The unveiling of the East Kilbride memorial was reported in The Glasgow Herald on the 2nd May 1921. As mass unemployment and hardship kicked in at the beginning of the 1920's, and as ex-servicemen were left unemployed and unable to support their families there are many allusions and metaphors about pulling together as a nation in many unveiling speeches and East Kilbride is no exception. The Herald reporter opened with a florid description of the ceremony and a link to the past "As the band of the Gordons 'raised the tune' for the opening psalm (it was 'Selma', enshrined in the affections of many generations of Scotsmen) one's thoughts wandered to the cruel days when the Highland Host and the Dragoons broke in on the Psalm singing of the Covenanters in these same Lanarkshire uplands, and the present gathering to honour men irrespective of sect offered a grateful contrast to those unhappy far off days" The reporter then quotes from the speech by Captain Elliot on the unveiling of the monument who said that they "were there to honour the dead, and to hearten the living for the task that still lay before the nation...Many of the things they fought for had not yet been realised. A world fit for such heroes as those men could not be made in one year or twenty years. That required the whole country to pull together on the one rope as they pulled together on the rope that pulled down the great colossus of the German Empire that sought to crush the world under its nailed boots. The defeat of that colossus was not brought about by the swashbucklers or the blowhards, but by the quiet men who realising that something had come into the world that was not fit for free men to endure, went out to fight it and died in the hundreds of thousands." Glasgow Herald 2 May 1921,page 11e