The International Hospitality League of the Y.M.C.A. is doing similar work on a very large scale, and in its kiosks and inquiry rooms, not only in London, but in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and many of our large provincial centres hundreds of thousands of inquiries are being received and answered day by day, whilst the street patrol workers have been able to help very many who have welcomed their assistance.
We know of no more moving sight than one of the great Triage huts in France when leave is on. We think of our last visit to one such. Three hundred men were sleeping there that night, and 'Uncle Joe,' the Y.M.C.A. leader, went round the bunks last thing to see them safely tucked in. As we stood in the main hall we thought we understood what was said of our Lord that 'when He saw the multitude He was filled with compassion.' Scores of men were gathered around the piano, singing rowdy choruses of the kind loved by our Tommies. The coffee queue extended the whole length of the room, and the men had to buy their tickets from Uncle Joe, who had a few words with each in homely Lancashire dialect, whilst further along the counter a titled lady was serving coffee as fast as she could pour it out. There were crowds round the tables, reading or feeding. We noticed at one table a group of men, one of whom was cutting up a long French loaf, another had just opened a tin of sardines which he was sharing round, whilst a third was helping his comrades from a tin of pears. All were on their way home on leave, or returning to the Front, and all were merry and happy as British Tommies almost invariably are.
Sometimes in a London hut, or it may be in the Y.M.C.A. in Paris, you will come across one of these Tommies who is down and out. He has been on leave and has spent or lost all his money, and is down on his luck. It is to the Y.M.C.A. he turns. A little act of kindness, under such circumstances, has often changed a man's whole outlook on life. Nearly the whole of the service in the Y.M.C.A. hostels is rendered voluntarily, and many workers who have home or business ties welcome this opportunity of doing war service that really counts. There is a tendency in some quarters to speak disparagingly of the voluntary worker, but those who know, realise the enormous value of such service. No paid workers could have been more zealous or more efficient than those who have served voluntarily under the Red Triangle. The old brewery in Earl Street was the first building in London to be adapted for sleeping purposes, but the 'Euston' was the first Y.M.C.A. hostel to be built. One of the largest is the Shakespeare Hut which was built on the site of the proposed National Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, kindly loaned for the purpose. The huge building by London Bridge was lent by the city of London. Many of the huts occupy central and important sites, as for instance, the station huts at King's Cross, Victoria, and Waterloo,—and the station hut often means the last touch of home before men go overseas, and that makes the work and the personality of the workers all the more important.
CHAPTER IV
THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE
This work has been admirably done both at home and at the Front. Its spiritual and material value to the men lies beyond all reckoning, and the services of its personnel are deeply appreciated by the men themselves.—The Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, O.M., M.P.
On August 4, 1914, our plan for war work was ready, but the 'sinews of war' were lacking. Little could be done without money. In our extremity we laid the whole position before one of our most generous leaders and supporters, and told him of the opportunity we saw facing the Y.M.C.A. 'If we are to seize the opportunity,' we said, 'it is absolutely necessary we should secure immediately twenty-five thousand pounds!' He looked up and smiled indulgently—'Twenty-five thousand pounds!' he cried; 'you couldn't possibly raise three thousand pounds at a time like this; the thing's impossible!' 'Impossible or not,' was the reply, 'it must be done. We mustn't even stop to think of the future of the Y.M.C.A. Everything is at stake, and even if we have to sell every building and every stick of furniture we possess we must go forward now!' That very day a large number of telegrams and letters were sent out from Headquarters to friends all over the country—the first war emergency appeal of the Red Triangle—and within a few days the whole of the twenty-five thousand pounds had been raised, and we were appealing for another fifty thousand pounds, until at the time of writing, in August 1918, the war fund has reached the total of nearly two and a half millions sterling. That is a small sum compared with the amounts raised for Y.M.C.A. war work in the United States. Their first appeal brought in five million pounds, the second more than twelve millions, and their appeal a year later, in October 1918, is for twenty millions sterling. Our American friends gave us a hundred thousand pounds from the amount raised by their second war work appeal, a generous and much appreciated gift. People who know little of the facts are sometimes inclined to criticise what they regard as the huge war expenditure of the British Y.M.C.A.'s, but a moment's reflection will make it clear that it has been little short of a miracle of finance to carry out such an enormous programme of work at a total cost of only about one-third of the cost to Britain alone of a single day of war. We have always been short of money, have always had a big overdraft at the bank, and that largely because we have had to finance a huge business concern without capital. Our war fund has been secured partly as a result of skilful advertising, partly through personal solicitation and in response to postal appeals. Flag Days and Hut Weeks also proved valuable agencies for raising money. The full-page Y.M.C.A. advertisements in The Times and other papers were something quite new in religious and social work advertising, though the method has since been widely adopted by other organisations.
Many touching stories are told concerning gifts to the war fund, gifts, many of which have not been secured as a result of cleverly drawn advertisements, but because the contributors have been touched directly or indirectly by the work itself. A boy wrote home from Flanders, 'Tell Dad if he has any money to spare to give it to the Y.M.C.A. as a thankoffering for what they are doing for us chaps out here.' One of our centres had been nearly destroyed by a Zeppelin bomb. It was rebuilt and the day came for the reopening. A lady was present and expressed herself thus: 'I wanted to be here to-day, if only to thank you for what your Association has done for my boy. When the war broke out,' said she, 'he went to the Crystal Palace for his training, and found the Y.M.C.A. there an inestimable boon. He was sent to Blandford to complete his training, and the Y.M.C.A. was there. He was drafted out to Gallipoli, and to his amazement he found the Y.M.C.A. on the Peninsula. He was wounded and sent to Suez, where once more the Y.M.C.A. was a great help to him, and yesterday,' she continued, 'I received a letter from him from Alexandria saying he was convalescent, and spending the whole of his spare time in the central building of the Association.' It is that personal touch that has made the appeal of the Red Triangle one of the most popular appeals of the war.