Part 15

He felt that it was an outrage that Scotland should be overlooked in any good thing. Blessed was the people who had won the distinction of being hated by the German, and therefore Sandy added the words "and Scotland"!

Now Scotland deserved that high praise. When the historian comes to write the full story of this great war it will make a large place for the words "and Scotland." Wonderful the heroism of the British army! Marvellous their achievements! But who is at the head of it? A great Scotsman, Sir Douglas Haig.

What stories fill the pages of the achievements of English sailors ever since the days of Nelson, standing on the deck of the Victory, down to the battle of Jutland! But that gallant Scot, Admiral Beatty, holds the centre of the stage to-day. There came a critical moment also when a man of intellect and a great heart must represent Great Britain in her greatest crisis in the United States, and in that hour they sent a Scotsman, Arthur James Balfour, philosopher, metaphysician, theologian, statesman, diplomat and seer.

And what shall one more say save that the finances of this war have been controlled by a Scotch Chancellor of the Exchequer, and her railways organized by a Scotch inventor. Wonderful the achievements of England--that "dear, dear land." Marvellous the contribution of Wales, through men like the Prime Minister, Lloyd George!

Who can praise sufficiently the heroes of Canada, Australia and New Zealand? In Ireland, for the moment, things are in a muddle. "What is the trouble with the Emerald Isle?" was the question, to which the Irishman made instant reply: "Oh, in South Ireland we are all Roman Catholics, and in North Ireland we are all Protestants, and I wish to heaven we were all agnostics, and then we could live together like Christians."

But Ireland will soon iron out her troubles. To the achievements of the various people of the great British Empire let us make a large place for the contributions of Scotland. The Germans hate with a deadly hatred any country and any race that has stopped them in their headlong career towards crime.

But the next time that a German-American has gone back to Berlin and has reached the western front and puts up a sign reading "Gott strafe England" let him not fail to add these words, "and Scotland."

2. "England Shall Not Starve"

Despite all warnings, rumours, and alarms, no dire peril known to passengers disturbed our voyage. The nearest approach came on a morning when the ship was two hundred miles off the coast of Ireland.

The steamer was making a letter S and constantly zigzagging, when suddenly the lookout called down that there was a rowboat dead ahead. With instant decision the officer changed the ship's course and we passed the life-boat a half mile upon our right.

The usual rumour started up and down the deck that there were dead bodies in the boat, but the petty officer answered my question by saying that it was 2,000 lives against one possible life that every drifting boat must be looked upon as a German decoy; that if the steamer stopped to send sailors with a life-boat to investigate it would simply give a German submarine a chance to come up with torpedoes. At that very moment one of the men beside the gun sighted a periscope and a moment later the gun roared and then boomed a second time and then a third. Because the object disappeared, all passengers said it was a submarine, but the officers said it was a piece of driftwood, tossed up on the crest of a wave.

That night, on deck, a close friend of the purser came for an hour's walk around the deck. The memory of those three shots rested heavily upon his mind.

It seemed that some months before he had been a purser on an East Indian liner. On the home voyage, twenty-four hours after they left Cairo, when well out into the Mediterranean, this officer went below for an hour's rest. Suddenly a torpedo struck the steamer. The force of the explosion literally blew the purser out of his berth. Grabbing some clothes, he ran through the narrow passageway, already ankle deep in rushing water. The great ship carried several thousand soldiers and a few women who were coming home from India or from Egypt. Despite the fact that all realized the steamer would go down within a few minutes, there was no confusion and the soldiers lined up as if on parade.

The boat went down in about eight minutes, but every one of the women and children had on their life-preservers and were given first places in the life-boats that had not been ruined by the explosion.

The purser said that he decided to jump from the deck and swim as far as possible from the steamer, but despite his struggles he was drawn under and came up half unconscious to find himself surrounded with swimming men and sinking rowboats that were being shelled by the German submarine. Suddenly a machine-gun bullet passed through his right shoulder and left an arm helpless. For half an hour he lay with his left arm upon a floating board, held up by his life-preserver. The submarine had disappeared. At distances far removed were three of the ship's boats and one raft. It was plain that there was no help in sight.

Near him was a woman, to whom he called. The purser told the woman that he had been shot in the right arm and could not help her nor come near to her. She answered that it was good to hear his voice.

The water was very cold. He began to be alarmed and reasoned as to whether the cold water would not stay the bleeding. From time to time he would call out to the woman to keep up hope and courage and not to struggle, but at last he saw she was exhausted. With infinite effort, swimming with his left arm, he managed to draw near to her.

"Is drowning very painful?" the woman asked.

"No," answered the officer. "Once the water rushes into the lungs one smothers."

To which the English girl answered, "Then I think I will not wait any longer. Good-bye! Good luck!"

Utterly exhausted she let her head fall over and in a moment the life-preserver was on the top and that was all that he saw.

"The next thing I remember," said the officer, "was waking up to find a nurse trying to pour a stimulant down my throat."

A destroyer had come up in response to the signals for help and picked up the survivors.

For months he was in the hospital before he could be carried to England. Even now he was not able to lift a hat from his head with his right arm, but he could write a little. This was his first voyage to test his strength to prove to the Government that he could take his old task as purser.

"How did you feel, purser, when you heard that cannon roar this morning against that submarine?"

You should have seen the fire flash in the man's eyes.

"How did I feel?" answered the officer. "I felt like a race-horse snuffing the battle from afar. Let them sink this ship--I will take another. Let them sink every steamer, I'll take a sailing vessel. Let them sink all our sailing vessels, we will betake ourselves to tugs.

"We have 5,000 steamers that come and go between any Sunday and Sunday. Some are old cattle-boats, some are sea tramps and some are ocean hounds. They have carried 10,000,000 men and 20,000,000 tons of war materials, and 8,000,000 tons of iron ore and $3,000,000,000 worth of goods.