WITH THE BRITISH ARMY
I
In sheltered America we cannot realize what war means, but when we
entered the warring countries of Europe, in an instant we were in a
different atmosphere. We landed in England upon a darkened coast, we
entered a darkened train, where every blind was drawn lest it furnish a
guide to London for invading Zeppelins or aeroplanes. We passed
through gloomy towns and villages, where not a single light was showing
from a window, where every street lamp and railway station was darkened
or hidden. Automobiles with a dim spark of light groped through the
black streets of the metropolis.
In London we saw a great Zeppelin brought down in flames. It was a
sight never to be forgotten. At half-past two in the morning we were
awakened by the roar of the anti-aircraft guns in and around the city.
After traveling all night from Germany, one Zeppelin had arrived over
London and a whole fleet of them was scattered over the coasts and
counties of England.
We sprang to the window and found the sky swept by a score of
searchlights with their great shafts of piercing light, shooting from
the dark depths of the city high into the sky, where they all converged
on a single bright object that hung nine thousand feet above us. Long,
and shining like silver with its flashing aluminum, the Zeppelin seemed
held as if blinded by the fierce light. Bombs were dropping from it
and explosions followed in rapid succession in the city beneath.
It was a battle to the death, high in the air with all London looking
on. The guns were in full play and the shell and shrapnel were
bursting all about the Zeppelin. Sometimes you could trace the whole
trajectory of a projectile, as a spark of light swept through the sky
toward the Zeppelin and then burst to the right or left, above or below
it. Most of the shots seemed to go wide of the mark. More than a
score of aeroplanes had been sent up to attack it, with one plane to
guide the rest and signal to the guns below by wireless or lights. The
battle finally developed into a duel to the death between the machine
guns of the Zeppelin and Lieutenant Robinson of the Flying Corps, who
was up for two hours in his aeroplane after the enemy--one man fighting
for a city of five millions. He attacked from below and bombs were
thrown at his plane; then he attacked from the side as he circled about
the monster, but he was driven off by their machine guns. At last,
mounting high in the sky, he attacked from above. The guide-plane
flashed down the signal for the guns to cease firing and give him a
chance.
For a few moments all was silent; the battle seemed to be over. The
great airship, which had swung sharply to the left, was triumphantly
leaving for home. Then it was that Robinson dropped his incendiary
bomb. Suddenly there was an explosion. A flame of burning gas leaped
into the sky. London was lit up for ten miles round-about. Our room
was instantly as bright as though a searchlight had flashed into the
window. Far above us was the Zeppelin in flames. Now it began to
sink--first it was in a blaze of white light, then its outline turned
to a dull red, finally it crumpled to a glowing cinder, sank from
sight, and fell crashing to the earth. Then all was dark again. Death
had fallen suddenly upon the men in the Zeppelin and upon some in the
sleeping city below.
As we drove through London we passed the draper's shop, near St. Paul's
Cathedral, where George Williams and a group of twelve young men met in
a little upper room on June 6, 1844, to organize the first Young Men's
Christian Association. A dozen young men with little wealth,
influence, or education might not seem a very formidable force, but
twelve men have upset the world and changed the course of history
before now. They had only thirteen shillings, or $3.25, in the
treasury, and were too poor even to print and send out a circular
announcing their little organization. But George Williams brought his
fist down on the table, with the confident words, "If this movement is
of God, the money will come."
It has come. The twelve men have been multiplied now to a million and
a half, scattered in forty lands. Girded with new strength and with
the dauntless optimism of youth, the movement has risen up to minister
not only to the millions of British and American soldiers and munition
workers, but also to the men in the camps, hospitals, or prisons in
most of the nations now at war. The thirteen shillings have been
multiplied until now the permanent Y M C A buildings are worth over a
hundred million dollars. An average of two new huts or centers have
been erected and opened by the British or American Associations every
day since war was declared; while two permanent buildings in brick or
stone rise each week in some part of the world.
