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Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes. What says our glorious Johnson of courage: ‘Unless a man has that virtue he has no security for preserving any other.’ We should thank our Creator three times daily for courage instead of for our bread, which, if we work, is surely the one thing we have a right to claim of Him. This courage is a proof of our immortality, greater even than gardens ‘when the eve is cool.’ Pray for it. ‘Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.’ Be not merely courageous, but light-hearted and gay. There is an officer who was the first of our Army to land at Gallipoli. He was dropped overboard to light decoys on the shore, so as to deceive the Turks as to where the landing was to be. He pushed a raft containing these in front of him. It was a frosty night, and he was naked and painted black. Firing from the ships was going on all around. It was a two-hours’ swim in pitch darkness. He did it, crawled through the scrub to listen to the talk of the enemy, who were so near that he could have shaken hands with them, lit his decoys and swam back. He seems to look on this as a gay affair. He is a V.C. now, and you would not think to look at him that he could ever have presented such a disreputable appearance. Would you? (indicating Colonel Freyberg).

Those men of whom I have been speaking as the kind to fill the fife could all be light-hearted on occasion. I remember Scott by Highland streams trying to rouse me by maintaining that haggis is boiled bagpipes; Henley in dispute as to whether, say, Turgenieff or Tolstoi could hang the other on his watch-chain; he sometimes clenched the argument by casting his crutch at you; Stevenson responded in the same gay spirit by giving that crutch to John Silver; you remember with what adequate results. You must cultivate this light-heartedness if you are to hang your betters on your watch-chains. Dr. Johnson–let us have him again– does not seem to have discovered in his travels that the Scots are a light-hearted nation. Boswell took him to task for saying that the death of Garrick had eclipsed the gaiety of nations. ‘Well, sir,’ Johnson said, ‘there may be occasions when it is permissible to,’ etc. But Boswell would not let go. ‘I cannot see, sir, how it could in any case have eclipsed the gaiety of nations, as England was the only nation before whom he had ever played.’ Johnson was really stymied, but you would never have known it. ‘Well, sir,’ he said, holing out, ‘I understand that Garrick once played in Scotland, and if Scotland has any gaiety to eclipse, which, sir, I deny—-‘

Prove Johnson wrong for once at the Students’ Union and in your other societies. I much regret that there was no Students’ Union at Edinburgh in my time. I hope you are fairly noisy and that members are sometimes let out. Do you keep to the old topics? King Charles’s head; and Bacon wrote Shakespeare, or if he did not he missed the opportunity of his life. Don’t forget to speak scornfully of the Victorian age; there will be time for meekness when you try to better it. Very soon you will be Victorian or that sort of thing yourselves; next session probably, when the freshmen come up. Afterwards, if you go in for my sort of calling, don’t begin by thinking you are the last word in art; quite possibly you are not; steady yourself by remembering that there were great men before William K. Smith. Make merry while you may. Yet light-heartedness is not for ever and a day. At its best it is the gay companion of innocence; and when innocence goes– as it must go–they soon trip off together, looking for something younger. But courage comes all the way: