st have thought often of their future. They must have wondered
what was to become of them, when they had to take up the struggle
with the world anew--no longer on even terms with their mates, but
handicapped by grievous injuries that had come to them in the noblest
of ways. I remembered crippled soldiers, victims of other wars, whom
I had seen selling papers and matches on street corners, objects of
charity, almost, to a generation that had forgotten the service to
the country that had put them in the way of having to make their
living so. And I had made a great resolution that, if I could do
aught to prevent it, no man of Scotland who had served in this war
should ever have to seek a livelihood in such a manner.

So I conceived the idea of raising a great fund to be used for giving
the maimed Scots soldiers a fresh start in life. They would be
pensioned by the government. I knew that. But I knew, too, that a
pension is rarely more than enough to keep body and soul together.
What these crippled men would need, I felt, was enough money to set
them up in some little business of their own, that they could see to
despite their wounds, or to enable them to make a new start in some
old business or trade, if they could do so.

A man might need a hundred pounds, I thought, or two hundred pounds,
to get him started properly again. And I wanted to be able to hand a
man what money he might require. I did not want to lend it to him,
taking his note or his promise to pay. Nor did I want to give it to
him as charity. I wanted to hand it to him as a freewill offering, as
a partial payment of the debt Scotland owed him for what he had done
for her.

And I thought, too, of men stricken by shell-shock, or paralyzed in
the war--there are pitifully many of both sorts! I did not want them
to stay in bare and cold and lonely institutions. I wanted to take
them out of such places, and back to their homes; home to the village
and the glen. I wanted to get them a wheel-chair, with an old,
neighborly man or an old neighborly woman, maybe, to take them for an
airing in the forenoon, and the afternoon, that they might breathe
the good Scots air, and see the wild flowers growing, and hear the
song of the birds.

That was the plan that had for a long time been taking form in my mind.
I had talked it over with some of my friends, and the newspapers had
heard of it, somehow, and printed a few paragraphs about it. It was
still very much in embryo