It was on the twenty-ninth day of March, in that year of 1914 that
dawned in peace and happiness and set in blood and death and bitter
sorrow, that we landed in Sydney. Soon I went to work. Everywhere my
audiences showed me that that great and wonderful reception that had
been given to me on the day we landed had been only an earnest of
what was to come. They greeted me everywhere with cheers and tears,
and everywhere we made new friends, and sometimes found old ones of
whom we had not heard for years.
And I was thinking all the time, now, of my boy. He was on his way.
He was on the Pacific. He was coming to me, across the ocean, and I
could smile as I thought of how this thing and that would strike
him, and of the smile that would light up his face now and the look
of joy that would come into his eyes at the sudden sighting of some
beautiful spot. Oh, aye--those were happy days When each one brought
my boy nearer to me.
One day, I mind, the newspapers were full of the tale of a crime ill
an odd spot in Europe that none of us had ever heard of before. You
mind the place? Serajevo! Aye--we all mind it now! But then we read,
and wondered how that outlandish name might be pronounced. A
foreigner was murdered--what if he was a prince, the Archduke of
Austria? Need we lash ourselves about him?
And so we read, and were sorry, a little, for the puir lady who sat
beside the Archduke and was killed with him. And then we forgot it.
All Australia did. There was no more in the newspapers. And my son
John was coming--coming. Each day he was so many hundred miles nearer
to me. And at last he came. We were in Melbourne then, it was near to
the end of July.
We had much to talk about--son, and his mother and I. It was long
months since we had seen him, and we had seen and done so much. The
time flew by. Maybe we did not read the papers so carefully as we
might have done. They tell me, they have told me, since then, that in
Europe and even in America, there was some warning after Austria
moved on Serbia. But I believe that down there in Australia they did
not dream of danger; that they were far from understanding the
meaning of the news the papers did print. They were so far away!
And then, you ken, it came upon us like a clap of thunder. One night
it began. There was war in Europe--real war. Germany had attacked
France and Russia. She was moving troops through Belgium. And every
Briton knew what that must mean. Would Britain be drawn in? There was
the question that was on every man's tongue.
"What do you think, son?" I asked John.
"I think we'll go in," he said. "And if we do, you know, Dad--they'll
send for me to come home at once. I'm on leave from the summer
training camp now to make this trip."
My boy, two years before, had joined the Territorial army. He was a
second lieutenant in a Territorial battalion of the Argyle and
Sutherland Highlanders. It was much as if he had been an officer in a
National Guard regiment in the United States. The territorial army
was not bound to serve abroad--but who could doubt that it would, and
gladly. As it did--to a man, to a man.
But it was a shock to me when John said that. I had not thought that
war, even if it came, could come home to us so close--and so soon.
Yet so it was. The next day was the fourth of August--my birthday.
And it was that day that Britain declared war upon Germany. We sat at
lunch in the hotel at Melbourne when the newsboys began to cry the
extras. And we were still at lunch when the hall porter came in from
outside.
"Leftenant Lauder!" he called, over and over. John beckoned to him,
and he handed my laddie a cablegram.
Just two words there were, that had come singing along the wires half
way around the world.
"Mobilize. Return."
John's eyes were bright. They were shining. He was looking at us, but
he was not seeing us. Those eyes of his were seeing distant things.
My heart way sore within me, but I was proud and happy that it was
such a son I had to give my country.
"What do you think, Dad?" he asked me, when I had read the order.
I think I was gruff because I dared not let him see how I felt. His
mother was very pale.
"This is no time for thinking, son," I said. "It is the time for
action. You know your duty."
He rose from the table, quickly.
"I'm off!" he said.
"Where?" I asked him.
"To the ticket office to see about changing my berth. There's a
steamer this week--maybe I can still find room aboard her."
He was not long gone. He and his chum went down together and come
back smiling triumphantly.
"It's all right, Dad," he told me. "I go to Adelaide by train and get
the steamer there. I'll have time to see you and mother off--your
steamer goes two hours before my train."
We were going to New Zealand. And my boy was was going home to fight
for his country. They would call me too old, I knew--I was forty-four
the day Britain declared war.
What a turmoil there was about us! So fast were things moving that
there seemed no time for thought, John's mother and I could not
realize the full meaning of all that was happening. But we knew that
John was snatched away from us just after he had come, and it was
hard--it was cruelly hard.
But such thoughts were drowned in the great surging excitement that
was all about us. In Melbourne, and I believe it must have been much
the same elsewhere in Australia, folks didn't know what they were to
do, how they were to take this war that had come so suddenly upon
them. And rumors and questions flew in all directions.
Suppose the Germans came to Australia? Was there a chance of that?
They had islands, naval bases, not so far away. They were Australia's
neighbors. What of the German navy? Was it out? Were there scattered
ships, here and there, that might swoop down upon Australia's shores
and bring death and destruction with them?
