The Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour, employed no press agent, and it could not boast of a bill poster.  No hoardings were covered with great colored sheets advertising its coming.  And yet the whole front seemed to know that we were about.  The soldiers we met along the roads welcomed us gladly, but they were no longer, after the first day or two, surprised to see us.  They acted, rather, as if they had been expecting us.  Our advent was like that of a circus, coming to a country town for a long heralded and advertised engagement.  Yet all the puffing that we got was by word of mouth.

There were some wonderful choruses along those war-worn roads we traveled.  “Roamin’ in the Gloamin’” was still my featured song, and all the soldiers seemed to know the tune and the words, and to take a particular delight in coming in with me as I swung into the chorus.  We never passed a detachment of soldiers without stopping to give them a concert, no matter how it disarranged Captain Godfrey’s plans.  But he was entirely willing.  It was these men, on their way to the trenches, or on the way out of them, bound for rest billets, whom, of course, I was most anxious to reach, since I felt that they were the ones I was most likely to be able to help and cheer up.

The scheduled concerts were practically all at the various rest billets we visited.  These were, in the main, at chateaux.  Always, at such a place, I had a double audience.  The soldiers would make a great ring, as close to me as they could get, and around them, again, in a sort of outer circle, were French villagers and peasants, vastly puzzled and mystified, but eager to be pleased, and very ready with their applause.

It must have been hard for them to make up their minds about me, if they gave me much thought.  My kilt confused them; most of them thought I was a soldier from some regiment they had not yet seen, wearing a new and strange uniform.  For my kilt, I need not say, was not military, nor was the rest of my garb warlike!

I gave, during that time, as many as seven concerts in a day.  I have sung as often as thirty-five times in one day, and on such occasions I was thankful that I had a strong and durable voice, not easily worn out, as well as a stout physique.  Hogge and Dr. Adam appeared as often as I did, but they didn’t have to sing!

Nearly all the songs I gave them were ditties they had known for a long time.  The one exception was the tune that had been so popular in “Three Cheers”—­the one called “The Laddies Who Fought and Won.”  Few of the boys had been home since I had been singing that song, but it has a catching lilt, and they were soon able to join in the chorus and send it thundering along.  They took to it, too—­and well they might!  It was of such as they that it was written.