2110-3-6-8

Logie and Gauldry United Free Church. THE MANSE, GAULDRY, WORMIT, FIFE.

Minister: Rev. W. H. Hamilton, M.A.

9th May 1919.

Col. John Buchan LL.D.

Dear Sir, 1. Will you allow me to thank you for "Mr Standfast" and to offer hearty congratulations on creating so fascinating a trilogy of stories - a series as fascinating and irresistible as (without suggesting any confessions) the "Sherlock Holmes" and "Scarlet Pimpernel" series? I would also thank you for the "History of the War."

2. I take this opportunity of asking if there is no chance of our having new editions of your stories now out of print. - "My [sic] Lost Lady of Old Years" "The Half-hearted" "Grey Weather" and "The Moon Endureth". Also of your essays etc. It is nothing but sober truth to say one is anxious not to die till one has read every book written by the author of "John Burnet of Barns" and some of them seem beyond reach at present.

3. Reverting to "Mr Standfast", you will not - I am sure, - misunderstand if I venture to thank you for the sympathy and understanding with which you have sketched Laurence Wake. I hope the position of ministers under the Military Service Acts proves a minister disinterested at least in taking up the case of the genuine

conscientious objector, as I for one had to do or feel untrue. I suppose we are all conscientious objectors, only most doubt if the apparently immeasurable remoteness of that achievement does not make some other course mean hanging on to the ultimate vision a present duty for us; & then we generalise, and perhaps persecute the prophets. Next to the men who died I honour the real objector and only feel that the one perfectly abominable thing is that he should grumble at his own sufferings or in any way comfort himself as other than a different kind of soldier in a fight as grim and wounding; & your Laurence Wake seems this sort and is, I fancy, more typical than the mean fellow the general press has depicted. Even if they have not been equal to the occasion of these visions, have not such men been hanging on to something immensely true & heroic, all the more so that it is unhonoured? Of course, if they "can no other" they will be serene as Wake; and I suppose no man is justified in assuming their attitude unless he "can no other". I greatly wish you might apply your mind and pen to some such study of conflicting loyalties - a story commenting on S. Luke 14.26. or even Isaiah 53 - in this distressing problem. I've know[n] so many chaps in whom it certainly was neither funk nor fanaticism and at heart one feels a big moral tug to side with them. Yours most truly W. H. Hamilton