But even before we sailed, next day, I could see that order was
coming out of that chaos. Everywhere recruiting offices were opening,
and men were flocking to them. No one dreamed, really, of a long
war--though John laughed, sadly, when someone said it would be over in
four months. But these Australians took no chances; they would offer
themselves first, and let it be decided later whether they were needed.
So we sailed away. And when I took John's hand, and kissed him good-by,
I saw him for the last time in his civilian clothes.
"Well, son," I said, "you're going home to be a soldier, a fighting
soldier. You will soon be commanding men. Remember that you can never
ask a man to do something you would no dare to do yourself!"
And, oh, the braw look in the eyes of the bonnie laddie as he tilted
his chin up to me!
"I will remember, Dad!" he said.
And so long as a bit of the dock was in sight we could see him waving
to us. We were not to see him again until the next January, at Bedford,
in England, where he was training the raw men of his company.
Those were the first days of war. The British navy was on guard. From
every quarter the whimpering wireless brought news of this German
warship and that. They were scattered far and wide, over the Seven
Seas, you ken, when the war broke out. There was no time for them to
make a home port. They had their choice, most of them, between being
interned in some neutral port and setting out to do as much mischief
as they could to British commerce before they were caught. Caught
they were sure to be. They must have known it. And some there were to
brave the issue and match themselves against England's great naval power.
Perhaps they knew that few ports would long be neutral! Maybe they
knew of the abominable war the Hun was to wage. But I think it was
not such men as those who chose to take their one chance in a
thousand who were sent out, later, in their submarines, to send women
and babies a to their deaths with their torpedoes!
Be that as it may, we sailed away from Melbourne. But it was in
Sydney Harbor that we anchored next--not in Wellington, as we, on the
ship, all thought it would be! And the reason was that the navy,
getting word that the German cruiser _Emden_ was loose and raiding,
had ordered our captain to hug the shore, and to put in at Sydney
until he was told it was safe to proceed.
We were not much delayed, and came to Wellington safely. New Zealand
was all ablaze with the war spirit. There was no hesitation there.
The New Zealand troops were mobilizing when we arrived, and every
recruiting office was besieged with men. Splendid laddies they were,
who looked as if they would give a great account of themselves. As
they did--as they did. Their deeds at Gallipoli speak for them and
will forever speak for them--the men of Australia and New Zealand.
There the word Anzac was made--made from the first letters of these
words: Australian New Zealand Army Corps. It is a word that will
never die.
Even in the midst of war they had time to give me a welcome that
warmed my heart. And there were pipers with them, too, skirling a
tune as I stepped ashore. There were tears in my eyes again, as there
had been at Sydney. Every laddie in uniform made me think of my own
boy, well off, by now, on his way home to Britain and the duty that
had called him.
They were gathering, all over the Empire, those of British blood.
They were answering the call old Britain had sent across the seven
seas to the far corners of the earth. Even as the Scottish clans
gathered of old the greater British clans were gathering now. It was
a great thing to see that in the beginning; it has comforted me many
a time since, in a black hour, when news was bad and the Hun was
thundering at the line that was so thinly held in France.
Here were free peoples, not held, not bound, free to choose their
way. Britain could not make their sons come to her aid. If they came
they must come freely, joyously, knowing that it was a right cause, a
holy cause, a good cause, that called them. I think of the way they
came--of the way I saw them rising to the summons, in New Zealand, in
Australia, later in Canada. Aye, and I saw more--I saw Americans
slipping across the border, putting on Britain's khaki there in
Canada, because they knew that it was the fight of humanity, of
freedom, that they were entering. And that, too, gave me comfort
later in dark times, for it made me know that when the right time
came America would take her place beside old Britain and brave France.
New Zealand is a bonnie land. It made me think, sometimes, of the
Hielands of Scotland. A bonnie land, and braw are its people. They
made me happy there, and they made much of me.
At Christchurch they did a strange thing. They were selling off, at
auction, a Union Jack--the flag of Britain. Such a thing had never
been done before, or thought of. But here was a reason and a good
one. Money was needed for the laddies who were going--needed for all
sorts of things. To buy them small comforts, and tobacco, and such
things as the government might not be supplying them. And so they
asked me to be their auctioneer.
I played a fine trick upon them there in Christchurch. But I was not
ashamed of myself, and I think they have forgi'en me--those good
bodies at Christchurch!
Here was the way of it. I was auctioneer, you ken--but that was not
enough to keep me from bidding myself. And so I worked them up and
on--and then I bid in the flag for myself for a hundred pounds--five
hundred dollars of American money.
I had my doots about how they'd be taking it to have a stranger carry
their flag away. And so I bided a wee. I stayed that night in
Christchurch, and was to stay longer. I could wait. Above yon town of
Christchurch stretch the Merino Hills. On them graze sheep by the
thousand--and it is from those sheep that the true Merino wool comes.
