I could not, much as I should in many ways have liked to do so,
prolong my stay in Scotland. The peace and the restfulness of the
Highlands, the charm of the heather and the hills, the long, lazy
days with my rod, whipping some favorite stream--ah, they made me
happy for a moment, but they could not make me forget! My duty called
me back, and the thought of war, and suffering, and there were
moments when it seemed to me that nothing could keep me from plunging
again into the work I had set out to do.
In those days I was far too restless to be taking my ease at home, in
my wee hoose at Dunoon. A thousand activities called me. The rest had
been necessary; I had had to admit that, and to obey my doctor, for I
had been feeling the strain of my long continued activity, piled up,
as it was, on top of my grief and care. And yet I was eager to be off
and about my work again.
I did not want to go back to the same work I had been doing. No! I
was still a young man. I was younger than men and officers who were
taking their turn in the trenches. I was but forty-six years old, and
there was a lot of life and snap in the old dog yet! My life had been
rightly lived. As a young man I had worked in a pit, ye ken, and that
had given me a strength in my back and my legs that would have served
me well in the trenches. War, these days, means hard work as well as
fighting--more, indeed. War is a business, a great industry, now.
There is all manner of work that must be done at the front and right
behind it. Aye, and I was eager to be there and to be doing my share
of it--and not for the first time.
Many a time, and often, I had broached my idea of being allowed to
enlist, e'en before the Huns killed my boy. But they would no listen
to me. They told me, each time, that there was more and better work
for me to do at hame in Britain, spurring others on, cheering them
when they came back maimed and broken, getting the country to put its
shoulder to the wheel when it came to subscribing to the war loans
and all the rest of it. And it seemed to me that it was not for me to
decide; that I must obey those who were better in a position to judge
than I could be.
I went down south to England, and I talked again of enlisting and
trying to get a crack at those who had killed my boy. And again my
friends refused to listen to me.
"Why, Harry," they said to me--and not my own friends, only, but men
highly placed enough to make me know that I must pay heed to what
they said--"you must not think of it! If you enlisted, or if we got
you a commission, you'd be but one man out there. Here you're worth
many men--a brigade, or a division, maybe. You are more use to us
than many men who go out there to fight. You do great things toward
winning the war every day. No, Harry, there is work for every man in
Britain to do, and you have found yours and are doing it."
I was not content, though, even when I seemed to agree with them. I
did try to argue, but it was no use. And still I felt that it was no
time for a man to be playing and to be giving so much of his time to
making others gay. It was well for folk to laugh, and to get their
minds off the horror of war for a little time. Well I knew! Aye, and
I believed that I was doing good, some good at least, and giving
cheer to some puir laddies who needed it sorely. But--weel, it was no
what I wanted to be doing when my country was fighting for her life!
I made up my mind, slowly, what it was that I wanted to do that would
fit in with the ideas and wishes of those whose word I was bound to
heed and that would still come closer than what I was doing to meet
my own desires.
Every day, nearly, then, I was getting letters from the front. They
came from laddies whom I'd helped to make up their minds that they
belonged over yon, where the men were. Some were from boys who came
from aboot Dunoon. I'd known those laddies since they were bits o'
bairns, most of them. And then there were letters--and they touched
me as much and came as close home as any of them--from boys who were
utter strangers to me, but who told me they felt they knew me because
they'd seen me on the stage, or because their phonograph, maybe,
played some of my records, and because they'd read that my boy had
shared their dangers and given his life, as they were ready, one and
all, to do.
And those letters, nearly all, had the same refrain. They wanted me.
They wanted me to come to them, since they couldn't be coming to me.
"Come on out here and see us and sing for us, Harry," they'd write to
me. "It'd be a fair treat to see your mug and hear you singing about
the wee hoose amang the heather or the bonnie, bonnie lassie!"
