A Pleasant Evening in a Hostess House

Salvation Army Lassies at the Front

The prodigious program of the Y. M. C. A. with the American forces, which it has not been possible to more than outline, was carried through largely by volunteer workers who wished to undertake it as the best way in which they could help to win the war. Men who were too old to fight or were physically unfit for military service joyfully welcomed the opportunity to do something that would aid the fighting men. Many gave up large salaries and left their situations for the sake of this important service. Others who were financially unable to leave dependents accepted for them an allowance much smaller than they could have earned themselves and gladly took up the work upon the mere payment of their expenses.

The “Y” workers were on the troop trains that carried the men from their homes to the training camps and the Red Triangle was at the fighting man’s side from that moment until he was ready to go over the top. And sometimes the “Y” worker even went forward in the charge with the men for whose welfare he was giving his service. Shell fire not infrequently destroyed the trucks upon which the goods of the Y. M. C. A. were being carried to the front, its huts were sometimes shattered in the same way and nine of its workers, two of them women, were killed by bursting shells. Fifty-seven died in the service, most of them from wounds, over-work and exposure. Twenty-three were seriously injured or gassed. Of its workers 152 received official recognition for distinguished services, to thirteen of whom was awarded the Croix de Guerre and to fifty more other famous decorations.

The American Army was a reading and thinking army and that one of the seven great big-brothering organizations which undertook to supply it with reading matter, the American Library Association, was kept busy. The Library War Service of the Association had in each of forty-eight large army and navy training camps and in seventy hospitals in the United States a central library building, or library quarters, with branches and stations radiating all over the camp or hospital area to render its volumes easy of access. It had collections of books in nearly two hundred hospitals and Red Cross Houses. It equipped with these collections over five hundred military camps and posts and aviation fields, schools and repair depots. It supplied with libraries 260 naval and marine stations and 750 vessels. It had nearly 2,000 branches and stations placed in Y. M. C. A. and K. of C. huts, barracks and mess halls. It shipped overseas 2,000,000 books and 64,000 magazines and distributed 5,000,000 magazines donated by the public through the mails. In its war service libraries there were over 5,000,000 volumes. Three hundred and forty trained librarians supervised its service. Accepted books to the number of 4,000,000 were given by the American people, who provided also the money with which were bought 1,300,000 more. Book donations were well sifted before the books were accepted for war service and the authorities of the association estimated that probably twice as many were given as were finally used.

But even these enormous quantities of books and magazines were no more than sufficient to meet the desire for reading shown throughout the Army and the Navy. The Library War Service of the Association did its best to supply to every fighting man in the training camps at home, on the transports, on the cruisers and battleships, in the stations overseas, in the camps and rest billets, the book he needed when he wanted it, whether it was light fiction, or a technical treatise, or a work of history, economics, philosophy or travel. It supplied books in practically all the modern languages—about forty were represented in each of the large camps—for both study and reading and its lists were filled with titles of scientific, technical and other works that covered the whole range of modern knowledge and activity, philosophy, literature, history, biography, poetry, art, music, fiction, drama, economics, sociology, business, travel. There was demand for them all. Toward the end of the war and after the armistice the Library War Service bent its energies to meeting the greatly increased call for vocational books that would enable the fighting man to become more efficient in his special job or to get a better one when he should presently be returned to civil life.

To support this vast enterprise of big-brothering the Army the American people gave without stint to the organizations by which the work was systematized and carried through. They gave money and effort and thought and love, because it was for “our boys.” They responded with more than was asked by each organization in its separate appeals made during the first year and a half of our war effort. Then, in order that the appeal for funds might be made more efficiently and economically, the seven chief organizations united in a great, nation-wide drive, the money that was subscribed to be divided proportionately among them. They asked for $170,000,000. All the preparations had been made for it before the armistice was signed and it began on that day. Every one believed that the war was over, but because “our boys” were still overseas and for many weeks to come would need care, recreation, comforts and entertainment, no hand withheld its gift. When the week’s drive was over it was found that $203,179,000 had been subscribed to continue the work of big-brothering the fighting forces.

CHAPTER XXXII
RUNNING THE RAILROADS

During the first nine months of our participation in the war the railroads did their best to meet the unusual and mounting demands upon their facilities and methods. But the entire railroad system had developed under the principle of competition and, composed as it was of so many diverse parts and divergent interests, all accustomed by theory, tradition and practice to competitive methods, it presently became evident that the coördinated management and coöperative effort demanded by the emergency would be impossible under continued private control. The immense increase in traffic caused by war conditions had strained the existing system to its utmost effort, and had resulted by the autumn of 1917 in hopeless congestion of freight at eastern terminals and along the railway lines far inland. There had been such rapid increase in operating expenses that the financial situation of the railroads was very bad, and, under the general financial conditions of the time, had become a serious menace. The country was at war and its first and most pressing duty was to prosecute that war to early and complete victory, which it could not do under the paralysis that was threatening the transportation system.