tae a new day. This auld world has seen a
great sacrifice--a greater sacrifice than any it has known since
Calvary. The brawest, the noblest, the best of our men, have offered
themselves, a' they had and were, upon the altar of liberty and of
conscience.

And I'll ask you some questions. Gie'n you're asked, the noo, tae do
something that's no just for your ain benefit. Whiles you would ha'
thought, maybe, and hesitated, and wondered. But the noo? Wull ye no
be thinking of some laddie who gave up a' the world held that was dear
to him, when his country called? Wull ye no be thinking that, after
a', ought that can be asked of you in the way of sacrifice and effort
is but a sma' trifle compared to what he had tae do?

I'm thinking that'll be sae. I'm thinking it'll be sae of all of us.
I'm thinking that, sae lang as we live, we folk that ken what the war
was, what it involved for the laddies who fought it, we'll be
comparing any hardship or privation that comes tae us wi' what it was
that they went through. And it's no likely, is it, that we'll ha' the
heart and the conscience tae be saying 'No!' sae often and sae
resolutely as used tae be our wont?

They've put shame into us, those laddies who went awa'. They ha'
taught us the real values o' things again. They ha' shown us that i'
this world, after a', it's men, not things, that count. They helped to
prove that the human spirit was a greater, grander thing than any o'
the works o' man. The Germans had all that a body could ask. They had
numbers, they had guns, they had their devilish inventions. What beat
them, then? What held them back till we could match them in numbers
and in a' the other things?

Why, something Krupp could not manufacture at Essen nor the
drillmasters of the Kaiser create! The human will--the spirit that is
God's creature, and His alone.

I was in France, you'll mind. I remember weel hoo I went ower the
ground where the Canadians stood the day the first clouds of poison
gas were loosed. There were sae few o' them--sae pitifully few! As it
was they were ootmatched; they were hanging on because they were the
sort o' men wha wouldna gie in. French Colonials were supporting them
on one side.

And across the No Man's Land there came a sort o' greenish yellow
cloud. No man there knew what it meant. There was a hissing and a
writhing, as of snakes, and like a snake the gas came toward them. It
reached them, and men began to cough and choke. And othe