2110-3-11-27

44 St. Kevin's Park Dartry Road Dublin.

20th Nov^r. 1921

Dear Sir,

You've done it; & you've done it now for the third time. You did it first when you made John Burnet's man mount a wall, draw his sword & salute his foes, &, then, dive into the Scheldt or the Maas or some other of those miry rivers in the low countries. You did it again when the fellow who saluted adventure fought with the Indian in an American sheugh. This time you've done it, when General Hannay & Archie, watching the German aeroplanes being downed, see the sixth one which has just jinkit two British planes, faced with another - the little Gladas. That has done it. I've had to lay down Mr Standfast, blow my nose several times, for my wife's at the other side of the fire, light my pipe & even blow again. Kinglake did the same to me long ago when he told how Sir Colin Campbell

at the Alma threatened his men that if any went to the rear, his name would be stuck up in the parish kirk. Old Caesar once touched me in the same when he tells how, when he went to help Cicero, I think it was, he fortified his camp & built up the two gates with sods. But the sods were only one deep &, when Ariovistus & his Germans went for the walls, Caesar's cavalry knocked down the sods & got Ariovistus in the flank.

Because you have done this to me, I'm going to ask you a question I've been ettlin asking for six or seven years. So far I've had only one leg to stand on in pitting my question. That leg was that I'm a Kirkurd man. Now you've given me another leg & I feel bold enough. In a review about that time ago, you said Lincoln was one of the three greatest men of the Anglo-Saxon kin. Who were the other two? Presuming that you don't mean poets &, thus, must not be thinking of Shakespeare or Milton,

44 St. Kevin's Park Dartry Road Dublin.

I've tried to get the other two from among such a lot as Alfred, Henry ii, Cromwell, Pitt & even Adam Smith. Scientific men like Newton & such a queer character as Marlborough are also, I presume, ruled out. My own impression is that William the Conqueror did about the biggest work ever done in England, but you might not call him Anglo-Saxon, though his Norse descent might possibly let him in. I'm not apologising for asking you to listen to my curiosity. My own work - I'm Professor of Agriculture in the Royal College of Science, here

takes me into out of the way places trying to trace the farmers' ways of doing things back to their origins.

Now I think I can go back again & see how Lensch & Peter fight it out

Yours faithfully

James Wilson

John Buchan Esq