The Red Watch Part 7

We were much struck at first by the fact that in England farmers paid no attention to the rain. They kept on ploughing in rain, that in Canada would have sent the hired man to the shelter of the barn. After a while it dawned on us that if they did not plough in the rain they would not get any ploughing done at all.

Not only did the battalions give their days to drill but after they got through their squad drill they took two nights a week in training.

All this soon began to get the men in shape.

On Thursday, November 19th, the 3rd Brigade had a visit from Mr.

Rudyard Kipling. I sat at lunch with him and formed a friendship which I regard very highly. Mr. Kipling is one of the great men of the age, the first Imperialist of the Empire. He said very nice things about the Canadians.

On the 27th of November the Canadian Division was reviewed by General Pitcairn Campbell, Officer Commanding the southern command. The Division was drawn up in a long line on the Downs and presented a formidable aspect. It was one of the most inspiring sights I have ever seen. There was plenty of room on the plains and after we had performed a number of evolutions we were formed in line miles long and marched some distance, then formed for an attack upon a ridge crowned by a number of tumuli. The earth trembled with the tread of the battalions and the hoofs of the battery horses. Thirty thousand Canadians in battle array is a sight never to be forgotten. Everything pa.s.sed off well, considering the difficulties with which we had to contend. General Campbell was accompanied by Mr. Walter Long, M.P.

After luncheon he was kind enough to ride over to the 48th and complimented us very highly on our excellent appearance. The field training and hard work was working wonders on the men. Every day they were becoming better soldiers. It was the same with the other battalions. The officers were in earnest and unconsciously they were giving to the men under their command just what they needed. In the ranks there were a number of men born in the British Isles. Most of the officers were of Canadian birth, and the British-born soldier gets on magnificently with Colonial officers. Mutual respect was gradually bringing about efficiency and discipline of a very high order.

There was still much discontent because we were not sent abroad. It was not as bad with us as with Kitchener's Army. The question everybody was asking of the men in khaki was "When are you going to the Front?" It is wonderful how the sight of a uniform acts on the people's mind. They think that just as soon as a man dons a uniform he is ready to go to the Front. This re-acts on the men, and with everyone asking "When are you going to the Front?" they become almost frantic with impatience. After a soldier has been drilling a while, however, he realizes there is still something for him to learn. Then when he gets to the Front he discovers that it is not just knowing his drill that made him a soldier but the experience of obeying orders and doing the same things over and over again until he forgets drill and does the right thing without even thinking.

People who ask soldiers when they are going to the "Front" forget that it is not the men's fault they do not leave for the Front at once. A man that had lost a leg and whose left arm had been shattered at the elbow was invalided home, and he complained to me that because he was in uniform everybody kept asking him when he was going to the Front.

In November we learned that the arch corsair, the "Emden," had been caught and put out of business by the Australian cruiser "Sydney,"

after a spirited action in which the latter ship upheld the traditions of the British Navy. We also learned that while in England the Canadians were supposed to take a share in the defense of the East coast in case of a German invasion. On two separate occasions I was called at midnight and warned to be ready.

I forgot to mention that the Royal Flying Corps had a school at Lark Hill near Amesbury and that every day the aviators sailed above us. On several places on the Plains monuments have been erected by the Flying Corps in memory of officers who had given their lives in the interests of the new science. Some of the Canadians joined this Corps. Lieut.

Lawson of the 48th, an engineer of ability and experience, subsequently joined and served in Mesopotamia. One man in our battalion wanted to join, but when it was pointed out to him that according to the statistics of the war his chances of being killed in a Highland Battalion were much better than in a flying squadron, he decided to stay with the 48th.

Towards Christmas we received an invitation to go to Glasgow and play football against one of the Glasgow battalions. On Christmas Day a number of the Canadian oarsmen in the different regiments had a race for eights in the Thames. We had eight first cla.s.s men who had belonged to Canadian fast crews, namely, Lieutenants Alex. Sinclair, Acland, Bickell, Muir, Taylor, Bath, Wilson and Campbell. The crews were arranged according to clubs at home. If the crews had been by battalions I am inclined to think we would have won.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OUR PULLMAN COACH]

Our football team went to Glasgow on New Year's Day and played at Annie's Land. They played a very strong game but were up against new rules that penalized them, so they did not win.

The people of Glasgow were very kind and appreciative.

CHAPTER X

HIS MAJESTY THE KING, AND FIELD MARSHAL THE RIGHT HONORABLE VISCOUNT KITCHENER

"Did they bury him standing on his head, or the other way on?"

We, that is to say, Mr. J.R. Robinson, editor of the Toronto Telegram, and I stood in Westminster Abbey at the spot in the hallowed floor where "Rare" Ben Jonson had claimed his foot of ground, and we were playing "Innocents Abroad" and having some fun with our guide. He told us that he was a Swiss and that he had shown "Buffalo Bill," "Sir"

Thomas Edison, and other famous Americans about the place.

"I guess they stood him up on his feet," answered the guide.

"Was he the man who wrote the dictionary?"

"I guess that is him," answered the guide. "I understand he was a literary man."

"Who was this chap Goldsmith? Was he the first p.a.w.nbroker, or the man who invented watches?"

"I think he had something to do with the watches," said our guide, awestricken by our profound knowledge.

"Who was this Salisbury?" we asked. "He must have been somebody important to have such a fine monument?"

"He was some rich lawyer chap," was the answer we received. We were certainly having our money's worth.

We wandered up and down the aisles; beneath whose flagstones rest Britain's honored dead.

