left behind. [Cheers.] We want more men, and, perhaps most of all, the help for training them of every one in the whole of this kingdom who has in days gone by, as officer or as non-commissioned officer, served his country. He never had a greater or more fruitful opportunity of service than is presented to him to-day.
We appeal to the manhood of all the three kingdoms, and to such an appeal I know well, as now your senior representative in the House of Commons, that Scotland will not turn a deaf ear. [Cheers.] Scotland is doing well, and indeed more than well—and no part of Scotland, I believe, better in proportion than Edinburgh—and I cannot say with what pleasure I heard the figures given by the Lord Provost and those which have been supplied to me by by the gallant General who has the Scottish Command—[loud cheers]—which show us, indeed, as was to be expected, that Scotland is more than holding her own. Let me add in that connection—let me repeat what I said two weeks ago in London—we think it of the highest importance that, as far as possible and subject to the exigencies of war, people belonging to the same place, breathing the same atmosphere, having the same associations should, as far as possible, be kept together for the purpose of war. [Cheers.] Now, my Lord Provost, I have only one more word to say. What is it that we can offer to our recruits? They come to us spontaneously under no kind of compulsion—of their own free will—[cheers]—to meet a national and an Imperial need.
We present to them no material inducement in the shape of bounty or bribe. They have to face the prospect of a spell of hard training, from which most of the comforts and all the luxuries that any of them have been accustomed to are rigorously banished. But then, when they are fully equipped for their patriotic task, they will have the opportunity of striking a blow—it may be, even, of laying down their lives—not to serve the cause of ambition or aggression, but to maintain the honour and the good faith of our country, to shield the independence of free States, to protest against brute force—[hear, hear]—the principles of civilization and the liberties of Europe.
