CHRISTIAN SCIENCE IN THE WAR
the Board earlier in the year to make a preliminary investigation of conditions in France and to report back with recommendations. His experience and counsel now proved of great value.
On May 11, the State Department approved and issued the necessary passports. In conversations with the Department at this time, the Committee was assured that any War Relief work it might engage in would be acceptable. At the same time it was pointed out that all Welfare work in the army camps had already been delegated to certain authorized agencies, and work abroad similar to that then being done by us in the American camps, was inadvisable. Applications for passports having originally contained the statement that our work abroad was to be that of Camp Welfare, it became necessary to modify our plans, and the party finally sailed on May 14 from the port of New York, recognized and authorized by the State Department as Christian Science War Relief Workers. Neither the members of this party nor of those constituting the third one to cross, reckoning the Board's earlier representatives as the first party, were thereafter, at any time, able to carry on a work in any large degree comparable to that done in the camps and cantonments of the United States, as related elsewhere. With the full approval, however, of the State Department and the military authorities in France, these workers established and maintained in ten important centers in France, accessible at all times to many men in the service, depots or Christian Science headquarters. From these depots there went out in ever increasing measure messages of health and courage, inspiring books and helpful literature. To them
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