“Hoots!” I said, at first, when they wanted me tae speak for the war and the recruiting or a loan.  “They’ll no be wanting to listen tae me.  I’m just a comedian.”

“You’ll be a relief to them, Harry,” I was told.  “There’s been too much serious speaking already.”

Weel, I ken what they meant.  It’s serious speaking I’ve done, and serious thinking.  But there’s nae harm if I crack a bit joke noo and again; it makes the medicine gae doon the easier.  And noo the medicine’s swallowed.  There’s nae mair fichting tae be done, thank God!  We’ve saved the hoose our ancestors built.

But its walls are crackit here and there.  The roof’s leaking.  There’s paint needed on all sides.  There’s muckle for us tae do before the’ hoose we’ve saved is set in order.  It’s like a hoose that’s been afire.  The firemen come and play their hose upon it.  They’ll put oot the fire, a’ richt.  But is it no a sair sicht, the hoose they leave behind them when they gae awa’?

Ye’ll see a wee bit o’ smoke, an hour later, maybe, coming frae some place where they thocht it was a’ oot.  And ye’ll have tae be taking a bucket of water and putting oot the bit o’ fire that they left smouldering there, lest the whole thing break oot again.  And here and there the water will ha’ done a deal of damage.  Things are better than if the fire had just burnt itself oot, but you’ve no got the hoose you had before the fire!  ’Deed, and ye have not!

Nor have we.  We had our fire—­the fire the Kaiser lighted.  It was arson caused our fire—­it was a firebug started it, no spontaneous combustion, as some wad ha’ us think.  And we called the firemen—­the braw laddies frae all the world, who set to work and never stopped till the fire was oot.  Noo they’ve gaed hame aboot their other business.  We’ll no be wanting to call them oot again.  It was a cruel, hard task they had; it was a terrible ficht they had tae make.

It’s sma’ wonder, after such a conflagration, that there’s spots i’ the world where there’s a bit of flame still smouldering.  It’s for us tae see that they’re a’ stamped oot, those bits of fire that are still burning.  We can do that ourselves—­no need to ca’ the tired firemen oot again.  And then there’s the hoose itself!

Puir hoose!  But how should it have remained the same?  Man, you’d no expect to sleep in your ain hoose the same nicht there’d been a fire to put out?  You’d be waiting for the insurance folks.  And you’d know that the furniture was a’ spoiled wi’ water, and smoke.  And there’ll be places where the firemen had to chop wi’ their axes.  They couldna be carfu’ wi’ what was i’ the hoose—­had they been sae there’d be no a hoose left at a’ the noo.

Sae are they no foolish folk that were thinking that sae soon as peace came a’ would be as it was before yon days in August, 1914?  Is it but five years agane?  It is—­but it’ll tak’ us a lang time tae bring the world back to where it was then.  And it can’t be the same again.  It can’t.  Things change.