re skeletons. New
officers were getting acquainted with their men; that wonderful thing
that is called esprit de corps was being made all around me. It is a
great sight to watch it in the making; it helps you to understand the
victories our laddies have won.

I was glad to see the kilted men of the Scots regiments all about me.
It was them, after all, that I had come to see. I wanted to talk to
them, and see them here, in France. I had seen them at hame, flocking
to the recruiting offices. I had seen them in their training camps.
But this was different. I love all the soldiers of the Empire, but it
is natural, is it no, that my warmest feeling should be for the
laddies who wear the kilt.

They were the most cheerful souls, as I saw them when we reached
their rest camp, that you could imagine. They were laughing and
joking all about us, and when they heard that the Reverend Harry
Lauder, M.P., Tour had arrived they crowded about us to see. They
wanted to make sure that I was there, and I was greeted in all sorts
of dialect that sounded enough, I'll be bound, to Godfrey and some of
the rest of our party. There were even men who spoke to me in the
Gaelic.

I saw a good deal, afterward, of these Scots troops. My, how hard
they did work while they rested! And what chances they took of broken
bones and bruises in their play! Ye would think, would ye no, that
they had enough of that in the trenches, where they got lumps and
bruises and sorer hurts in the run of duty? But no. So soon as they
came back to their rest billets they must begin to play by knocking
the skin and the hair off one another at sports of various sorts, of
which football was among the mildest, that are not by any means to be
recommended to those of a delicate fiber.

Some of the men I met at Aubigny had been out since Mons--some of the
old kilted regiments of the old regular army, they were. Away back in
those desperate days the Germans had dubbed them the ladies from
Hell, on account of their kilts. Some of the Germans really thought
they were women! That was learned from prisoners. Since Mons they
have been out, and auld Scotland has poured out men by the scores of
thousands, as fast as they were needed, to fill the gaps the German
shells and bullets have torn in the Scots ranks. Aye--since Mons, and
they will be there at the finish, when it comes, please God!

There have always been Scots regiments in the British army, ever
since the day when King