In May 1914, Sir George Younger, the Scottish Unionist Party's Westminster ‘whip’, sent Andrew Bonar Law, the Leader of the Opposition, a memorandum prepared ‘by a small committee of the Scottish Unionist Association’ (SUA) entitled ‘Scottish Home Rule’ (Younger 1914). ‘Scottish National sentiment is a strong force in all ranks of Scottish life’, it declared, something its authors believed might ‘either be turned to good account or bad’. The ‘Radicals’ (i.e. Liberals) were attempting to channel it into ‘narrow political Scottish nationalism’ which wanted a Scottish Parliament, and therefore it fell to Unionists ‘to turn it into good’.

So rather than a ‘parochial parish-pump type of Scottish nationalism’ (based ‘largely on jealousy of others’), the SUA promoted the ‘wider and better ideal of Imperial patriotism’ to which Scots ‘invariably show themselves ready to respond … when it is properly made’. The memo had three recommendations for Unionist candidates, to (a) ‘show a full appreciation of the fine worth and patriotic importance of Scottish National sentiment when directed into legitimate channels’, (b) ‘to expose the fallacies of … Parliamentary severance of Scotland from the other parts of the United Kingdom’ and, beyond this, (c) ‘point to the important part which Scottish National patriotism has played and must still play in the wider patriotism of the whole British Empire’.

‘Scottish National patriotism’ included civic aspects – ‘Scottish national institutions, its separate Courts and System of Law [and] Church’ – and also cultural – ‘Literature, and Music, to say nothing of the history and tradition of the Scottish Regiments’. Furthermore, the memo made some suggestions for improvements: ‘some form of Imperial Council’ to relieve the UK Parliament of its legislative backlog as well as ‘delegation of certain matters of more exclusively local concern’ from Westminster to local bodies in ‘the several countries of the United Kingdom’. It also suggested overhauling the twenty-nine-year-old Scottish Office, adding ‘at least two’ under-secretaries, granting ‘greater administrative powers’ and gathering together various boards and departments ‘in one building’ situated in Edinburgh.

Finally, a detailed appendix filleted the Liberal MP Sir William Cowan's recent Government of Scotland Bill. This, it argued, ‘sins against the doctrine of a larger patriotism and nationalism’ by seeking to create but a ‘glorified Town Council’.