Sir Harry Lauder intended the Million Pound Fund to benefit those servicemen who had returned home from the First World War and were facing hardship
Sir Harry Lauder was the highest paid artist in variety theatre during the First World War, and the enthusiastic driving force behind ‘The Harry Lauder Million Pound Fund’. Registered as a war charity in August 1917, it aimed to ‘supplement the state or any other pension for Scottish pensioned or discharged sailors… and soldiers and the dependents of deceased Scottish sailors and soldiers who have served or directly suffered by the war’.
Throughout the war, Lauder performed for the troops at the front and on leave and encouraged men to enlist. Like so many others, he was not left untouched by the horrors of war. His only son, John, served as a captain with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Having suffered a gas attack at the front, by late 1916 he was back in France.