of healing, which have been rest-houses for multitudes of sick and
wounded men pending their return to duty, their discharge on pension, or
their passing to an early grave.

The Royal Patriotic Fund was the expression of the nation's desire to
succour the widows and orphans of the breadwinners who had fallen in the
war.


=The Awakened National Conscience.=

But these efforts, noble though they were, by no means met the full
necessity. For solicitude on behalf of our soldiers and our sailors
being once aroused, their daily life on board ship and in barracks soon
compelled attention. Its homelessness and monotony, its utter lack of
quiet and rest, its necessary isolation from all the comforts and
amenities of social life, the consequent eagerness with which the
men--wearied well-nigh to death, yet full of lusty vigorous life--went
anywhere for change, society, and excitement--all these things broke
like a revelation on the awakened conscience of the nation. The terrible
fact, to which reference has already been made, that hitherto almost the
only sections of the civil community which had catered for them was the
publican, the harlot, and the crimp, that they had indeed been left to
the tender mercies of the wicked, still further deepened the impression.

At the same time it came to be gradually realized that the splendid
manhood of the army and the navy was a vast mission force, which, if it
could only be enlisted on the side of purity, temperance, and religion,
might be of untold value to the empire and the home population.