returns, and quote untruthful extracts from our butt registers. At
breakfast, every one has a newspaper, which he props before him and
reads, generally aloud. We exchange observations upon the war news. We
criticise von Kluck, and speak kindly of Joffre. We note, daily, that
there is nothing to report on the Allies' right, and wonder regularly
how the Russians are really getting on in the Eastern theatre.

Then, after observing that the only sportsman in the combined forces
of the German Empire is--or was--the captain of the _Emden_, we come
to the casualty lists--and there is silence.

Englishmen are fond of saying, with the satisfied air of men letting
off a really excellent joke, that every one in Scotland knows every
one else. As we study the morning's Roll of Honour, we realise that
never was a more truthful jest uttered. There is not a name in the
list of those who have died for Scotland which is not familiar to us.
If we did not know the man--too often the boy--himself, we knew his
people, or at least where his home was. In England, if you live in
Kent, and you read that the Northumberland Fusiliers have been cut
up or the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry badly knocked about, you
merely sigh that so many more good men should have fallen. Their names
are glorious names, but they are only names. But never a Scottish
regiment comes under fire but the whole of Scotland feels it. Scotland
is small enough to know all her sons by heart. You may live in
Berwickshire, and the man who has died may have come from Skye; but
his name is quite familiar to you. Big England's sorrow is national;
little Scotland's is personal.

Then we pass on to our letters. Many of us--particularly the senior
officers--have news direct from the trenches--scribbled scraps torn