A Minstrel In France by Harry Lauder

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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.

CHAPTER III

Now indeed we began to get real news of the war. We heard of how that
little British army had flung itself into the maw of the Hun. I came
to know something of the glories of the retreat from Mons, and of how
French and British had turned together at the Marne and had saved
Paris. But, alas, I heard too of how many brave men had died--had
been sacrificed, many and many a man of them, to the failure of
Britain to prepare.

That was past and done. What had been wrong was being mended now.
Better, indeed--ah, a thousand times better!--had Britain given heed
to Lord Roberts, when he preached the gospel of readiness and prayed
his countrymen to prepare for the war that he in his wisdom had
foreseen. But it was easier now to look into the future.

I could see, as all the world was beginning to see, that this war was
not like other wars. Lord Kitchener had said that Britain must make
ready for a three year war, and I, for one, believed him when others
scoffed, and said he was talking so to make the recruits for his
armies come faster to the colors. I could see that this war might
last for years. And it was then, back in 1914, in the first winter of
the war, that I began to warn my friends in America that they might
well expect the Hun to drag them into the war before its end. And I
made up my mind that I must beg Americans who would listen to me to
prepare.

So, all the way across the continent, I spoke, in every town we
visited, on that subject of preparedness. I had seen Britain, living
in just such a blissful anticipation of eternal peace as America then
dreamed of. I had heard, for years, every attempt that was made to
induce Britain to increase her army met with the one, unvarying reply.

"We have our fleet!" That was the answer that was made. And, be it
remembered, that at sea, Britain _was_ prepared! "We have our fleet.
We need no army. If there is a Continental war, we may not be drawn
in at all. Even if we are, they can't reach us. The fleet is between
us and invasion."

"But," said the advocates of preparedness, "we might have to send an
expeditionary force. If France were attacked, we should have to help
her on land as well as at sea. And we have sent armies to the
continent before."

"Yes," the other would reply. "We have an expeditionary force. We can
send more than a hundred thousand men across the channel at short
notice--the shortest. And we can train more men here, at home, in
case of need. The fleet makes that possible."

Aye, the fleet made that possible. The world may well thank God for
the British fleet. I do not know, and I do not like to think, what
might have come about save for the British fleet. But I do know what
came to that expeditionary force that we sent across the channel
quickly, to the help of our sore stricken ally, France. How many of
that old British army still survive?

They gave themselves utterly. They were the pick and the flower of
our trained manhood. They should have trained the millions who were
to rise at Kitchener's call. But they could not be held back. They
are gone. Others have risen up to take their places--ten for one--a
hundred for one! But had they been ready at the start! The bonnie
laddies who would be living now, instead of lying in an unmarked
grave in France or Flanders! The women whose eyes would never have
been reddened by their weeping as they mourned a son or a brother or
a husband!

So I was thinking as I set out to talk to my American friends and beg
them to prepare--prepare! I did not want to see this country share
the experience of Britain. If she needs must be drawn into the war--
and so I believed, profoundly, from the time when I first learned the
true measure of the Hun--I hoped that she might be ready when she
drew her mighty sword.

They thought I was mad, at first, many of those to whom I talked.
They were so far away from the war. And already the propaganda of the
Germans was at work. Aye, they thought I was raving when I told them
I'd stake my word on it. America would never be able to stay out
until the end. They listened to me. They were willing to do that. But
they listened, doubtingly. I think I convinced few of ought save that
I believed myself what I was saying.

I could tell them, do you ken, that I'd thought, at first, as they
did! Why, over yon, in Australia, when I'd first heard that the
Germans were attacking France, I was sorry, for France is a bonnie
land. But the idea that Britain might go in I, even then, had laughed
at. And then Britain _had_ gone in! My own boy had gone to the war.
For all I knew I might be reading of him, any day, when I read of a
charge or a fight over there in France! Anything was possible--aye,
probable!