How could a man get such a plea as that and not want to do what those
laddies asked? How could he think of the great deal they were doing
and not want to do the little bit they asked of him? But it was no a
simple matter, ye'll ken! I could not pack a bag and start for France
from Charing Cross or Victoria as I might have done--and often did--
before the war. No one might go to France unless he had passports and
leave from the war office, and many another sort of arrangement there
was to make. But I set wheels in motion.
Just to go to France to sing for the boys would have been easy
enough. They told me that at once.
"What? Harry Lauder wants to go to France to sing for the soldiers?
He shall--whenever he pleases! Tell him we'll be glad to send him!"
So said the war office. But I knew what they meant. They meant for me
to go to one or more of the British bases and give concerts. There
were troops moving in and out of the bases all the time; men who'd
been in the trenches or in action in an offensive and were back in
rest billets, or even further back, were there in their thousands.
But it was the real front I was eager to reach. I wanted to be where
my boy had been, and to see his grave. I wanted to sing for the
laddies who were bearing the brunt of the big job over there--while
they were bearing it.
And that no one had done. Many of our leading actors and singers and
other entertainers were going back and forth to France all the time.
Never a week went by but they were helping to cheer up the boys at
the bases. It was a grand work they were doing, and the boys were
grateful to them, and all Britain should share that gratitude. But it
was a wee bit more that I wanted to be doing, and there was the rub.
I wanted to go up to the battle lines themselves and to sing for the
boys who were in the thick of the struggle with the Hun. I wanted to
give a concert in a front-line trench where the Huns could hear me,
if they cared to listen. I wanted them to learn once more the lesson
we could never teach them often enough--the lesson of the spirit of
the British army, that could go into battle with a laugh on its lips.
But at first I got no encouragement at all when I told what it was in
my mind to do. My friends who had influence shook their heads.
"I'm afraid it can't be managed, Harry," they told me. "It's never
been done."
I told them what I believed myself, and what I have often thought of
when things looked hard and prospects were dark. I told them
everything had to be done for the first time sometime, and I begged
them not to give up the effort to win my way for me. And so I knew
that when they told me no one had done it before it wasn't reason
enough why I shouldn't do it. And I made up my mind that I would be
the pioneer in giving concerts under fire if that should turn out to
be a part of the contract.
But I could not argue. I could only say what it was that I wanted to
do, and wait the pleasure of those whose duty it was to decide. I
couldn't tell the military authorities where they must send me. It
was for me to obey when they gave their orders, and to go wherever
they thought I would do the most good. I would not have you thinking
that I was naming conditions, and saying I would go where I pleased
or bide at hame! That was not my way. All I could do was to hope that
in the end they would see matters as I did and so decide to let me
have my way. But I was ready for my orders, whatever they might be.
There was one thing I wanted, above all others, to do when I got to
France, and so much I said. I wanted to meet the Highland Brigade,
and see the bonnie laddies in their kilts as the Huns saw them--the
Huns, who called them the Ladies from Hell, and hated them worse than
they hated any troops in the whole British army.
Ha' ye heard the tale of the Scotsman and the Jew? Sandy and Ikey
they were, and they were having a disputatious argument together.
Each said he could name more great men of his race who were famous in
history than the other could. And they argued, and nearly came to
blows, and were no further along until they thought of making a bet.
An odd bet it was. For each great name that Sandy named of a Scot
whom history had honored he was to pull out one of Ikey's hairs, and
Ikey was to have the same privilege.
"Do ye begin!" said Sandy.
"Moses!" said They, and pulled.
"Bobbie Burns!" cried Sandy, and returned the compliment.
"Abraham!" said Ikey, and pulled again. "Ouch--Duggie Haig!" said
Sandy.
And then Ikey grabbed a handful of hairs at once.
"Joseph and his brethren!" he said, gloating a bit as he watched the
tears starting from Sandy's eyes at the pain of losing so many good
hairs at once.
"So it's pulling them out in bunches ye are!" said Sandy. "Ah, well,
man" And he reached with both his hands for Ikey's thatch.