"What strikes me most," said Robinson, "is not the number of tombs and monuments to the great, but the numberless monuments to nonent.i.ties that by some means have managed to creep into the shadow of greatness, by crowding upon the tombs of the Immortals in this Holy of Holies, the Temple of Fame of the British race."

After we had grilled our guide to our heart's content, and fed him till he almost fainted, we went around to have a look at Cromwell's monument and the spot in the great hall where Charles I. stood when he received his death sentence. Poor Charles, whose pictures look so much like his descendant William of Germany, the Kaiser, who has caused so much trouble for us all.

Of all the public buildings I have ever seen the great Hall of William Rufus at Westminster impressed me most. It is of the Norman order of architecture. The conception and simplicity of the structure is magnificent. King William announced to the banquetting courtiers, according to tradition, that this majestic structure was intended as an ante-room to the great Parliament Buildings which he intended to rear on the banks of the Thames. The person who reads the poetry of the stones inwardly curses the careless archer whose arrow cut short the career of this truly great king, for this is not the only great structure that "William the Red" conceived and commenced during his turbulent reign.

The three distinctive monuments of London are, this Hall of William the Red, the grim dominating lineaments shown in Cromwell's statue, and the n.o.ble well balanced head of the great Clive, the foremost of Empire builders.

"London Bridge is falling Down" is the marching-out tune of the "Red Watch," and many other Highland Regiments, although in the Celtic the words of the song say "Well tak' the High Road." London Bridge had not fallen down in spite of threatened Zeppelin raids, and from it we had a good look at the Thames with the magnificent vista of buildings along the embankment.

The Thames means a great deal to the Imperialist. I have seen the Missouri River where it joins the Mississippi, the two gigantic streams forming a symphony of liquid mud, the Detroit River rushing between two busy cities laden with hundreds of ships representing liquid commerce, but the Thames,--the Thames represents liquid history.

There was great joy and rejoicing when we were informed that everybody was to have a holiday either at Christmas or New Year, and that His Majesty had decreed that free transportation would be provided for such as wished a holiday to visit friends. A free trip to any place in Great Britain or Ireland meant a great deal to our men. The Government had taken over the British railways on an agreement to pay the proprietors the amount of the earnings in 1913, during the period the roads would be under control. The managers of the railways had been formed into a Board to run the roads, and the whole thing had proved such a great success that the Government was virtually having the work done for nothing. In the language of the London _Statist_, this was "the best bargain" the British government ever made.

The curse of railways is compet.i.tion. Governments can and have endeavored to adjust rates so as to cheapen the cost of service and at the same time put a stop to rate cutting, but there is such a thing as compet.i.tion in service or operation which means running too many trains, where control by the Government ends.

The whole matter, however, turned out to the advantage of the soldiers. Those of our men who had friends in England chose Christmas for their holidays. The Scotchmen selected New Year's, and the Irish chose both and had their way, for what Commanding Officer could deny a man a two weeks' holiday in the Green Isle when the recipient stood a good chance of never seeing the home of his ancestors again?

The pipes of the 48th Highlanders played on New Year's Day in Glasgow, but Scotland was too busy with the war to listen. I spent a few days in the Hebrides. This is not the place for the description of a tour in the Highlands. There is something about the Highland Hills that impresses one very deeply. The peaks are not so majestic as the Saw Tooth Rockies, the Kicking Horse Range, the Cariboo Mountain, or the Range of the Agawa Valley on the northwest sh.o.r.e of Lake Superior which is the most beautiful spot probably in the whole world, but there is something of solemn grandeur in the Scottish Hills that pertains to them alone. They are cathedral-like in their majesty. No wonder they have produced poets and soldiers.

But Scotland was busy arming for the war. Every man of military age was taking to the field. It required no conscription to send the Scots to the war. Ninety-three per cent. of the sons of the Scottish Manse had volunteered and gone, and only the lame, the halt and the blind of military age remained. If this war continued very long there would be no Scotch left, except what you get in bottles.

I spent a day in Mull and Iona motoring with a friend who was enlisting men for the naval service. We stopped at a village on our return, and while he went off to see a young man, I was sitting in the automobile opposite a small cottage, at the front gate of which stood a tall, handsome young woman, with two tiny children clinging to her skirts. She managed to pluck up courage to speak to me.

"Perhaps you are from the war, Sir?" she said with a wistful look on her face, and a strong Highland accent.

"My husband is in one of the Highland Regiments, perhaps you have seen his battalion, the Argyles?"

I replied in the negative, adding that I belonged to a Canadian Highland Regiment.

"There are only two young men left in this village who have not gone to the war," she volunteered. "And they will have to be out of here to-morrow, or they will hear from the women."

"You Scotch women are very hard on the men," I said in a half joking way; "You are sending them all to the war. There won't be any left.

Why did you, with those two little children, let your husband go to the war?"

This seemed to stagger her for a moment, then she drew herself up scornfully and turning on me, with her eyes fairly blazing, she said:

"I am a Cameron, Sir. I would never have spoken to him again if he had not volunteered to go to the war."

I regretted my remark, and the refrain of the old Jacobite song recurred to me, "A Cameron never can yield." This is an example of the spirit of the Highland Scotch people in the Great War.

It should be considered a duty of every person of Scottish blood to see Scotland and live in it, if only for a short time, and have their children see "Home." The people of Scotland cannot understand why Colonials and Americans of Scottish descent to the second and third generations, especially Canadians, should call Scotland "Home." The reason is easily explained.