I have never called myself a prophet. But then, I think, I had
something of a prophet's vision. And all the time I was struggling
with my growing belief that this was to be a long war, and a
merciless war. I did not want to believe some of the things I knew I
must believe. But every day came news that made conviction sink in
deeper and yet deeper.

It was not a happy trip, that one across the United States. Our
friends did all they could to make it so, but we were consumed by too
many anxieties and cares. How different was it from my journey
westward--only nine months earlier! The world had changed forever in
those nine months.

Everywhere I spoke for preparedness. I addressed the Rotary Clubs,
and great audiences turned out to listen to me. I am a Rotarian
myself, and I am proud indeed that I may so proclaim myself. It is a
great organization. Those who came to hear me were cordial, nearly
always. But once or twice I met hostility, veiled but not to be
mistaken. And it was easy to trace it to its source. Germans, who
loved the country they had left behind them to come to a New World
that offered them a better home and a richer life than they could
ever have aspired to at home, were often at the bottom of the
opposition to what I had to say.

They did not want America to prepare, lest her weight be flung into
the scale against Germany. And there were those who hated Britain.
Some of these remembered old wars and grudges that sensible folk had
forgotten long since; others, it may be, had other motives. But there
was little real opposition to what I had to say. It was more a good
natured scoffing, and a feeling that I was cracked a wee bit,
perhaps, about the war.

I was not sorry to see New York again. We stayed there but one day,
and then sailed for home on the Cunarder _Orduna_--which has since
been sunk, like many another good ship, by the Hun submarines.

But those were the days just before the Hun began his career of real
frightfulness upon the sea--and under it. Even the Hun came gradually
to the height of his powers in this war. It was not until some weeks
later that he startled the world by proclaiming that every ship that
dared to cross a certain zone of the sea would be sunk without warning.

When we sailed upon the old _Orduna_ we had anxieties, to be sure.
The danger of striking a mine was never absent, once we neared the
British coasts. There was always the chance, we knew, that some
German raider might have slipped through the cordon in the North Sea.
But the terrors that were to follow the crime of the _Lusitania_ still
lay in the future. They were among the things no man could foresee.

The _Orduna_ brought us safe to the Mersey and we landed at Liverpool.
Even had there been no thought of danger to the ship, that voyage would
have been a hard one for us to endure. We never ceased thinking of John,
longing for him and news of him. It was near Christmas, but we had small
hope that we should be able to see him on that day.

All through the voyage we were shut away from all news. The wireless
is silenced in time of war, save for such work as the government
allows. There is none of the free sending, from shore to ship, and
ship to ship, of all the news of the world, such as one grows to
welcome in time of peace. And so, from New York until we neared the
British coast, we brooded, all of us. How fared it with Britain in
the war? Had the Hun launched some new and terrible attack?

[ILLUSTRATION: "I did not stop at sending out my recruiting band. I
went out myself.". (See Lauder02.jpg)]

But two days out from home we saw a sight to make us glad and end our
brooding for a space.

"Eh, Harry--come and look you!" someone called to me. It was early in
the morning, and there was a mist about us.

I went to the rail and looked in the direction I was told. And there,
rising suddenly out of the mist, shattering it, I saw great, gray
ships--warships--British battleships and cruisers. There they were,
some of the great ships that are the steel wall around Britain that
holds her safe. My heart leaped with joy and pride at the sight of
them, those great, gray guardians of the British shores, bulwarks of
steel that fend all foemen from the rugged coast and the fair land
that lies behind it.

Now we were safe, ourselves! Who would not trust the British navy,
after the great deeds it has done in this war? For there, mind you,
is the one force that has never failed. The British navy has done
what it set out to do. It has kept command of the seas. The
submarines? The tin fish? They do not command the sea! Have they kept
Canada's men, and America's, from reaching France?