"The Hieland Brigade!" he roared, and pulled all the hairs his two
hands would hold!
Ah, weel, there are sad thoughts that come to me, as well as proud
and happy ones, when I think of the bonnie kilted laddies who fought
and died so nobly out there against the Hun! They were my own
laddies, those, and it was with them and amang them that my boy went
to his death. It was amang them I would find, I thought, those who
could tell me more than I knew of how he had died, and of how he had
lived before he died. And I thought the boys of the brigade would be
glad to see me and to hear my songs--songs of their hames and their
ain land, auld Scotland. And so I used what influence I had, and did
not think it wrong to employ at such a time, and in such a cause. For
I knew that if they sent me to the Hieland Brigade they would be
sending me to the front of the front line--for that was where I would
have to go seeking the Hieland laddies!
I waited as patiently as I could. And then one day I got my orders! I
was delighted, for the thing they had told me could not be done had
actually been arranged for me. I was asked to get ready to go to
France to entertain the soldiers, and it was the happiest day I had
known since I had heard of my boy's death.
There was not much for me to do in the way of making ready. The whole
trip, of course, would be a military one. I might be setting out as a
minstrel for France, but every detail of my arrangements had to be
made in accordance with military rules, and once I reached France I
would be under the orders of the army in every movement I might make.
All that was carefully explained to me.
But still there were things for me to think about and to arrange. I
wanted some sort of accompaniment for my songs, and how to get it
puzzled me for a time. But there was a firm in London that made
pianos that heard of my coming trip, and solved that problem for me.
They built, and they presented to me, the weest piano ever you saw--a
piano so wee that it could be carried in an ordinary motor car. Only
five octaves it had, but it was big enough, and sma' enough at once.
I was delighted with it, and so were all who saw it. It weighed only
about a hundred and fifty pounds--less than even a middling stout
man! And it was cunningly built, so that no space at all was wasted.
Mrs. Lauder, when she saw it, called it cute, and so did every other
woman who laid eyes upon it. It was designed to be carried on the
grid of a motor car--and so it was, for many miles of shell-torn
roads!
When I was sure of my piano I thought of another thing it would be
well for me to take with me. And so I spent a hundred pounds--five
hundred American dollars--for cigarettes. I knew they would be welcome
everywhere I went. It makes no matter how many cigarettes we send to
France, there will never be enough. My friends thought I was making a
mistake in taking so many; they were afraid they would make matters
hard when it came to transportation, and reminded me that I faced
difficulties in that respect in France it was nearly impossible for us
at home in Britain to visualize at all. But I had my mind and my heart
set on getting those fags--a cigarette is a fag to every British
soldier--to my destination with me. Indeed, I thought they would mean
more to the laddies out there than I could hope to do myself!
I was not to travel alone. My tour was to include two traveling
companions of distinction and fame. One was James Hogge, M.P., member
from East Edinburgh, who was eager, as so many members of Parliament
were, to see for himself how things were at the front. James Hogge
was one of the members most liked by the soldiers. He had worked hard
for them, and gained--and well earned--much fame by the way he
struggled with the matter of getting the right sort of pensions for
the laddies who were offering their lives.
The other distinguished companion I was to have was an old and good
friend of mine, the Reverend George Adam, then a secretary to the
Minister of Munitions. He lived in Ilford, a suburb of London, then,
but is now in Montreal, Canada. I was glad of the opportunity to travel
with both these men, for I knew that one's traveling companions, on
such a tour, were of the utmost importance in determining its success
or failure, and I could not have chosen a better pair, had the choice
been left to me--which, of course, it was not.
There we were, you see--the Reverend George Adam, Harry Lauder and
James Hogge, M.P. And no sooner did the soldiers hear of the
combination than our tour was named "The Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P.,
Tour" was what we were called! And that absurd name stuck to us
through our whole journey, in France, up and down the battle line,
and until we came home to England and broke up!