death should levy a heavy toll on
Scottish soldiers in the field. Thousands of kilted youth have suffered
the fate which Raemaekers depicts in the accompanying cartoon. It is
not, of course, only the young Scot whose thought turns in the moment of
death to the hearth of his home with vivid memories of his mother. But
the word "home" and all that the word connotes often makes a more urgent
appeal to the Scot abroad than to the man of another nationality. There
is significance in the fact that, far as the Scots are wont to wander
over the world's surface, they should, under every sky and in every
turning fortune, treasure as a national anthem the song which has the
refrain:--
"For it's hame, an' it's hame, fain wad I be,
O! it's hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie!"
The German soldier in this war would seem to have lost well nigh all
touch of humanity. Yet the draughtsman here suggests that even the
German soldier on occasion yields to the pathos of the young Scot's
death-cry for home and mother. There is grim irony in the dying man's
blurred vision which mistakes the hand of his mortal foe for that of his
mother.
Of such trying scenes is the drama of war composed.