Wars are the birth-pangs of new eras. A new day dawned for the Young
Men's Christian Association with the present war. At midnight on
August 4, 1914, the British Association as it had been for seventy
years was buried and forgotten, and a new movement arose on the ruins
of the old. Ninety per cent of its former workers left to join the
colors, but a new army of over thirty thousand men and women was
mustered and trained within its huts for the service of the British
soldiers. The Y M C A had suddenly to "think imperially," and to
minister to a world at war.
Seventy years ago George Williams was the man of the hour, but a leader
of the British war work of the Y M C A was found in the present crisis
in the person of Mr. A. K. Yapp, General Secretary of the National
Council of Great Britain, who has recently been knighted by virtue of
his distinguished service for the nation. He had spent Sunday, August
second, in deep searching of heart and had caught a vision of what the
war would mean, and the opportunity that would be presented to an
organization that was interdenominational, international, readily
mobile, and adaptable enough instantly to meet a great national crisis.
Within a fortnight the British army and the whole British navy were
mobilized for war. During that time the Y M C A was represented in
four-fifths of the camps of the territorial forces and 250 centers were
opened. In six months 500 centers were occupied; at the end of the
first year there were 1,000, and after two years of the war 1,500 such
centers were in full swing. The area of operations includes the
British Isles, Egypt, the Dardanelles, Malta, the Mediterranean ports,
India, Mesopotamia, East and South Africa, Canada, Australia, and out
to the last limits of Britain's far flung battle line.
The Y M C A has a strong homing instinct, aiming to provide "a home
away from home." In the dugouts behind the trenches, in the deserts of
Egypt, or in the jungles of Africa, it has been forced to make a home
in every kind of shelter. It was significant that its first three
successive dwelling places seventy years ago were a little bedroom, a
coffee house, and a room in a tavern. During the present war, one may
see Associations in actual operation along the fighting line in France,
in a cowshed, a pigsty, a stable, a hop-house, dugouts under the earth;
in battered and ruined buildings in Flanders; in tents in the Sahara
and on the ancient Peninsula of Mt. Sinai; at the bases of the big
battle fleets; in the rest houses of the flying corps; on the Bourse in
Cairo; in hotels taken over in Switzerland and France, and in the great
Crystal Palace of London. In four centers it has used and transformed
a brewery, a saloon, a theater, and a museum. Its dwellings stretch
away from the tents of "Caesar's Camp," where the Roman Julius lauded
in 55 B. C., on the southern shores of Britain, to the far north, in
the new naval institute at Invergordon, erected for the sailors of the
Grand Fleet at a cost of more than $20,000. They range from the
battered dugouts at the front in France to the Shakespeare hut in
London, costing more than $30,000. They stretch from the rest huts of
the great metropolis, with sleeping and feeding accommodations for some
ten thousand men a day during the dangerous period of leave in London,
away to the hut in "Plug Street" Woods, recently blown to atoms by a
shell, where the secretary escaped by a few seconds and returned to
find literally nothing left save the rims of his spectacles and two
coins melted and fused together by the terrific heat of the explosion.
Several of the secretaries and workers have been killed by shell fire,
or in transit by torpedoes from submarines, while other Association men
have received the Victoria Cross for heroism in action.
Let us visit a typical hut to grasp the significance of its work, in
order that we may realize what is going on in the fifteen hundred
similar centers. We are on the great Salisbury Plain, in the midst of
thirty miles square of weltering mud during the long winter months. To
realize what a hut means to the men in such a place, we must understand
the unnatural situation created by the conditions of war. Here are
multitudes of men far from home, shut out from the society of all good
women, taken away from their church and its surroundings, weary and wet
with marching and drilling, often lonely and dejected, in an atmosphere
of profanity and obscenity in the cheerless barrack rooms, and tempted
by the animal passions which are always loosed in war-time. The men
need all the help we can give them now, and need it desperately.
Now can you measure just what a big warm hut means to these men as a
home, far away from home? The red triangle at the entrance gleams
across the whole camp and stands for the three things the soldier most
needs.
