Boulogne a definite programme had been laid out for
the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour. We had decided that we would
get better results by adopting a programme and sticking to it at all
our meetings or concerts. So, at all the assemblies that we gathered,
Hogge opened proceedings by talking to the men about pensions, the
subject in which he was so vitally interested, and in which he had
done and was doing such magnificent work. Adam would follow him with
a talk about the war and its progress.

He was a splendid speaker, was Adam. He had all the eloquence of the
fine preacher that he was, but he did not preach to the lads in the
trenches--not he! He told them about the war, and about the way the
folks at hame in Britain were backing them up. He talked about war
loans and food conservation, and made them understand that it was not
they alone who were doing the fighting. It was a cheering and an
inspiring talk he gave them, and he got good round applause wherever
he spoke.

They saved me up for the last, and when Adam had finished speaking
either he or Hogge would introduce me, and my singing would begin.
That was the programme we had arranged for the Hole-in-the-Ground
Theater, as the Canadians called their amphitheater. For this
performance, of course, I had no piano. Johnson and the wee
instrument were back where we had left the motor cars, and so I just
had to sing without an accompaniment--except that which the great
booming of the guns was to furnish me.

I was afraid at first that the guns would bother me. But as I
listened to Hogge and Adam I ceased, gradually, to notice them at
all, and I soon felt that they would annoy me no more, when it was my
turn to go on, than the chatter of a bunch of stage hands in the
wings of a theater had so often done.

When it was my turn I began with "Roamin' In the Gloamin'." The verse
went well, and I swung into the chorus. I had picked the song to open
with because I knew the soldiers were pretty sure to know it, and so
would join me in the chorus--which is something I always want them to
do. And these were no exceptions to the general rule. But, just as I
got into the chorus, the tune of the guns changed. They had been
coughing and spitting intermittently, but now, suddenly, it seemed to
me that it was as if someone had kicked the lid off the fireworks
factory and dropped a lighted torch inside.

Every gun in the battery around the hole began whanging away at once.
I wa