When we landed my first inquiry was for my son John. He was well, and
he was still in England, in training at Bedford with his regiment,
the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders. But it was as we had feared.
Our Christmas must be kept apart. And so the day before Christmas
found us back in our wee hoose on the Clyde, at Dunoon. But we
thought of little else but the laddie who was making ready to fight
for us, and of the day, that was coming soon, when we should see him.

CHAPTER IV

It was a fitting place to train men for war, Bedford, where John was
with his regiment, and where his mother and I went to see him so soon
as we could after Christmas. It is in the British midlands, but
before the factory towns begin. It is a pleasant, smiling country,
farming country, mostly, with good roads, and fields that gave the
boys chances to learn the work of digging trenches--aye, and living
in them afterward.

Bedford is one of the great school towns of England. Low, rolling
hills lie about it; the river Ouse, a wee, quiet stream, runs through
it. Schooling must be in the air of Bedford! Three great schools for
boys are there, and two for girls. And Liberty is in the air of
Bedford, too, I think! John Bunyan was born two miles from Bedford,
and his old house still stands in Elstow, a little village of old
houses and great oaks. And it was in Bedford Jail that Bunyan was
imprisoned because he would fight for the freedom of his own soul.

John was waiting to greet us, and he looked great. He had two stars
now where he had one before--he had been promoted to first
lieutenant. There were curious changes in the laddie I remembered. He
was bigger, I thought, and he looked older, and graver. But that I
could not wonder at. He had a great responsibility. The lives of
other men had been entrusted to him, and John was not the man to take
a responsibility like that lightly.

I saw him the first day I was at Bedford, leading some of his men in
a practice charge. Big, braw laddies they were--all in their kilts.
He ran ahead of them, smiling as he saw me watching them, but turning
back to cheer them on if he thought they were not fast enough. I
could see as I watched him that he had caught the habit of command.
He was going to be a good officer. It was a proud thought for me, and
again I was rejoiced that it was such a son that I was able to offer
to my country.

They were kept busy at that training camp. Men were needed sore in
France. Recruits were going over every day. What the retreat from
Mons and the Battle of the Marne had left of that first heroic
expeditionary force the first battle of Ypres had come close to
wiping out. In the Ypres salient our men out there were hanging on
like grim death. There was no time to spare at Bedford, where men
were being made ready as quickly as might be to take their turn in
the trenches.

But there was a little time when John and I could talk.

"What do you need most, son?" I asked him.

"Men!" he cried. "Men, Dad, men! They're coming in quickly. Oh,
Britain has answered nobly to the call. But they're not coming in
fast enough. We must have more men--more men!"

I had thought, when I asked my question, of something John might be
needing for himself, or for his men, mayhap. But when he answered me
so I said nothing. I only began to think. I wanted to go myself. But
I knew they would not have me--yet awhile, at any rate. And still I
felt that I must do something. I could not rest idle while all around
me men were giving themselves and all they had and were.

Everywhere I heard the same cry that John had raised:

"Men! Give us men!"

It came from Lord Kitchener. It came from the men in command in
France and Belgium--that little strip of Belgium the Hun had not been
able to conquer. It came from every broken, maimed man who came back
home to Britain to be patched up that he might go out again. There
were scores of thousands of men in Britain who needed only the last
quick shove to send them across the line of enlistment. And after I
had thought a while I hit upon a plan.

"What stirs a man's fighting spirit quicker or better than the right
sort of music?" I asked myself. "And what sort of music does it best
of all?"

There can be only one answer to that last question! And so I
organized my recruiting band, that was to be famous all over Britain
before so very long. I gathered fourteen of the best pipers and
drummers I could find in all Scotland. I equipped them, gave them the
Highland uniform, and sent them out, to travel over Britain skirling
and drumming the wail of war through the length and breadth of the
land. They were to go everywhere, carrying the shrieking of the pipes
into the highways and the byways, and so they did. And I paid the bills.