It stands, in the first place, as a pledge for supplying the _physical
need_ of these hungry, lonely, and fiercely tempted men. A dry
shelter, a warm fire, a cheerfully lighted room, the bursts of song,
and the hum of conversation make the men forget the wind and rain and
mud outside. Supper and a hot cup of coffee satisfy their hunger. On
the notice-board is the announcement of the outdoor sports, football
tournaments, and the games, where the thirty thousand men of the
division will compete in open contest on the coming Saturday, under the
direction of the Y M C A. Whatever the soldier needs for his physical
life, whether it is to eat or to sleep, a bed in London, a cool drink
in the thirsty desert, or hot coffee in the trenches, it is furnished
for him by the Association.
The hut also provides for the soldier's _intellectual_ and social
needs. The piano and the phonograph, the billiard tables, draughts and
chess boards, tables for games, library, and reading room keep him
busy; and the concerts, stimulating lectures, moving pictures,
educational classes, and debating societies provide him with
recreational and mental employment.
The far deeper _moral and spiritual needs_ of the soldier are also met.
As the evening draws to a close, one sees the secretary in his military
uniform stand up on the table; hats are off and heads are bowed at the
call for evening prayers, which are held here every night. On Sunday
the parade services of the different denominations take place in turn
in the Association hut. Weekly voluntary religious meetings are also
held. At one end of the building is the "quiet room," where groups of
Christian soldiers can meet for Bible classes or for prayer. At
regular intervals evangelistic meetings are held. On our last night at
this hut, on a Sunday evening, twelve hundred men gathered to listen to
the Christian message.
Of the three bars of the triangle, it is this which stands at the top,
which unites the other two and which is the dominating factor of the
whole. And yet nowhere is religion forced down the throats of the men.
Rather it is the aim to make it the unconscious atmosphere of the whole
hut. It is a striking fact, to which every soldier will testify, that
while the language of the barrack room and beer canteen is often
reeking with the profane and the obscene, the whole tone of the
Association hut is entirely different. As one soldier says: "You don't
realize the enormous difference of atmosphere between this and any
other place where soldiers congregate. A man simply does not talk bad
language and filth here; he learns to control himself." Thus the
threefold work of the Association stands for the whole man and for the
whole manhood of the nation.
In many ways the Y M C A hut seeks to meet the soldier's every need.
1. It is his _club_, where he meets his comrades and in the freedom and
friendship of the place forgets the irksome drill, the endless
restraints, and the stern discipline of military life.
2. As we have already seen, it is his _home_, the place where he writes
his letters and keeps in touch with his family and distant friends.
Nearly twenty million pieces of stationery are sent out free for the
soldiers each month from the London central office, and the sign of the
red triangle on the letter head brings weekly joy and cheer to the
broken circle in the distant home. It is here that the lad is helped
to "keep the home fires burning" in his heart and to hold true to those
high ideals. One little girl when visiting the Crystal Palace, upon
seeing the sign of the red triangle, said: "My daddy always makes that
mark on his letters when he writes to us at home."
3. It is his _church_, for out on the desert, or in the jungle, or at
the front, there is usually no other church building for religious
services. The following is taken from a typical Sunday program in one
of the huts: "6:30 a. m., Roman Catholic Mass; 7:30 Nonconformist
service; 9:00 Anglican service; 2-3 p. m., Bible class; 6:4:5-8 United
Song Service." Thus each denomination is allowed to have its own
service in its own way on Sunday morning, while the evening meeting is
interdenominational and open to all.
In one place where the young Hebrews were being sadly neglected and
were falling away from their former moral standards, the secretary
arranged with the Jewish rabbi to have a weekly service in the Y M C A
tent for his men. It has been held ever since. The Jews of the
neighboring city were so grateful that they started a campaign to raise
a fund of $10,000 for Y M C A huts. The Rev. Michael Adler, the head
Jewish rabbi with the forces in France, has time and again expressed
his cordial appreciation of the help rendered to the men of his faith.
The doors of the Association will always remain open for men of all
creeds. As wide as the needs of men, as broad as democracy, as unified
as humanity, and as tolerant as its Lord and Master, the movement will
ever aim to be.
4. The Association hut is the soldier's _school_. Here his classes are
held. A program taken at random from a single hut will show the scope
of a week's work: "Bible classes; religious services; lecture on The
Town Where We Are; lecture on South America; lantern lecture on Russia;
debating society; impromptu speeches; history class."
