On the King's Service: Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms

CHAPLAIN TO THE FORCES SEPT. 1914-MAY 1916
HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO MCMXVII

This little book is written as a slight tribute of love and respect for those with whom the writer had, for over twenty months, the honour of association.
United Free Church of Scotland Manse, Braemar.



Those gaunt unlovely buildings
The War Office built Maryhill Barracks, Glasgow, to look exactly like a gaol, but these gaunt unlovely buildings, packed beyond endurance with men of the new army, were at least in some way in touch with what was happening elsewhere. Even in that first month of the war it seemed callous to be breathing the sweet, clear air of Braemar, or to let one's eyes linger on the matchless beauty of mountain and glen. The grey spire of my church rising gracefully among the silver birches and the dark firs, bosomed deep in purple hills, pointed to some harder way than that. Stevenson, who wrote part of Treasure Island here, called it 'the wale (pick) of Scotland,' but just because it was so we saw more clearly the agony of Belgium and the men of our heroic little Regular Army dying to keep us inviolate.