Forgotten Philanthropy: The British League of Help
Sally White recalls the efforts of the British League of Help, launched in the wake of the First World War by Lilias, Countess Bathurst, to raise funds to support devastated areas of France.
Most studies of the First World War concentrate, understandably, on military history. Little attention is paid to the effects of the conflict on the people who lived in the war zone of northern France. When we do consider the impact of the war we have a comfortable way of talking as though all the damage was done by the Germans. Obviously this was not true. British shelling inflicted widespread destruction on the region. This is not just a recent attitude. During the conflict and in the years immediately following the Armistice, few British people knew about, or paid much attention to, the struggle that was being waged to maintain and reclaim some semblance of a normal life in northern France.
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