5. The Association hut is also his place of _rest_, and the shop where
he buys his supplies. Here he can procure almost anything he needs
that is decent, and read anything that is wholesome. Usually this hut
is the only clean place of recreation in the camp, and without it he is
left to choose between the cheerless tent and the beer canteen.
6. The Y M C A is the center of his _recreation_, and his entertainment
bureau. Under the leadership of Miss Lena Ashwell and scores of
others, concerts and entertainment parties have been organized and have
toured continuously in France, Great Britain, Egypt, and the more
distant camps. The six artists of each party are received with
tremendous enthusiasm and become the fast friends of Tommy Atkins. One
writes: "Last time the party came here the press of men waiting on the
verandah to go into the second performance was so great that our brand
new verandah collapsed with the sound of a bomb explosion! Luckily the
mass was so tightly packed that they fell through in a solid heap; no
one was hurt, and all were able to enjoy the concert thoroughly."
7. It is the soldier's _bank_, and his _postoffice_. We were in one
hut alone where more than fifteen thousand dollars were on deposit in
the savings bank. The sale of stamps in this hut amounts to fifteen
hundred dollars a month, and of postal orders for the remittance of
money home to more than four thousand dollars. Every week an average
of 28,000 letters are written and posted in this one room, while
thousands more are received and handed to the men.
8. The Association is the soldier's _friend_ and tourist guide, while
he is visiting London, Paris, or the other great cities. In some
places one table is set apart where a chaplain or secretary is always
on duty to help the soldiers make their wills, find out their trains to
London, answer their questions, or give them the friendly help they
need.
The Y M C A stands by the soldier to the last and even after he falls.
After the boy has fought his last fight and lies wounded or crippled or
dying in the hospital in France, it meets his parents and relatives and
provides for their entire stay in the country. Each relative of the
wounded proceeding to France receives printed instructions from the War
Office that the Y M C A will meet all the boats and provide
transportation and accommodations for all who need it while at the
front. Our friend, Mr. Geddes, broke down as he tried to tell us how
he and his wife had been met on the lonely shores of France by the Y M
C A secretary and motored quickly to the bedside of their dying son,
only to find that they were just too late. The funeral was arranged,
even to the providing of flowers. The last ministry was performed for
the young man away from home and for the loved ones left behind, under
the triangle that will forevermore be red.
Thus the Association is at once the soldier's club, his home, his
church, his school, his place of rest, his entertainment bureau, his
bank and postoffice, his tourist guide, and the friend that stands by
him and his bereaved parents at the last. Fifteen hundred just such
huts and centers stretch away from Scotland to East Africa, from France
to Mesopotamia, from Egypt to India. Could any other single
organization have met all these needs of the men under arms, mobilized
so quickly, united all denominations, entered all lands, and embraced
all forms of work secular and religious?
We conducted meetings for several months throughout the camps in the
British Isles. At our last parade service with the brigade out in the
open field there were several thousand seated on the grass, with their
eight bands drawn up in front. In every service the battle was on
between good and evil, between God and mammon, between sacrifice and
sin.
One night we visited the sailors' training camp. It was a great
meeting, with two thousand of the sailor boys crowded in a big theater.
The concert was going on when we arrived and the jeers and yells of the
crowd drowned some of the voices of the performers; it was evident that
we were going to have a hard time to hold the audience. Captain "Peg"
stepped to the stage and soon had them singing, "We'll Never Let the
Old Flag Fall." Roars of applause followed and they clamored for more.
Out in the glare of the footlights and looking into that sea of faces,
we began to fight for that audience. There were two thousand tempted
men whom we should never see again. In five minutes the whole theater
was hushed--you could hear a pin drop. After half an hour the meeting
was interrupted by the noise of the band outside. Surely the men will
bolt and leave the meeting. We said to them: "Boys, there is the band.
