SCOTLAND YET.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 9, 21 December 1911, Page 4

SCOTLAND YET.

Latterly, in the United States of America, the.re has been a remarkable era7/8 for anything with Scottish associations, and—next, of course, to the bawbee’s big brother, the Almighty Dollar—nothing is more highly valued at the moment in America than the ability to trace descent from a Scottish ancestry. It is said that this feeling may be largely explained by the facts mentioned in Mr. Whitelaw Reid’s lecture in Edinburgh recently—facts which, it is safe to say, were quite unknown to the majority of people in Scotland. For if most of them were aware of the great part that has been played by -Scotsmen in the history of Canada, few. but close students of American history had any idea of the importance of the Scottish element in that immigration which has practically built up the United States of to-day.. When one looks at the steady stream of Scottish and Ulster-Scottish emigration described by Mr. Reid and Lord Rosebery, and the extraordinary proportion of distinguished men among the immediate descendants of the Scottish emigrants, it is hardly surprising that Americans should be eager to claim descent from a race which by sheer ability and energy of character, and with no artificial advantages, has persistently forced its way to the top out of perhaps the freest and fiercest competition the world has ever seen.