From Aldershot to Pretoria | Page 3

of untold advantage. Her sympathy showed the nation where its heart should go and where its hand should help.
The send-off from the courtyard of Buckingham Palace; the review of the battle-worn heroes in the Palace itself, when she decorated them with their well-earned honours; her constant visits to the hospitals, were incidents which the nation could not forget. In them, as in so many other ways, she awakened her people from their apathy, and by her example led them to a higher and more Christian patriotism.
=The Netley and Herbert Hospitals.=
There was also the noble man whose monument adorns the Quadrangle of the War Office, who was War Minister at the time. But perhaps foremost of all, save the Queen herself, was the 'Lady of the Lamp,' who, surrendering the comfort of a refined and beautiful home, went out to the hospitals at Scutari to minister to the wounded and the fever-stricken, and found in doing so a higher comfort, a comfort which is of the soul itself. These two--Florence Nightingale and Sydney Herbert--the one in guiding the Administration, the other inspiring the nation, did imperishable good.
The Herbert and the Netley Hospitals were the first embodiment of the nation's sympathy expressed in terms of official administration--palaces 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.
It was plainly seen that if left, as it had hitherto been, to the homelessness of the barracks and the main-deck, and to the canteen and the public-house, it would certainly take the side of sin; and whilst defending the empire by its valour, would imperil it by its ill-living.
All these convictions were confirmed by the record of the noble lives of heroes, who were Christians as well as heroes, with which the history of the Crimean War and the Mutiny is enriched. If a few could thus be saved, it was asked, why not many? if some, why not all? For men of all ranks, of varied temperaments and gifts, were among the saved, some whose natural goodness made them easily susceptible of good, others 'lost' in very deed, sunk in the depths of a crude and brutal selfishness.
=Woman's Work in this Field.=
As might be expected, the first to take to heart these special aspects of the case, and to embody the great awakening in the deeds of a practical beneficence, were women. Miss Robinson and Miss Weston, Mrs. and Miss Daniel, Miss Wesley, and Miss Sandes will ever live among those who set themselves to fight the public-house and the brothel by opening at least one door, which, entering as to his own home, the soldier and the sailor would meet with purity instead of sin, and where the hand stretched out to welcome him would be not the harlot's but the Christ's.
=The Influence of Methodism.=
It was given to the Wesleyan Methodist Church to take the foremost place in this new departure. Nor could it well be otherwise when the history of that Church is borne in mind.
The soldiers and man-of-war's men of John Wesley's time came in large numbers under the spell of his wonderful ministry. Converted or not, they recognised in him a man; and his dauntless courage, his invincible good humour, and his practical sympathy, won for him from many of them a singular devotion, and from not a few a brave and noble comradeship. Some