What America did

by Florence Finch Kelly

Coöperating with the War Camp Community Service, the National League for Women’s Service with its 300,000 members ran its own clubs and canteens, furnished workers for those of other organizations and for information booths, recruited a Woman’s Motor Corps whose members were ready for work as motor drivers for any war service organization served as the distributing agency for florists all over the country who contributed flowers for the wounded in hospitals, and collected and sent books, magazines, games, phonographs and records to army and navy camps at home and overseas.

The Over-There Theater League, under the leadership of men prominent in the theatrical world, secured actors and actresses, arranged theatrical tours, staged entertainments and, under the auspices of the Y. M. C. A., carried their performances from camp to camp. During the “Slacker Record Week” 15,000 men and women engaged in the campaign to secure phonographs and records to be sent overseas for the pleasure of the soldiers. To provide moving pictures for the camps at home and on the other side a great number of writers, actors and producers worked with zeal, and the Community Motion Picture Bureau, in charge of the service under the Y. M. C. A., made careful investigation to find out what kind of pictures were best liked in the different places. In the camps and cantonments at home it showed 8,000,000 feet of films per week. It had 2,000,000 feet of films in service on the transports that carried the troops to France. Its films were sent out to the ships of the Atlantic fleet and circulated from one cruiser to another. In France, and wherever there were American troops, the movie was ready for their entertainment in camps and hospitals from the port of debarkation to the rear of the firing line.

The contribution of the Y. W. C. A. to the work of big-brothering the army gave a peculiar touch which, unprecedented in war as the whole movement was, carried in a still more unusual and original way the atmosphere of the home and the influence of the social fabric through the training camps and across the ocean. In more than a hundred camps and cantonments its Hostess Houses, accommodating from 500 to 5,000, offered welcome to women friends and relatives visiting soldiers and sailors. The Hostess House, with its flowers and rugs and easy chairs, its desks for writing and tables offering books and magazines, its cheerful, blazing fireplace in winter and its verandas in summer, its pleasant and well conducted cafeteria and its general homelike air, was a charming bit of the outside world set down in the midst of military activities. There mother, wife, sister, sweetheart, friend could meet her soldier or sailor lad, could spend the night if necessary and have good, inexpensive meals. It was the scene of many impromptu weddings, the hostess of the house and her assistants taking charge of the arrangements, when lovers decided suddenly to be married before the ocean and the chances of battle should separate them. The Y. W. C. A. carried its work to France, and in its Hostess Houses there looked after the welfare of the women workers for the American Expeditionary Force and its canteens followed the American troops even to north Russia, where they were established in Murmansk and Archangel.

All of the great religious bodies of the country joined at once in the effort to lessen for the army and navy men the hardships of war, to surround them with as many as possible of the comforts of civilized life and to uphold them physically, mentally and morally. People of Protestant faith gave their support mainly to the long established and widely reaching organization of the Y. M. C. A., members of the Catholic Church, working through the National Catholic War Council, supported the endeavors of the Knights of Columbus, and the Jewish Welfare Board, with American Jewry behind it, turned its attention especially to soldiers of that faith. And the Salvation Army, with its years of experience in caring for the needs of humanity and upholding morale, was early in the field. All these organizations coöperated in the most cordial way, supplementing one another’s effort and joining their endeavors whenever the best results could be gained in that way, two or more of them sometimes using the same building. The friendly hand, the good cheer, the comforts each had to offer were ready for any man in uniform without a thought as to his religious affiliations. Each held its religious ministrations in reserve for those who asked for them and, for the rest, based its abundant and many-sided service solely on the desire to help the American Army fight the battle of justice and liberty. Their one purpose was to big-brother the fighting forces of the nation and, whether in training camp or debarkation port, on transport or battleship, behind the lines in France or at the very front, to be ready with whatever help and cheer and comfort it was in their power to give when it was wanted.

In a Red Triangle Hut in the Battle Zone

The Jewish Welfare Board was the youngest of all these organizations, having been formed after our entrance into the conflict for the purpose of helping to win the war by carrying out the policies of the War Department with regard to the welfare and the morale of the soldiers. Behind it were three and a half million citizens of the Jewish faith and, while it functioned on its religious side for the benefit of the 175,000 men of the Jewish religion in the Army and Navy, in all its other activities it was nonsectarian and worked as generously and cordially for one as for another. In the training camps of the Army and the Navy in the United States it had many huts and nearly three hundred field workers who arranged entertainments, classes and study groups, provided religious services, and taught the English language and the principles of American citizenship to men new to America. In two hundred communities near training stations the representatives of the Welfare Board coöperated with the War Camp Community Service in all the phases of its activities. Overseas it had headquarters in Paris and at the end of hostilities it was preparing to establish others at debarkation ports and in cities near the large camps of the A. E. F. and was ready to send a hundred men and women workers to take charge of them. Its club rooms in Paris were equipped with books, music, games and other means of social enjoyment and the organization, by coöperation with a French society, arranged to have Jewish soldiers entertained in French homes of their own faith. Through the suggestion of the Welfare Board a number of rabbis were commissioned as chaplains with the fighting forces, each of them being provided with a monthly allowance to expend upon small comforts for his boys. They held Jewish holyday services back of and almost in the front line trenches, in cities and villages, once in the ruins of a Roman Catholic Cathedral and again in a large Y. M. C. A. hut. At one service, at which the rabbi, coming from another sector, arrived a little late, he found that the local Knights of Columbus Chaplain had kept the meeting together for him and opened it with a preliminary prayer.

The National Catholic War Council, organized to direct the war-aiding activities of all Catholic forces, operated a million-dollar chain of Visitors’ Houses at army and navy training camps and of service clubs in communities and embarkation ports, where it worked in coöperation with the War Camp Community Service. Under its supervision was the society of the Knights of Columbus which, at the close of hostilities, had in the United States several hundred buildings and 700 secretaries and overseas more than a hundred buildings and huts, with many more in preparation, and over 900 workers. It had service clubs in London and Paris which provided reading, lounging and sleeping rooms, and all such club comforts, while its huts behind the lines furnished centers of comfort, cheer, entertainment and small services of many sorts. It operated a great fleet of motor trucks which carried supplies up to the firing line and into the front trenches. Nothing was more welcome to the battle-weary soldiers relieved from front line duty than these “K. C.” rolling canteens with their hot drinks, cigarettes and other comforts. The organization shipped to the other side and gave to soldiers and sailors many tons of supplies, including cigarettes by the hundreds of millions and huge amounts of chewing gum, soap, towels, stationery, candy and chocolate. It had more than a hundred voluntary chaplains on service with the troops, many of whom carried money furnished by the society to aid in providing comforts for the welfare of the soldiers.

The Salvation Army won a peculiar place in the hearts of our fighting men by the simple hominess and complete self-abnegation of its service. Its huts and hostels were in all the important training camps at home, while overseas the Salvation Army uniform in some kind of a structure or dugout welcomed the army lad in the big camp areas, in the supporting lines and in the forward troop movements up to the rear of the front line forces and trenches. It had overseas more than 1200 officers, men and women, operating 500 huts of one sort or another, rest rooms and hostels. It had forty chaplains serving under Government appointment and it supplied nearly fifty ambulances. Its method was to put a husband and wife in charge of a canteen or hut, the man making himself useful in any way that offered, the woman making doughnuts and pies, chocolate and coffee for the ever hungry doughboys, and doing for them whatever small motherly service was possible. In their huts the men could always find warmth and light and good cheer, music and games and good things to eat that were touchingly reminiscent of boyhood and home. Shells screamed overhead, gas floated back from the front and the earth shook with the roar of battle, but the Salvation Army workers stood to their self-imposed duties regardless of their own comfort or danger and had ready for the long lines of soldiers coming and going a smiling, heartfelt welcome and huge quantities of pies and doughnuts and hot drinks. Its canteens were always open, day and night, and none of its workers was sent overseas without special training.

By far the largest, oldest and most important of these welfare organizations was the Young Men’s Christian Association, which expanded a total of nearly $80,000,000 on a system of war service so vast that the sun was rising upon it through every hour of the day. Within a few hours after the United States entered the war the Y. M. C. A. offered its entire resources to the Government. At the end of hostilities it had overseas over 7,000 workers, of whom 1,600 were women; in the American Expeditionary Forces it had 1,900 war service centers, nearly 1,500 in the French armies, several hundred in Italy, with more in Russia and Siberia; in the United States it had 950 of these centers and 6,000 workers and it was represented in every cantonment and training camp for Army or Navy from end to end of the country. On this side, it paid for its huts and their equipment a total of more than $6,000,000, while overseas the similar expenditure went beyond $5,000,000, making a total of well over $11,000,000 invested in the equipment with which to give our soldiers and sailors rest and cheer, entertainment and comfort. The cost of the operation of these centers amounted, for the duration of the war, to over $6,550,000.