e silence of the town was broken by
another sound. It was marching men we heard, but they were scuffling
with their feet as they came; they had not the rhythmic tread of most
of the British troops we had encountered. Nor were these men, when
they swung into sight, coming around a pile of ruins, just like any
British troops we had seen. I recognized them as once as Australians--
Kangaroos, as their mates in other divisions called them--by the way
their campaign hats were looped up at one side. These were the first
Australian troops I had seen since I had sailed from Sydney, in the
early days of the war, nearly three years before. Three years! To
think of it--and of what those years had seen!

"Here's a rare chance to give a concert!" I said, and held up my hand
to the officer in command.

"Halt!" he cried, and then: "Stand at ease!" I was about to tell him
why I had stopped them, and make myself known to them when I saw a
grin rippling its way over all those bronzed faces--a grin of
recognition. And I saw that the officer knew me, too, even before a
loud voice cried out:

"Good old Harry Lauder!"

That was a good Scots voice--even though its owner wore the
Australian uniform.

"Would the boys like to hear a concert?" I asked the officer.

"That they would! By all means!" he said. "Glad of the chance! And
so'm I! I've heard you just once before--in Sydney, away back in the
summer of 1914."

Then the big fellow who had called my name spoke up again.

"Sing us 'Calligan,'" he begged. "Sing us 'Calligan,' Harry! I heard
you sing it twenty-three years agone, in Motherwell Toon Hall!"

"Calligan!" The request for that song took me back indeed, through
all the years that I have been before the public. It must have been
at least twenty-three years since he had heard me sing that song--all
of twenty-three years. "Calligan" had been one of the very earliest
of my successes on the stage. I had not thought of the song, much
less sung it, for years and years. In fact, though I racked my
brains, I could not remember the words. And so, much as I should have
liked to do so, I could not sing it for him. But if he was
disappointed, he took it in good part, and he seemed to like some of
the newer songs I had to sing for them as well as he could ever have
liked old "Calligan."

I sang for these Kangaroos a song I had not sung before in France,
because it seemed to be an especially auspicious time to try it. I
wrote it while I