Let everybody go now who wants to go! We are going on. Every man that
wants to make the fight for character, the fight for purity with the
help of Jesus Christ, stay with us here." There was a shout from the
audience, and not a man left the theater. The band thundered on, but
the crowd was with us now, and the hopes of hundreds of hearts for the
things that are eternal surged to the surface. Several hundred men
signed the War Roll, pledging their allegiance to the Lord Jesus
Christ. One sailor boy came up to thank us, saying that he had all but
fallen the week before; and simply for the lack of a sixpence he had
been saved from sin. With God's help he would now live for Christ.
Another came up who had been drinking heavily and had quarreled with
his wife. He did not have the price of a postage stamp to write to
her. He wanted to know how he could be saved from drink. Man after
man came forward, hungry for human help and longing for a better life.
[Illustration: Harry Lauder Singing at a Y. M. C. A. Meeting. The
Officer seated at the extreme right is Captain "Peg."]
On another occasion we were with the army of Australian and New Zealand
troops, as they were marching by the King at their last review before
going to the front. Fortunately, we had secured standing room near the
King's side, where we could watch every smile and action as he saluted
each passing battalion, and we could even hear him speak a kind word
now and then to some officer. There were generals to the right of us
and to the left of us, colonels, majors, captains, officers of every
rank, and prominent civilians; but the greatest man on that field was
the soldier himself. With what a swing those clean-cut young
Australian boys marched past; every man was a volunteer and part of
that great first army of over four millions of men who came forward for
the defense of the Empire without conscription.
Hundreds were playing in the massed bands, as the long file of men
marched by. But time and again the firm columns seemed to fade before
us, and we could not see them for tears, as we realized that many of
these brave boys were going forward to die for us. Above, a great
aeroplane was looping the loop and warplanes were darting to and fro.
Away on the horizon stood the great boulders of Stonehenge, erected
long before the time of the Saxons, the Britons, or even the ancient
Druids, by the sun-worshippers, who offered their human sacrifices on
the ancient altar there nearly forty centuries before. We looked at
those stones, where through a mistaken conception of God and an
inadequate conception of man, human sacrifices were offered long ago.
Suddenly we heard the crack of the rifles of a body of troops at
practice, moving forward in open line of battle. Today, through a
mistaken conception of God and a low conception of man, over 5,000,000
of men have already been killed, offered in human sacrifice; while many
millions in lands devastated are homeless, starving, or ruined in body
or soul--these are part of the offering, forced upon humanity by a
godless materialism, while a divided Christian Church stands by
impotent.
II
Let us now visit Egypt where we shall witness very different scenes.
Away on the distant horizon are the two triangular points, which grow
as we approach into the outlines of the great pyramids. Beyond are the
fifty-eight centers which have risen along the banks of the Nile, in
the metropolis of Cairo, and in the harbors of Port Said and
Alexandria, and which line the Suez Canal and dot the desert even out
into the peninsula of Mt. Sinai. The sun is setting as we climb the
great pyramid, which stands a silent witness to forty centuries of
history which have ebbed and flowed at its base, but surely no stranger
sight has it ever seen than these armed camps about it, engaged in this
titanic struggle of the world. Away to the south towards far Khartoum,
like a green ribbon in the yellow desert, stretches the irrigated basin
of the Nile. Beyond it is the bottomless burning sand of the Sahara.
Here on the site of Napoleon's ancient battlefield is the largest
concentration camp in Egypt. The white tents of the Australasians
shelter a population as numerous as many a city, with three Association
buildings for the men. From out the great pyramid there is a constant
stream of soldiers passing to and fro. And there under the shadow of
the Sphinx are two more Y M C A huts. Jessop, the former secretary at
Washington, has been in charge here, with a large staff of secretaries
from Australia and New Zealand. General Sir Archibald Murray, in
command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Forces, says: "First of all, the
men must have mess huts; then we want the Y M C A."
Cairo is the throbbing center of Egypt's life, where vice does not lurk
in secret, but flaunts itself in open effrontery. Our secretaries have
been at work there in the long lines of men that stand outside the
places of vice, handing them Testaments and urging them to come away.
