ENGLAND'S ANSWER TO THE CALL
the work begun at one Reading Room was carried on in another. The Rooms at Chatham were opened in March, 1918, and the highest monthly attendance was 2636, reached in January, 1919, since which time demobilization caused a reduction.
An extract from a report states:
“Sailors have come into the Rooms through having seen the literature on their ships, one from having been introduced to it through Scientists at Durban, South Africa. Soldiers have seen it in camps or have been attracted by the notice boards. One man came across it in the trenches, where a companion received the Monitor regularly and passed it round for all to read.”
There were good cases of healing recorded in Chatham, but it is noticeable that many men quickly learnt to do their own work, when once they started reading the books.
Among many interesting points which came up in the course of the unfoldment of the work, was the increasingly rapid recognition of each Room as these were opened in different centers. At Colchester twelve days elapsed before any soldier ventured to step across the threshold, but at each subsequent opening the time was less and less until at Dover, a man came in to use the Room before the lettering was finished on the window.
Rooms of a similar nature were opened by the Yorkshire churches at Ripon, in February, 1916, at Newcastle early in 1917 by First Church of Christ, Scientist, in that town, at Dublin in September, 1917, and Bexhill and Edinburgh in 1918.
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