CHRISTIAN SCIENCE IN THE WAR
army. The Rooms consisted of a large salon, which the soldiers used as a lounging room, with comfortable chairs and a cheerful open fireplace. Here Christian Science services were held every Sunday and Wednesday. Adjoining this room—connecting with it by a large doorway—was the reading room, arranged with tables for reading and writing. Next to the reading room was a small office and on the other side of the corridor was a business office where French people and refugees applying for help could be received. Opening out of this was a large room where Christian Science literature and warm clothing for civilians and soldiers were stored, and where the literature was wrapped for mailing.
Letters were received daily asking for literature from men in the various barracks and hospitals, and aside from this distribution of Sentinels, Journals, Herauts, pamphlets and Quarterlies, a hundred Monitors were mailed each day to individuals who had asked for them, and to all the relief huts. It was not at all uncommon for officers, not Christian Scientists, to send their orderlies to the Rooms for Monitors, and they often came themselves and asked if they might subscribe for the paper for a month or two.
The soldiers' edition of Science and Health was always in demand. The little books could be read so easily and inconspicuously that the men were able to use them under all circumstances, and only a soldier knows what that means. They were read in bunks and hospital beds and freight cars, as well as in forests and trenches at the front, and everywhere they carried the same message of healing and comfort. In order not to mar them, many men carried the books in their little
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