The Y M C A has taken over a large amusement center in the Ezbekieh
Gardens in the very heart of Cairo; and in spite of the public saloon
nearby, with its attraction of music and wine, from two hundred to two
thousand men are constantly thronging the Association rooms. The
attractive equipment of a garden, an open-air theater, a skating rink,
baths, supper counters, and a meeting place, but most of all the
personal touch of the two earnest secretaries, make the whole work
effective. The Association has also rented the spacious Bourse, where
it houses several hundred men who are in the city on short leave, while
its lobby is used for concerts and entertainments. During the last
action five of the Y M C A huts on the Canal Zone were under fire. But
there is no day passes but that the men under canvas in this hot land
of Egypt are under fire from temptations more deadly than Turkish
bullets.
Leaving Egypt, we passed over the hot and stifling Red Sea, across the
Indian Ocean, toward the sunny plains of India. Away from the snowy
ridge of the Himalayas, down across the bare plains of the north and
the rice fields and cocoa-nut palms of the tropic south, India lies
like a vast continent, embracing one-fifth of the human race. It was
held before the war by some 75,000 British and twice as many Indian
troops. The numbers are completely altered now. Almost the whole
regular force, both Indian and British, are away fighting in
Mesopotamia, East Africa, France, and Egypt, while a new territorial
force of Kitchener's army of London clerks and English civilians has
taken its place.
One hundred and fifty secretaries in India were ready upon the outbreak
of the war. All across India the Y M C A has opened huts, buildings,
or tents for the territorial and other forces.[1] A writer in the
Journal of the Royal Sussex Regiment, at Bangalore, said: "Somehow the
very letters, Y M C A have gathered to themselves an implication of
comfort, pleasure, and welcome; we instinctively feel among friends."
We visited one night the great tent generously given by the Viceroy for
the work of the territorials in Delhi. General Sir Percy Lake took the
chair and the men gathered in the large marquee for the meeting.
Sherwood Day, of Yale, had been in charge of this work during the
winter, providing a home for the men of the territorials in this
ancient Indian capital. A series of lectures by leading Indians served
to interpret Indian life and thought to these soldiers, who were seeing
at once the needs and greatness of the Indian Empire at first hand,
while leading Indian Christians of the type of Mr. K. T. Paul, Dr.
Datta, and Bishop Azariah told them the fascinating story of Indian
missions and the history of Christianity in Asia. A new sense of race
brotherhood is taking the place of the old antagonism and prejudice,
and Indian secretaries stationed with English Tommies have become
exceedingly popular with them.
From India as a base, the Association has gone forward with the
advancing columns into Mesopotamia and East Africa. As we cross the
Persian Gulf and follow the winding courses of the Tigris and the
Euphrates up into the heart of Mesopotamia, we find a group of
Princeton men and some sixty secretaries stationed here with the
troops, under Leonard Dixon of Canada. The men affectionately call him
the "padre"; anyone who has ever boxed with Dixon and felt the force of
his right, knows that he is a man who has both drive and "punch." The
troops in Mesopotamia have been fighting often under terrible
conditions, marching through ooze and slime, drinking the yellow
unfiltered water, decimated by the attacks both of sickness and of the
enemy. In summer the alkali dust lies four inches deep on the floors
of their tents, and the thermometer stands at 120 degrees in the sultry
shade. Dixon racked his brain to provide recreation and helpful
entertainment for these hard fighting men. A bioscope, competitive
concerts, a Christmas tree, a New Year's treat, football and hockey
tournaments, and entertainments of various kinds have been improvised
to make the men forget the awful hardship of the march and of the
battle. On Sunday the writing tables are full from dawn till dark and
tons of stationery have been used to keep these men in touch with their
distant homes.
The secretaries have been kept busy handling the big convoys of wounded
as they come down the rivers in the boats from the fighting at the
front. One colonel got up from his sick bed to give his testimony
unasked as to what the work of the Association had meant to these
wounded men. He said that it was not only the big kettles of hot
coffee and the caldrons of soup which the secretaries brought aboard
the boats, not only the warm blankets, beef tea, and other comforts
which had helped the men so much, but the fact that when those men
entered that barge with its weight of human suffering and misery, it
seemed that the touch of Another hand unseen was resting on the hot
brow and feverish pulse of those wounded soldiers.
