1908 - 1923

1908
Under Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman, self-government is granted to the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony in South Africa.

Kenneth Grahame publishes "The Wind in the Willows".

1910
A revolution in medical education begins with the publication of "Medical Education in the United States and Canada" ("The Flexner Report") by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Peter Fraser emigrates to New Zealand, where he will help found the Labour Party (1916), create a national health service (1938), serve as Prime Minister (1940), and act as spokesman for small nations in the newly-formed post-war United Nations.

1914-18
Scottish soldiers and sailors play a major role in the First World War, with twenty seven battalions each raised by the Black Watch, the Cameronians and the Highland Light Infantry, along with the thirty-five battalions of the Royal Scots. 1915 A train wreck involving A Scottish express at Gretna Junction kills 227 and injures 246.

1916
Edinburgh-born James Connolly, prominent union leader and one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in Dublin, is shot by a British Army firing squad.

Scotsman Henry Sinclair Horne directs the first combat test of the newly invented tank at the Battle of the Somme.

Arthur William Tedder transfers from the army to another branch of service, where he will rise to become Marshal of the Royal Air Force and World War ll deputy commander to General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

1919
In June of this year, along with Englishman John W. Alcock, Glasgow-born Arthur Whitten Brown becomes one of the first two aviators to cross the Atlantic Ocean when their Vickers-Vimy twin-engined biplane reaches Clifden, Ireland from St. John's, Newfoundland. They make the crossing eight years ahead of Lindbergh.

1920
Elizabeth Haldane is appointed the first woman Justice of the Peace in Scotland.

1921
Marie Charlotte Stopes founds the first instructional clinic for contraception in Britain. Her work with the poor will persuade the Church of England to relax its stand against birth control.

Birth of Jack Aitken, who will take over from William Craigie the monumental task of compiling "The Scottish National Dictionary" and "The Dictionary of the Scottish Tongue".

Founding of the Scottish National Players.

1922
Publication of Hugh MacDiarmid's lyrics in the "Scottish Chapbook" begins a revival of Scottish literature.

John Reith begins work for the infant BBC, later to become its director-general and to exercise an enormous influence on the development of broadcasting worldwide.

Canadian-born Andrew Bonar Law becomes head of the new Conservative government.

1923
John James Macleod, physiologist and chemist, shares the Nobel Prize for Physiology of Medicine for his breakthrough in the discovery of insulin.