Between You and Me

by Sir Harry Lauder

There was a day in Kansas City that I remember well. Kansas City is a great place. And it has a wonderful hall—a place where national conventions are held. I was there in 1918 just before the Germans delivered their great assault in March, when they came so near to breaking our line and reaching the Channel ports we'd held them from through all the long years of the war. I was nervous, I'll no be denying that. What Briton was not, that had a way of knowing how terrible a time was upon us? And I knew—aye, it was known, in London and in Washington, that the Hun was making ready for his last effort.

Those were dark and troubled days. The great American army that General Pershing has led hame victorious the noo was still in the making. The Americans were there in France, but they had not finished their training. And it was in the time when they were just aboot ready to begin to stream into France in really great numbers. But at hame, in America, and especially out West, it was hard to realize how great an effort was still needed.

America had raised her great armies. She had done wonders—and it was natural for those folk, safe at hame, and far, far away frae all the turmoil and the stress of the fighting, to think that they had done enough.

The Americans knew, you'll ken, that they were resistless. They knew that the gigantic power of America could crush half a dozen Germanys— in time. But what we were all fearing, we who knew how grave the situation was, how tremendous the Hun's last effort would be, was that the line in France would be broken. The French had fought almost to the last gasp. Their young men were gone. And if the Hun broke through and swept his way to Paris, it was hard to believe that we could have gathered our forces and begun all over again, as we would have had to do.

In Kansas City there was a great chance for me, I was told. The people wanted to hear me talk. They wanted to hear me—not just at the theatre, but in the great hall where the conventions met. There was only the one time when I could speak, and I said so—that was at noon. It was the worst time of all the day to gather an audience of great size. I knew that, and I was sorry. But I had been booked for two performances a day while I was in Kansas City, and there was no choice.

Well, I agreed to appear. Some of my friends were afraid it would be what they called a frost. But when the time came for me to make my way to the platform the hall was filled. Aye—that mighty hall! I dinna ken how many thousand were there, but there were more than any theatre in the world could hold—more than any two theatres, I'm thinking. And they didna come to hear me sing or crack a joke. They came to hear me talk—to hear me preach, if you'll be using that same word that my wife is sae fond of teasing me with.

I'm thinking I did preach to them, maybe. I told them things aboot the war they'd no heard before, nor thought of, maybe, as seriously as they micht. I made them see the part they, each one of them, man, and woman, and child, had to play. I talked of their president, and of the way he needed them to be upholding him, as their fathers and mothers had upheld President Lincoln.

And they rose to me—aye, they cheered me until the tears stood in my een, and my voice was so choked that I could no go on for a space. So that's what I'm meaning when I say it's no all my fault if I preach, sometimes, on the stage, or when I'm writing in a book. It's true, too, I'm thinking, that I'm no a real author. For when I sit me doon to write a book I just feel that I maun talk wi' some who canna be wi' me to hear my voice, and I write as I talk. They'll be telling me, perhaps, that that's no the way to write a book, but it's the only way I ken.

Oh, I've had arguments aboot a' this! Arguments, and to spare! They'll come tae me, good friends, good advisers. They'll be worried when I'm in some place where there's strong feeling aboot some topic I'm thinking of discussing wi' my friends in the audience.

"Now, Harry, go easy here," I mind a Scots friend told me, once during the war. I was in a town I'll no be naming. "This is a queer place. There are a lot of good Germans here. They're unhappy about the war, but they're loyal enough. They don't want to take any great part in fighting their fatherland, but they won't help against their new country, either. They just want to go about their business and forget that there's a war."