What America did

by Florence Finch Kelly

In the home camps and cantonments the “Y” centers had an average of nearly 20,000,000 visits from soldiers and sailors per month, while in them at the same time were written letters on free Red Triangle stationery numbering more than 14,000,000 and its entertainments, lectures and motion picture shows were attended by 5,000,000 men. It established and carried on thousands of educational classes, French being the most popular study. Its work was especially valuable in the education of illiterates and of foreigners who did not understand English. Some 50,000 who could not read or write when they entered the training camps received in this way the rudiments of a common school education. On troop trains and transports the “Y” workers were present, giving whatever service the conditions made possible.

Overseas the hut of the Red Triangle was to be found wherever there were American fighting men—in England, Ireland, Scotland, in France and Italy, Russia and Siberia, from Gibraltar to Vladivostok, from the Caucasus to the Murman coast. Sometimes the “hut” was a dugout, sometimes a ruined chateau, again it was a freight car on a siding, or a temporary shack, or a substantial building. But, whatever its form and appearance, it stood for home, for the democratic social fabric for which the men were fighting, and within it they could always find light and warmth, cheer and good fellowship, books, games, music, entertainment, smokes and toothsome dainties.

Motion picture films for the Y. M. C. A. to the average length of fifteen miles were shipped every week, and at its moving picture shows there was an average weekly attendance of 2,500,500. Scores of actors and actresses canceled their engagements and went overseas to interest and amuse the soldiers and sailors with performances of all kinds on the hut circuit, organized and directed by the Over-There Theater League, under the Y. M. C. A. During the latter months a hundred performances daily, on the average, were put on in the various camps. None of the players received a salary and shows of all kinds were free. There were concerts, lectures, readings, as well as movies and every kind of theatrical performance. A department of plays and costumes maintained in Paris sent out to the camps facilities for amateur performances and fifty professional coaches went from the United States to encourage and train the soldiers to produce entertainments of their own. Violins, banjos, mandolins, ukeleles and cornets were sent over by the thousands, to say nothing of smaller instruments and sheets of music.

To provide for athletics and physical recreation for the soldiers and sailors overseas the Y. M. C. A. expended more than a million and a half dollars. It sent over 1,200 sports leaders and its shipments included huge quantities of baseballs and bats, boxing gloves, footballs, ping-pong balls, racquets, nets, tennis balls, running shoes, and all the paraphernalia of indoor and outdoor sports, to the value of $2,000,000, which were free for the asking.

The post canteens of the army were taken over by the Y. M. C. A., at the urgent request of the commander of the American forces and against its own desire, and operated throughout the war. This entailed the running of a huge merchandising proposition foreign to its customary activities and the work was assumed in addition to its chosen program of fostering the morale and cherishing the welfare of the fighting forces. For this post exchange service it furnished buildings and service without charge and sold to the soldiers at cost goods to the value of $3,000,000 per month. Its workers often carried packs of goods into the trenches and distributed them freely. Because it was all a question of service the organization itself bore the very considerable loss at which it operated the canteens.

A system of “leave-areas” conducted by the Y. M. C. A. provided recreation for the men on the seven days’ furlough given to each one after four months of service. It was not thought desirable by the military authorities to turn the men loose for their holiday and therefore several resorts were taken over to furnish interesting places for them to visit and were put into the hands of the Y. M. C. A. as hosts and entertainers. Aix-les-Bains was the first and twenty-five others were added until the men had a wide range of selection ranging from famed resorts in the Alps to others on the shores of the Mediterranean. It was a kind of entertainment that had to be created, for it was entirely without precedent. Largely in the hands of women workers in the Y. M. C. A., they and their men helpers and advisers bent their utmost endeavor, resourcefulness and loving care to the work of giving the men a good time and sending them back to their duties at the end of their leaves physically and mentally refreshed. Each area had its athletic field in which every day there were sports going on and there were mountain climbs, picnics, bicycle rides, and, in the evening, movies, theatrical entertainments, concerts, music and dancing.

The women’s contingent of the Y. M. C. A. did effective work both in these leave areas and in the canteens. Their service was not enlisted until a year after our entrance into the conflict, but at the end of hostilities a thousand women were engaged in it, and so insistent was the call for them that they were recruited as rapidly as possible, a thousand more being sent over during the next three months. They were given a week or more of intensive training before sailing to fit them for the duties they would have to undertake.

Unique in all army as well as in all educational history was the great educational system which the Y. M. C. A. undertook to establish, under the authority and with the coöperation of the War Department. Beginning in the home camps, it was carried across the sea, developed more and more as time went on, and found its climax in the “Khaki University.” The final and complete plans were ready only in time for use with the Army of Occupation in Germany and in the camps abroad and at home in which the men waited for demobilization, when $2,000,000 worth of text-books had been ordered for the work. Some of the foremost educational experts of the United States, numbering several hundred, were engaged in the organizing and supervision of the system and many hundreds of others, members of the alumni and faculties of American educational institutions who were enrolled among the fighting forces, undertook the work of instruction. The scheme enabled soldiers and sailors to continue their studies without expense, whether they desired elementary, collegiate or professional instruction or agricultural, technical or commercial training. The scheme, which was finally taken over by the Army, is described at more length in the chapter on “The Welfare of the Soldiers.”

So successful and important was the work of the Y. M. C. A. with the American forces that both the French and the Italian Governments requested it to establish service centers with their respective armies. This it did, the American workers who initiated and supervised the program of recreation and fostering of morale being assisted, in the respective armies, by French and Italians.