Christmas Gifts needed for the Front

From The Manchester Guardian, 5th December 1917.

THE CIVILIAN'S CHANCE

CHRISTMAS GIFTS NEEDED FOR THE

FRONT.

The civilian's lot in war-time is to all appearances a humble enough business, and it is hard to talk of his sacrifices.  His figure seems woefully insignificant against the vivid background of actual war, with its terrors and triumphs, its interminable epics of human fortitude and endeavour.  All of us stay-at-homes must surely feel, as we read of the struggle at Cambrai, that, however ambitiously we cast our resolutions, life for us will remain tolerably comfortable; that, no matter how grimly we steel ourselves to face the prospect of sugarless coffee and margarine eternally, we are hopelessly "out of it," like "twelfth men" in cricket matches, or even the scorers!

Yet our work at home is flattered by the very men who are sacrificing most: our fighting men are ever sending to us the call—nay, the entreaty—to keep and cherish all that they mean by "England" while they are away.  A simple enough task this is, in all conscience, and it can almost be defined in terms of warm hearthsides, steadfast friendliness—and "comforts." 

The list of articles printed below—compiled by Lancashire and Cheshire soldiers as representative of the things they need most to keep life in the trenches just tolerable,—these things can carry to a soldier on service the very essence of that English home life ho has left in our care. If we would answer Tommy's call to "keep the home fires burning" (and of course we are all desperate to do so if we could only find the way), the Comforts Fund offers one excellent way of doing it.

THE ARTICLES ASKED FOR. 

Cigarettes, cigarette papeors, tobacco, shag tobacco, pipes (clay and briar), tobacco pouches, pipe lighters. matches, candles, mufflers, socks, mittens, gloves, sleeveless sweaters, shirts, singlets, bootlaces, Balaclava caps. bachelors' buttons, macintosh capes, handkerchiefs, soap, shaving soap, safety razors, nail scissors, boot polish (black), 'tooth brushes, boot brushes, safety pins, anti-frostbite grease, insect powder, combination knife, fork, and spoon, needles, sewing cotton, chocolate, peppermints, tinned meats and fish, sweets, café au lait, writing pads, writing paper, envelopes, mouth organs, gramophones, gramophone records, indoor games, footballs, magazines and other reading matter, steel minors, tooth paste, pipe cleaners, and tinned milk.