That was the first of many recruiting bands that toured Britain.
Because it was the first, and because of the way the pipers skirled
out the old hill melodies and songs of Scotland, enormous crowds
followed my band. And it led them straight to the recruiting
stations. There was a swing and a sway about those old tunes that the
young fellows couldn't resist.

The pipers would begin to skirl and the drums to beat in a square,
maybe, or near the railway station. And every time the skirling of
the pipes would bring the crowd. Then the pipers would march, when
the crowd was big enough, and lead the way always to the recruiting
place. And once they were there the young fellows who weren't "quite
ready to decide" and the others who were just plain slackers, willing
to let better men die for them, found it mighty hard to keep from going
on the wee rest of the way that the pipers had left them to make alone!

It was wonderful work my band did, and when the returns came to me I
felt like the Pied Piper! Yes I did, indeed!

I did not travel with my band. That would have been a waste of
effort. There was work for both of us to do, separately. I was booked
for a tour of Britain, and everywhere I went I spoke, and urged the
young men to enlist. I made as many speeches as I could, in every
town and city that I visited, and I made special trips to many. I
thought, and there were those who agreed with me, that I could, it
might be, reach audiences another speaker, better trained than I, no
doubt, in this sort of work, would not touch.

So there was I, without official standing, going about, urging every
man who could to don khaki. I talked wherever and whenever I could
get an audience together, and I began then the habit of making
speeches in the theatres, after my performance, that I have not yet
given up. I talked thus to the young men.

"If you don't do your duty now," I told them, "you may live to be old
men. But even if you do, you will regret it! Yours will be a
sorrowful old age. In the years to come, mayhap, there'll be a wee
grandchild nestling on your knee that'll circle its little arms about
your neck and look into your wrinkled face, and ask you:

"'How old are you, Grandpa? You're a very old man.'

"How will you answer that bairn's question?" So I asked the young
men. And then I answered for them: "I don't know how old I am, but I
am so old that I can remember the great war."

"And then"--I told them, the young men who were wavering--"and then
will come the question that you will always have to dread--when you
have won through to the old age that may be yours in safety if you
shirk now! For the bairn will ask you, straightaway: 'Did _you_ fight
in the great war, Grandpa? What did you do?'

"God help the man," I told them, "who cannot hand it down as a
heritage to his children and his children's children that he fought
in the great war!"

I must have impressed many a brave lad who wanted only a bit of
resolution to make him do his duty. They tell me that I and my band
together influenced more than twelve thousand men to join the colors;
they give me credit for that many, in one way and another. I am proud
of that. But I am prouder still of the way the boys who enlisted upon
my urging feel. Never a one has upbraided me; never a one has told me
he was sorry he had heard me and been led to go.

It is far otherwise. The laddies who went because of me called me
their godfather, many of them! Many's the letter I have had from
them; many the one who has greeted me, as I was passing through a
hospital, or, long afterward, when I made my first tour in France,
behind the front line trenches. Many letters, did I say? I have had
hundreds--thousands! And not so much as a word of regret in any one
of them.

It was not only in Britain that I influenced enlistments. I preached
the cause of the Empire in Canada, later. And here is a bit of verse
that a Canadian sergeant sent to me. He dedicated it to me, indeed,
and I am proud and glad that he did.

"ONE OF THE BOYS WHO WENT"

Say, here now, Mate,
Don't you figure it's great
To think when this war is all over;
When we're through with this mud,
And spilling o' blood,
And we're shipped back again to old Dover.
When they've paid us our tin,
And we've blown the lot in,
And our last penny is spent;
We'll still have a thought--
If it's all that we've got--
I'm one of the boys who went!
And perhaps later on
When your wild days are gone,
You'll be settling down for life,
You've a girl in your eye
You'll ask bye and bye
To share up with you as your wife.
When a few years have flown,
And you've kids of your own,
And you're feeling quite snug and content;
It'll make your heart glad
When they boast of their dad
As one of the boys who went!

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