A Minstrel in France Part 2

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 sh.o.r.es, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 la.s.sies! 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 j.a.pan, 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 ash.o.r.e 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 ash.o.r.e 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 G.o.d 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 sh.o.r.e 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?