And in the gutters of Christchurch there flows, all day long, a
stream of water as clear and pure as ever you might hope to see. And
it should be so, for it is from artesian wells that it is pumped.
Aweel, I bided that night and by next day they were murmuring in the
town, and their murmurs came to me. They thought it wasna richt for a
Scotsman to be carrying off their flag--though he'd bought it and
paid for it. And so at last they came to me, and wanted to be buying
back the flag. And I was agreeable.
"Aye-I'll sell it back to ye!" I told them. "But at a price, ye ken--
at a price! Pay me twice what I paid for it and it shall be yours!"
There was a Scots bargain for you! They must have thought me mean and
grasping that day. But out they went. They worked for the money. It
was but just a month after war had been declared, and money was still
scarce and shy of peeping out and showing itself. But, bit by bit, they
got the siller. A shilling at a time they raised, by subscription. But
they got it all, and brought it to me, smiling the while.
"Here, Harry--here's your money!" they said. "Now give us back our flag!"
Back to them I gave it--and with it the money they had brought, to be
added to the fund for the soldier boys. And so that one flag brought
three hundred pounds sterling to the soldiers. I wonder did those
folk at Christchurch think I would keep the money and make a profit
on that flag?
Had it been another time I'd have stayed in New Zealand gladly a long
time. It was a friendly place, and it gave us many a new friend. But
home was calling me. There was more than the homebound tour that had
been planned and laid out for me. I did not know how soon my boy
might be going to France. And his mother and I wanted to see him
again before he went, and to be as near him as might be.
So I was glad as well as sorry to sail away from New Zealand's
friendly shores, to the strains of pipers softly skirling:
"Will ye no come back again?"
We sailed for Sydney on the _Minnehaha_, a fast boat. We were glad of
her speed a day or so out, for there was smoke on the horizon that
gave some anxious hours to our officers. Some thought the German
raider _Emden_ was under that smoke. And it would not have been
surprising had a raider turned up in our path. For just before we
sailed it had been discovered that the man in charge of the principal
wireless station in New Zealand was a German, and he had been
interned. Had he sent word to German warships of the plans and
movements of British ships? No one could prove it, so he was only
interned.
Back we went to Sydney. A great change had come since our departure.
The war ruled all deed and thought. Australia was bound now to do her
part. No less faithfully and splendidly than New Zealand was she
engaged upon the enterprise the Hun had thrust upon the world.
Everyone was eager for news, but it was woefully scarce. Those were
the black, early days, when the German rush upon Paris was being
stayed, after the disasters of the first fortnight of the war, at the
Marne.
Everywhere, though there was no lack of determination to see the war
through to a finish, no matter how remote that might be, the feeling
was that this war was too huge, too vast, to last long. Exhaustion
would end it. War upon the modern scale could not last. So they said
--in September, 1914! So many of us believed--and this is the spring
of the fourth year of the war, and the end is not yet, is not in
sight, I fear.
Sydney turned out, almost as magnificently as when I had first landed
upon Australian soil, to bid me farewell. And we embarked again upon
that same old _Sonoma_ that had brought us to Australia. Again I saw
Paga-Paga and the natural folk, who had no need to toil nor spin to
live upon the fat of the land and be arrayed in the garments that
were always up to the minute in style.
Again I saw Honolulu, and, this time, stayed longer, and gave a
performance. But, though we were there longer, it was not long enough
to make me yield to that temptation to cuddle one of the brown
lassies! Aweel, I was not so young as I had been, and Mrs. Lauder--
you ken that she was travelling with me?
In the harbor of Honolulu there was a German gunboat, the _Geier_,
that had run there for shelter not long since, and had still left a
day or two, under the orders from Washington, to decide whether she
would let herself be interned or not. And outside, beyond the three
mile limit that marked the end of American territorial waters, were
two good reasons to make the German think well of being interned.
They were two cruisers, squat and ugly and vicious in their gray war
paint, that watched the entrance to the harbor as you have seen a cat
watching a rat hole.
It was not Britain's white ensign that they flew, those cruisers. It
was the red sun flag of Japan, one of Britain's allies against the
Hun. They had their vigil in vain, did those two cruisers. It was
valor's better part, discretion, that the German captain chose.
Aweel, you could no blame him! He and his ship would have been blown
out of the water so soon as she poked her nose beyond American
waters, had he chosen to go out and fight.
I was glad indeed when we came in sight of the Golden Gate once more,
and when we were safe ashore in San Francisco. It had been a
nerve-racking voyage in many ways. My wife and I were torn with
anxiety about our boy. And there were German raiders loose; one or two
had, so far, eluded the cordon the British fleet had flung about the
world. One night, soon after we left Honolulu, we were stopped. We
thought it was a British cruiser that stopped us, but she would only
ask questions--answering those we asked was not for her!
But we were ashore at last. There remained only the trip across the
United States to New York and the voyage across the Atlantic home.