Scottish Nationalists.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19480, 29 November 1928, Page 10

Scottish Nationalists.

If it had not been for the timely discovery of the Daily Express there might have been a kaid one dark December night on Westminster Abbey, a forcible removal of the Stone of Destiny from the Coronation Chair, and, in a week or two no doubt, war between England and Scotland. The plot has been hatching for 632 years, and only the strongest sense of Imperial duty—for he is the next best thing to a Scot himself—can have impelled Lord Beaverbrook to reveal it when success was at last in sight. But if the Stone had been carried off, the Lord Provost of Perth would have been hard put to it to find enough pure Scots to mount guard over it while the war for its defence was being waged. There are,no doubt some pure Celts left in Scotland, though not very many, but as for the rest of the population it has perhaps caught the eye of some of our readers that the British Association did not quite succeed at its last annual meeting in establishing a separate origin for the Scots, while a well-known Scottish writer has since confessed that it is a rather dangerous .claim to make now that the world shows signs of taking it up. We dare not name him (after the revelations made lately by Mr John Bnchan in his brilliant study of Montrose), but it is perhaps safe to quote his opening sentence: Were I an Englishman I think I could prove that if there are any Caledonian aboriginals left in the wide world they have either migrated to Canada "or concealed their identity under assumed names to enable them to earn precarious livelihoods by annually proclaiming in the Press of South Britain that Scotland is a splendid place for plunder on and after the opening of the festival of St. Grouse. The English are of course very reluctant to cross swords with the Scots again, so that we shall never see that proofj but we carjg if we like, see it

proved that however the colonisation of Scotland began, its population today "consists of about six million "Englishry, a kiltless and claymore"less Celtic fringe, and a Polish- ". Hibernian plantation on the Clyde." Iti3 cercainly the case also that only about one young Scot in a hundred can now understand Burns without a glossary, and that "the language, senti"ment, and general atmosphere of "Princes street are more genteely "English than those of Piccadilly " Circus." Even Robert the Bruce, historians now shyly confess, was of Norman descent, and owned far more land in England than north of the Tweed, and might, if King Edward had not backed another Norman, never have discovered that "now was the "day and now the hour." However, it is perhaps just as well to let Bruce sleep undisturbed. If the Scottish Nationalists, as the Daily Express says, " mean business," it is the castor oil bottles and not the genealogies that will be called into service, since the new Club has been "inspired by the "example of what Nationalism has " done in Italy," and is thinking more of Mussolini than of Bruce or Wallace or Duncan or Malcolm.