Bovia McLain, an American secretary, gives us a glimpse of a night on a
hospital barge, with a cold wind and rain-storm sweeping down the
river. The canvas tarpaulin began to leak like a sieve and most of the
wounded were cold and drenched to the skin. Soon the men were lying
not only under wet blankets, but actually in two or three inches of
water on the undrained decks. They were packed in like sardines,
without pillows or comforts. "The whole thing was ghastly and
terrible. Men wanted to change their position or have a broken limb
slightly moved, and a dozen other wants seemed to demand attention all
at once. At times I felt the strain so that it seemed to me I could
not control myself longer, but must break down and weep, it was so
appalling." After the men had been made comfortable, the workers were
ready in the morning with supplies of chocolate and tobacco and other
luxuries. It is no wonder that up at the front when the secretary
invites the men to remain for evening prayers sometimes nearly the
whole battalion stays, and one can understand the new interpretation
given by some soldiers to the letters Y. M. C. A.--"You Make
Christianity Attractive."
When the war broke out the Association was ready to enter Africa also.
With the first contingent of 60,000 South African troops a number of Y
M C A secretaries were sent. They erected large marquees in local
training camps, and there prepared the way for the even greater
opportunity which was to follow in the East African campaign under the
Northern Army. The military authorities cabled the Association
headquarters at Calcutta, offering to hand over the army canteens of
East Africa to the Y M C A and to cut out liquor if the Association
would take them over and be responsible for the welfare work among the
troops, looking after their physical, social, and moral needs.
Instantly, Mr. E. C. Carter, the National Secretary of India, cabled
back accepting the offer.
The first score of men were sent over to open up nineteen centers with
the advancing column in the jungles of Africa. The 20,000 troops were
then occupying Swakopmund, a desolate little town surrounded by a sea
of burning sand. There were no trees, not a blade of grass, nor even
the song of a solitary bird to relieve the monotony. The men called it
"the land of sin, sand, sorrow, and sore eyes." Soon, however, the
large hall of the Faber Hotel was procured, with accommodations for a
thousand men. It became the social center of the whole camp. So
popular was the place that the men fairly fought and struggled to get
into the building. Every night at 7:30 the war telegrams were read,
and as it was the only way to hear the news from the front, each tent
appointed one man to be at the Y M C A at that hour. On the occasion
of the opening of the work, one man wrote home: "Two great events have
happened today--the Y M C A has commenced and I have had a bath." The
story will never be written as to what the Association meant in the
hearts of those men who laid down their lives fighting in East Africa.
On the cross at the head of every grave in one section of the dark
continent is the sentence: "Tell England, ye that pass by, that we who
lie here, rest content." Thus, from Cairo in the north, from
Swakopmund in the east, clear to Cape Town in the south, the red
triangle has followed the army to its last outposts. Space will not
permit us to describe the huts which have been opened at Salonica, the
twelve centers at Malta, and others dotted along the ports of the
Mediterranean.
III
A new development has now been undertaken by the Association among the
thousands in the munition works in Great Britain. With the whole
nation organized for war, there are millions of workers busily engaged
on ten and twelve hour shifts, turning out that steady stream of
munitions which must ever flow up to the guns at the front, to supply
the army fighting there. Here are men and women without the excitement
and the adventure of the front, toiling all day under a strain, far
removed from home, congested in unattractive surroundings, and it is of
the utmost importance that these workers be kept healthful and happy.
We motored down one afternoon to see the work that is going on in the
great arsenal at Woolwich. Outside, where a year ago were orchards and
pastures, are long rows of permanent buildings which have sprung up on
every side. To meet this situation the Y M C A has within recent
months erected more than a hundred huts in the different munition
centers, which can provide meals for thousands of tired workers. These
huts have already placed the Association in touch with half a million
workers. In the first hut we visited, three thousand of them were
seated at meals in two relays, while two thousand soldiers were
accommodated in the hut during the afternoon and evening. A platform
at one end had been put up for musical concerts and entertainments.
The price of meals varies from twelve to twenty-five cents. Lady Henry
Grosvenor and other leaders have marshalled a force of fifteen hundred
voluntary workers in this group of huts.
So appreciative has the government been of this new development, that
in addition to providing their own government welfare workers to look
after the women and girls, they are permitting the munitions
manufacturers to build new Y M C A huts at government expense for the
accommodation of the men. We passed down long rows of dormitories,
erected almost in a night, where thousands of weary workers were
sleeping during the day, preparing for their night shift. It was
almost a sad sight to see whole huts filled with hundreds of boys from
fourteen to sixteen years of age, all sound asleep at midday. The
secretaries look after these boys in their rest and play and provide
healthful surroundings, a clean moral atmosphere, and attractive
religious influences.
The Young Women's Christian Association has entered the open door for
work among the women. In one place where a young girl from the country
had been led astray by the temptations of this new and monotonous life
and had committed suicide, the Young Women's Christian Association has
erected a large hut to provide for the moral welfare of thousands of
other girls faced by the same temptations. Oh, the dreary drudgery
that faces these tired women!
"Rattle and clatter and clank and whirr,
And thousands of wheels a-spinning--
Oh, it's dreary work and it's weary work,
But none of us all will fail or shirk;
Not women's work--that should make, not mar,
But the Devil drives when the world's at war;
And it's long and long the day is."
The Y W C A has adopted the sign of the blue triangle, to distinguish
it from the red triangle of the Y M C A. The huts bore the touch of
deft women's hands in the decorations, flowers, and signs of cheer and
comfort which the ladies have provided for these hard worked girls.
Before the huts were erected some girls had to sleep in the streets all
night in the unsanitary communities about the works.
Both the government authorities and the Association workers have seen a
large open door for social service among these millions of munition
workers. For the work here is permanent. These great buildings will
remain as manufacturing centers of some kind after the war. The huts
will still be occupied. Already a new and growing body of legislation
is being introduced to improve the conditions of the toilers of old
England.
It is little wonder that the whole nation has responded to this work so
boldly undertaken on such a large scale. From the first gifts have
been pouring in unsolicited. His Majesty the King, patron of the Young
Men's Christian Association in Britain, has inspected many of the
buildings, and sent in his contribution, with the following note: "His
Majesty congratulates the Association on the successful results of its
War work, which has done everything conducive to the comfort and
well-being of the armies, supplying the special and peculiar needs of
men drawn from countries so different and so distant. It has worked in
a practical, economical, and unostentatious manner, with consummate
knowledge of those with whom it has to deal. At the same time the
Association, by its spirit of discipline, has earned the respect and
approbation of the Military Authorities."
The Queen Mother donated the Alexandra Hut in London, which makes
provision for the accommodation of soldiers on leave in the city. She
was seen recently serving tea behind the counter in the Association hut
to the happy Tommies who had come back strained and tired from the
front to "Blighty" once more. The Princess Victoria has been most
tireless in opening Y M C A huts, and has given unsparingly of her time
and effort for the men.
No one has been more appreciative than the military authorities
themselves. Lord Roberts, four days before his death, wrote expressing
his appreciation of the work being accomplished. His secretary adds:
"He hears on all sides nothing but praise for what the Y M C A is doing
at the camps." Lord Kitchener, who had inspected the huts of the
Association in England, France, and Egypt, wrote: "From the first the Y
M C A gained my confidence, and now I find they have earned my
admiration and gratitude." Mr. Asquith, when Prime Minister, after
visiting the Association huts and attending the religious meetings
said: "The Y M C A is the greatest thing in Europe." Lloyd George, the
present Premier, said recently: "I congratulate the Y M C A. Wherever
I go I hear nothing but good of the work they are doing throughout the
country, and we owe them a very deep debt of gratitude."
[1] In addition to the existing work at Bangalore, Maymyo, and Poona,
Association privileges have been provided for soldiers in Lahore,
Delhi, Multan, Forozepore, Jhansi, Lucknow, Mhow, Trimulgherry,
Jubbulpore, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Ahmednagar, Rangoon, Dalhousie,
Naini Tal, Karachi, Allahabad, and Jutogh.