At the close of a meeting held by one of our workers, an elderly lady came to him and said if he would go to her house she would give him a sovereign. He went, and she gave him the coin, and then closing the door of her private room, said, 'And now I am going to give you the most precious possession I have in the world.' Her voice choked with emotion as she proceeded, 'Years, many years ago, I was to have been married. The arrangements were made, the day fixed, and the ring bought, and—then he died!' And she sobbed as she spoke. Going to a bureau she took out a little box and, handing it to him, said, 'The wedding ring is in there. I have kept it all these years, but I promised the Lord I would only keep it until He showed me what He would have me do with it, and He told me while you were speaking. I give it to you for the Y.M.C.A. and for the boys,' and she turned away utterly broken up. Thousands of incidents could be related of equal interest to the foregoing, did space permit, and all these incidents combine to give a personal interest to the fund. We can only add that the greatest possible care has been taken to administer the fund wisely and so avoid waste, or anything that savours of extravagance. Of course, Y.M.C.A. finance has come in for criticism. Certain people who have visited the huts, and have seen the enormous business there transacted have come to the conclusion that either very large profits are being made, or that the business methods of the Association leave much to be desired. The question has frequently been asked, 'What is done with the profits?' and the fiction has got abroad that the Y.M.C.A. publishes no accounts and is amassing huge sums of money. The real position is easily stated:—

The Y.M.C.A. does not do trading for trading's sake, but because through its trading department it is the better enabled to meet the needs of the troops, and also because profits on trading mean further extension. So rapid has been the development of the war work of the Y.M.C.A., that not only has every penny of profit been spent on the maintenance and development of this work for soldiers and sailors, but it has been necessary to raise large sums of money in subscriptions to meet the ever-increasing demand for extension. Every new centre means, or may mean, an additional burden on the central fund or on the divisional funds for which the National Council is ultimately responsible. First, there is the cost of the hut, which may mean £750 or may run into thousands—it all depends upon size and site. The initial cost may be defrayed by an individual gift to the central war fund, but usually to make the hut large enough for its purpose, additional money has to be spent, whilst the furnishing will probably cost from one to three hundred pounds, or more. Also, it must carry stock to the value of a hundred pounds or possibly much more if it is a big camp. A very big turnover in a Triangle hut may represent a very small profit, e.g. there are enormous sales of stamps and postal orders, and all these are sold for actual cost, and, what is more, the Association has to bear the loss of shortages. Then there are the things the Y.M.C.A. does free of any charges whatever, e.g. there are no club fees and no charges for admission to concerts, lectures, or entertainments in the ordinary hut. Free writing paper and envelopes are at the present time costing more than £90,000 a year. Thousands of pounds are spent on cricket and football outfits, games generally, books, pictures, and literature for free distribution. Hot drinks and refreshments are given free to the walking wounded on a very large scale, and practically every one of the two thousand war Y.M.C.A.'s keeps 'open house' at Christmas. The work of the Y.M.C.A. for the relatives of wounded is very costly, especially in France, many hostels being maintained for that purpose. Motor transport is an expensive item for which there is no return, and very large sums of money are spent on lectures and educational work. It is estimated that the Y.M.C.A. educational programme in France alone may ultimately cost the Association fifty thousand pounds a year. When the request has come to open a new centre, the determining factor has been, 'Is it needed?' not 'Will it pay?' Indeed many huts in isolated centres cannot possibly be made to pay, and yet they mean everything to the men who use them. The spending department of the Association has been built up with the greatest care. A body of well-known business men meets for hours every week and watches expenditure as a cat watches a mouse. The Acting Treasurer of the War Emergency Fund is a partner in a big firm of Indian Merchants, and devotes himself with untiring energy and conspicuous ability to the supervision of accounts and to the expenditure. The accounts are audited by a leading firm of chartered accountants, and the audited statement of receipts and expenditure together with a balance sheet, is published in The Times and other papers every six months. In the canteens it is a matter of principle to give full value for money spent, but towards the war services the profits made have been equal to a sum of ten shillings for every pound contributed by the public. Owing chiefly to the enormous stores that have to be maintained in France and Overseas generally, the Bank overdraft of the war fund has often reached four and five hundred thousand pounds. It is thus not difficult to see what is done with the profits. The Y.M.C.A. might, had it so chosen, have feathered its nest during the war, but with a sublime, though by no means a reckless disregard of the future it stepped right into the breach, and went straight forward to meet the national need.

As a Y.M.C.A. we pride ourselves on the business management of our work. We insist on business methods being adopted, and we do not mix our business with philanthropy—the Association hut is not a charity as far as its business side is concerned. The average hut in a large camp is expected to pay its way, so that subscriptions from the general public can be applied to the extension of the work and to the maintenance of centres that cannot be self-supporting.

The War Office, in the early stages of the war, asked us to pay a rebate of 10 per cent. on the gross takings of the refreshment department. After full consideration, we came to the conclusion that we could only do this by extracting the money from the pockets of the men, who for the most part are miserably paid, by paying it out of subscriptions given by the public, or by limiting the extension of the work. Neither alternative seemed desirable or in the interests of the men, and after many conferences with the Quartermaster-General's department at the War Office, it was agreed, by mutual consent and at the suggestion of the War Office, to refer the matter for decision to the Secretary of State for War. It was at the time Lord Kitchener was in Gallipoli, and Mr. Asquith was personally in charge. At a conference at Downing Street the representatives of the Board of Control Regimental Institutes stated their case, and we had the opportunity of replying. Mr. Asquith took several weeks to consider the question in all its bearings, and ultimately gave the decision entirely in our favour, and decided for the duration of the war we should not be asked to pay the rebate. Later on, the matter was reopened by Lord Derby, and eventually it was found necessary for the Y.M.C.A. to pay 6 per cent. on their gross takings in huts on Military ground, to regimental funds, and this is a great tax on its resources. Most of the huts are loaned free to the Military for church parades and military lectures.

The figures of the Red Triangle are colossal, and yet figures by themselves fail to give an adequate idea of the magnitude of the work, and for obvious reasons it is impossible to make those statistics complete. On a given date it was ascertained that upwards of forty-five thousand workers were giving regular service to the war work of the Y.M.C.A. By August 31, 1918, 929,590,430 pieces of stationery had been sent out from Y.M.C.A. Headquarters in London for distribution amongst the men of His Majesty's Forces. The stationery bill by the summer of 1918 had risen to the rate of upwards of £90,000 per annum.

In two months one hundred and five tents were sent out to replace the huts and tents lost in Picardy and Flanders.

In eighteen months, Triangle House, London, the Headquarters of our Trading Department, sent out to the Y.M.C.A. overseas:—

875 Gramophones and 8386 Records.
322 Pianos and Organs.
572 Billiard and Bagatelle Tables.
1,341 Sets of Boxing Gloves.
108 Optical Lanterns.
10,188 Sets of Draughts.
1,335 Sets of Chess.
3,140 Sets of Dominoes.
4,263 Footballs.
1,080 Sets of Quoits.
657 Sets of Cricket.
4,992 Extra Balls.
1,540 Extra Bats.
1,798 Hockey Sticks.
520 Balls.
426 Golf Balls.
100 Tennis Sets.
330 Tennis Racquets.
2,364 Tennis Balls.
61 Sets Bowls.
358 Badminton Sets.
50 Baseball Sets.

It will be noted that the items in this list are not trading goods to be sold at a profit, but excepting in the case of some of the billiard tables, are non-remunerative, and provided absolutely free for the use of the men serving overseas.