During the mobilisation days these Homes were crowded to the utmost of their capacity, and chaplains and Scripture readers vied with each other in their earnest efforts to benefit the men.  In those solemn times of waiting, with war before them, and possibly wounds or death, hundreds of soldiers decided for Christ, or, as they loved to put it, ’enlisted into the army of the King.’

=Barrack Room Life.=

Somehow or other the average Englishman never thinks of the soldier as a Christian, and soldier poets bring out almost every other phase of the soldier character except this.  As a matter of fact the recruit when he comes to us is little more than a lad.  He has been brought up in the village Sunday school, and been accustomed to attend the village church or chapel.  He has all his early religious impressions full upon him.  He is excitable, emotional, easily led.  If he gets into a barrack room where the men are coarse, sensual, ungodly, he often runs into riot in a short time, though even then his early impressions do not altogether fade.  But if we lay hold of him, bring him to our Homes, surround him with Christian influences, by God’s help we make a man of him, and the raw recruit, the ‘rook’ as they call him, not only develops into a veteran ready to go anywhere and do anything for Queen and country, but into a Soldier of the Cross, ready to do and dare for his King.

=An Aldershot Sunday.=

Let me introduce you to an Aldershot Sunday.  The camp is all astir at an early hour.  Musters of men here and there on the regimental parade grounds, the stately march to church, the regimental band at the head.  The short, bright, cheery service.  The rattle and clatter of side-arms as the men stand or sit.  The rapid exit after the Benediction has been pronounced and the National Anthem sung.  The ‘fall in’ outside.  The ringing word of command, and the march back to barracks, amid the admiring gaze of the civilians.

All this can be sketched in a few sentences; but we want to give our readers more than a mere introduction—­a speaking acquaintance.  We want them to get to know our friend Thomas Atkins before they see him out on the veldt, or amid the heat of battle.  And to know him as we know him they must get a little closer than a mere church parade; they must watch us at our work for him, they must realize some of our difficulties, and be sharers in some of our joys.

Let us then get nearer to him, and in order to this, attempt to get into the heart of an Aldershot Sunday.  And as the most conspicuous and handsome pile of buildings in Aldershot is the Grosvenor Road Wesleyan Church and Soldiers’ Home, and it happens to be the one with which we are best acquainted, we will follow the workers in their Sunday’s work.

=The Prison Service.=

And first of all let us visit the Military Prison.  There are not so many prisoners as usual just now, and those who are there are terribly anxious to have their terms of imprisonment shortened, in order that they may get to the front—­not that prisoners are ever wishful to drag out the full term of their imprisonment, but now that all is excitement and their regiments are on the eve of departure, they are feverishly anxious to go with them.