But it was not long before the silence of the town was broken by another sound. It was marching men we heard, but they were scuffling with their feet as they came; they had not the rhythmic tread of most of the British troops we had encountered. Nor were these men, when they swung into sight, coming around a pile of ruins, just like any British troops we had seen. I recognized them as once as Australians-- Kangaroos, as their mates in other divisions called them--by the way their campaign hats were looped up at one side. These were the first Australian troops I had seen since I had sailed from Sydney, in the early days of the war, nearly three years before. Three years! To think of it--and of what those years had seen! "Here's a rare chance to give a concert!" I said, and held up my hand to the officer in command. "Halt!" he cried, and then: "Stand at ease!" I was about to tell him why I had stopped them, and make myself known to them when I saw a grin rippling its way over all those bronzed faces--a grin of recognition. And I saw that the officer knew me, too, even before a loud voice cried out: "Good old Harry Lauder!" That was a good Scots voice--even though its owner wore the Australian uniform. "Would the boys like to hear a concert?" I asked the officer. "That they would! By all means!" he said. "Glad of the chance! And so'm I! I've heard you just once before--in Sydney, away back in the summer of 1914." Then the big fellow who had called my name spoke up again. "Sing us 'Calligan,'" he begged. "Sing us 'Calligan,' Harry! I heard you sing it twenty-three years agone, in Motherwell Toon Hall!" "Calligan!" The request for that song took me back indeed, through all the years that I have been before the public. It must have been at least twenty-three years since he had heard me sing that song--all of twenty-three years. "Calligan" had been one of the very earliest of my successes on the stage. I had not thought of the song, much less sung it, for years and years. In fact, though I racked my brains, I could not remember the words. And so, much as I should have liked to do so, I could not sing it for him. But if he was disappointed, he took it in good part, and he seemed to like some of the newer songs I had to sing for them as well as he could ever have liked old "Calligan." I sang for these Kangaroos a song I had not sung before in France, because it seemed to be an especially auspicious time to try it. I wrote it while I was in Australia, with a view, particularly, to pleasing Australian audiences, and so repaying them, in some measure, for the kindly way in which they treated me while I was there. I call it "Australia Is the Land for Me," and this is the way it goes: