100 Years ago
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/archive/first-world-war/article4691741.ece
The YMCA
September 28, 1915
I feel sure that the Church of England could hardly commit a greater mistake than if she were to drift out of sympathy with this valuable and beneficent organization
To the Editor of The Times
Sir, May I, as the result of a short visit to the British Expeditionary Force in France, offer my testimony, for what it is worth, in support of the tribute so generously paid a few days ago by your Special Correspondent to the work of the Young Men’s Christian Association? It is, indeed, work which cannot easily be over-praised. It is not, of course, the only, but it is perhaps the chief, means by which the soldiers in their various camps are provided with the opportunity of healthy occupation and recreation in their leisure hours.
Nobody who has spent an evening in the huts of the YMCA; who has seen the hundreds of men, when their day’s work is over, sitting at the tables, reading the newspapers or writing letters to their friends at home or playing games of chess, backgammon, draughts, and dominoes, who has watched the “leader” of the hut going to and fro with a kindly word for every man, or the ladies (who are not at all ashamed to be officially registered as cantinières) selling buns, sandwiches, or non-alcoholic drinks at the bar, who has been present at the concerts or theatrical entertainments, such as Miss Lena Ashwell’s parties give at regular intervals, or at the cinematograph shows, some of which, I am told, are specially designed for the Indian troops, or, above all, who has taken part in one or more of the simple, bright, religious services with which the evening frequently closes, can, I think, feel any doubt that the YMCA is exercising a widely diffused influence for good upon the British Army.
The praises of the Association were sung in my ears by all sorts of people - by officers, by ministers of religion, and by nurses, as well as by the private soldiers themselves. The magical letters YMCA, which must, I think, be almost unintelligible to many Frenchmen, seem to act as an “Open Sesame” in the camps.
Nor is the YMCA solicitous for the welfare of the soldiers alone; it is equally mindful and careful of the numerous labourers who are engaged at the permanent base in the loading and unloading of ships and trains, and in all the operations indispensable to the feeding and comfort of the Army at the front. Out of the 19 huts erected in and around Havre alone, five, I think, are situated at the Docks. It was a dock labourer who said to me of the YMCA, “Sir, we couldn’t live without it.”
There are, of course, other philanthropic and religious agencies doing noble work in France; I do not forget or disparage them; but it happens that my own experience lay chiefly within the sphere of the YMCA; and I feel sure that the Church of England could hardly commit a greater mistake than if she were to drift out of sympathy with this valuable and beneficent organization. Happily, the chaplains of the Church whom I met, were, almost without exception, as friendly to the YMCA as the YMCA was to them.
I remain, Sir, Your obedient servant,
J E C Weldon,
The Deanery, Manchester, Sept 27.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/archive/first-world-war/article4691740.ece
YMCA huts in France
September 21, 1915
The sale of tobacco is one of the mainstays of the organization, for it is obtained out of bond and sold to the troops at the ordinary English prices. In one hut that I saw £60 odd was taken in the canteen during a single night.
From our special correspondent, British Headquarters, Sept 18.
As we pushed through the open flap and moved towards the trestle counter that ran right across one end of the tent a bespectacled young man, in shirt sleeves and apron, came out from behind piles of sandwiches and cigarettes and offered to serve us with the air of an expert shop-hand. Before the war this salesman was one of the “idle rich”, with an independent income, I believe, well over the supertax margin; now he is merely one of the huge staff of voluntary workers who have enrolled themselves under the YMCA and who are doing so much in various ways to make the British Army in the field an Army of contented, clean-living, clean-fighting soldiers.
Hitherto the main work of the YMCA with the Army in the field has lain in the different bases, and there are in round numbers about a dozen main centres of the organization. Each of these centres again is sub-divided into branches. In the Boulogne district, for example, there are nine such branches which look after rest camps, convalescent camps, Indian camps, and so forth.
The work is carried out either in tents or in huts. The huts are quite substantial wooden pavilions - they cost upwards of £500 to build and equip - and their stout construction will make them especially welcome as soon as the cold and wet weather sets in.
The Queen Mary Hut, into which I was taken the other day, may be regarded as a typical example. The main room was some 50ft long, with a canteen at one end. The body of the tent was filled with tables and benches at which men were sitting eating, smoking, or playing games. At the far end was a “quiet” room, where men can read or write undisturbed, while off one wall ran an annexe which housed on one side a billiard-room with three tables, and on the other a bathroom, in which hot baths are now being installed. The tents, of course, are altogether less elaborate but as they are pitched in more open country, their disadvantages indoors are largely compensated by the possibility of playing cricket, football, or badminton in the immediately surrounding fields.
FREE GAMES AND CONCERTS
The fundamental ideal of the YMCA, as was earnestly impressed upon me by one of the workers (an old Cambridge man, who was studying theology), is religious and moral. In war time, perhaps even more than in peace, mischief is begotten of idleness and want of homely surroundings, and therefore, if the soldiers are to be kept away from the estimanets and the company of women, they must have as many opportunities as possible of going to places where they can amuse and occupy themselves in a wholesome manner. The huts normally close in the evening at 8.30 with simple prayers, and services are always held on Sundays, but these religious exercises are not imposed upon anybody who does not care to attend them, and all the YMCA buildings are available equally to Atheist and Nonconformist, Protestant and Roman Catholic.
As for amusements, great trouble is taken to make these as varied as possible. Apart from the permanent features such as sets of games, billiards, and books, concert parties are arranged from London at intervals of about three weeks, among the visitors having been the Westminster Glee Singers, Miss Carrie Tubb, and other well-known artists. Special arrangements have also been made for the Indian troops and gramophone records provided with songs in different Indian tongues.
All these entertainments and facilities are provided free of charge. The only things for which any money is charged are refreshments (all alcohol is, of course, barred) and tobacco. The sale of tobacco, indeed, is one of the mainstays of the organization, for it is obtained out of bond and sold to the troops at the ordinary English prices. In one hut that I saw £60 odd was taken in the canteen during a single night. On the other hand, the expenses are very considerable, one of the main items being for stationery. During one week £1,000 worth of writing paper was used in the YMCA buildings, and though this is the “record” expenditure, it may serve to show both what a heavy drain the soldiers’ correspondence entails and also what a great use is made of the facilities offered by the Association.
To meet special calls the tents are open at special hours. Thus one tent in a vast camp which is used often by 500 men a night is opened at 5.30am, and occasionally the tents may be kept open very late if there are exceptionally large drafts passing through on their way to the front.
Another special department is a hostel, in which the wives or other near female relatives of wounded men may lodge while visiting the patient.
VOLUNTEER HELPERS
At the actual front the YMCA have, at present, only a few branches, but fresh centres are on the point of being opened, and an invitation which was shown me to open a hut not far from Headquarters was so warmly worded as to leave no doubt that the work of the YMCA is heartily approved by the military authorities. As it happened, I knew the officer from whom the invitation came, and when I mentioned this fact I was struck by the careful inquiries which the commissioner who was conducting me round put to me as to the particular type of men to be found in this proposed new centre. He was obviously at pains that only the most suitable man should be sent, and if this anxiety is always shown - as there is no reason to doubt - it goes far to explain the success of the work. And, as a matter of fact, the YMCA has been exceedingly fortunate in the type of men and women who have joined it since the war began. Only about 10 per cent of those now working over here had had anything to do with the YMCA before the war; the remaining 90 per cent are special volunteers.
Of the men out here the very large majority are said to be old public school or university men, and a correspondingly good class of women have come forward. About one half of the work is done by women. The number of volunteers, I am told, is still large, and therefore there is every reason to expect that, whatever may be the developments of the YMCA at the front, the work will continue to be administered by capable and tactful people.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/archive/first-world-war/article4691739.ece
In a YMCA hut
December 21, 1915
The day boat train was in, and the night one had not yet drawn out from the railway station opposite, so there were men with Flanders mud still on their clothes and others with the reflection of farewells still upon their faces
From a correspondent.
The hut was at its busiest on the evening when I saw it first, for a fog had come down outside and slime squelched away from the omnibus wheels and splashed my skirt as I groped my way to it out of the untempting street. Moreover, the day boat train was in, and the night one had not yet drawn out from the railway station opposite, so there were men with Flanders mud still on their clothes and others with the reflection of farewells still upon their faces, as well as the crowd of those who were on their way to or from some camp at home.
The air smelt of wet cloth and leather and food. The tap of billiard cues came from the far end, and the blows of a finger striking “Tipperary” out of a piano. The smoke of Woodbines was so thick that this made a background of sound rather than sight for the groups round the stoves half-way up the room. The centre of one of these was a man wrapped up to the ears in his treach coat of goat-skin, which was steaming with the heat. He looked in it like a being out of another age and country. By the opposite fire only one man sat, so still that you would have thought he was asleep if his eyes had not been open, staring on the ground.
When he had been there perhaps an hour without stirring someone went down to him from behind the canteen counter (there are a good many jobs for a woman to do in a YMCA hut besides ladling out “sausage and mashed”). She asked him if there was anything he wanted. “No,” he said; and then, since she did not go away, “I only got home tonight. I got a chap to write I was comin’, but there weren’t nobody at the station.”
“And you’ve had nothing to eat?”
“Don’t fancy anythin’, thank you, Miss.”
“Oh, nonsense. I expect they never got your letter. I’ll fetch you some coffee.”
It was something to get him to shift his eyes off his boots anyhow, and when the coffee had gone down he lugged a postcard out of his pocket. “She mus’a’ got my letter, Miss. It went to the address all right.”
Hurried reading of post-card, though with very faint hope that it could turn this tragedy into comedy. It did, however. “But she says here she is moving - going down to the country, look - to this address.”
” Lor’ bless yer, Miss. Yer don’t tell me! I never was much of a reader and I didn’t get that bit spelt out.”
TORPEDO ME THOSE SAUSAGES
Such is Thomas Atkins. As simple as a child and quite as irritating. One wonders sometimes how he rubbed through the world at all before he got the British Government to manage his personal affairs for him. Fifty or 60 specimens of him sat in the hut that evening, and the queue in front of the canteen counter got longer and lenger. Every now and then a Colonial shouldered himself through the crowd, moving about like a giant among pygmies and making his requests with a more imperturbable serenity than theirs.
“Ten minutes to my train, Miss, so torpedo me those sausages, if you please.”
I made a dash for the kitchen to where cook brooded over a dozen spluttering pans. For five hours at a stretch that wonderful woman stood there repelling the gusts of our fusses by the calm that comes of competence. She never forgot either who wanted what, nor the chronology of the orders. Above the frizzling of rashers her voice flowed evenly on, “You’ll burn your fingers, Ma’am. Turn that toast, please, Miss. No, Ma’am, the other oven, if you don’t mind. There’s your order, Ma’am. Three eggs and four sausages, I think you said.”
With these I flew, imitating as nearly as might be the motion of the required torpedo. The plateful disappeared in an incredibly short time, and when I went down the room again to clear away the remains the man had gone, and another trooper from oversea had sat down at the table, which was looking as if someone had been doing a relief map in bacon fat all over it.
I attacked the chief range of mountains with a damp cloth and much valiance, until a grave voice said, “Give that over here, Miss. I reckon it’s the first time you’ve ever tried it.”
I took the dishes back, reflecting on the great gulf which is fixed between the amateur and the professional. The past 16 months have taught some of us women how to measure it, but to say how many of us will learn to bridge it might be be too hard a problem, even for those prophets who can tell us (within a week or two) the precise date on which this war is going to end.
The YMCA
September 28, 1915
I feel sure that the Church of England could hardly commit a greater mistake than if she were to drift out of sympathy with this valuable and beneficent organization
To the Editor of The Times
Sir, May I, as the result of a short visit to the British Expeditionary Force in France, offer my testimony, for what it is worth, in support of the tribute so generously paid a few days ago by your Special Correspondent to the work of the Young Men’s Christian Association? It is, indeed, work which cannot easily be over-praised. It is not, of course, the only, but it is perhaps the chief, means by which the soldiers in their various camps are provided with the opportunity of healthy occupation and recreation in their leisure hours.
Nobody who has spent an evening in the huts of the YMCA; who has seen the hundreds of men, when their day’s work is over, sitting at the tables, reading the newspapers or writing letters to their friends at home or playing games of chess, backgammon, draughts, and dominoes, who has watched the “leader” of the hut going to and fro with a kindly word for every man, or the ladies (who are not at all ashamed to be officially registered as cantinières) selling buns, sandwiches, or non-alcoholic drinks at the bar, who has been present at the concerts or theatrical entertainments, such as Miss Lena Ashwell’s parties give at regular intervals, or at the cinematograph shows, some of which, I am told, are specially designed for the Indian troops, or, above all, who has taken part in one or more of the simple, bright, religious services with which the evening frequently closes, can, I think, feel any doubt that the YMCA is exercising a widely diffused influence for good upon the British Army.
The praises of the Association were sung in my ears by all sorts of people - by officers, by ministers of religion, and by nurses, as well as by the private soldiers themselves. The magical letters YMCA, which must, I think, be almost unintelligible to many Frenchmen, seem to act as an “Open Sesame” in the camps.
Nor is the YMCA solicitous for the welfare of the soldiers alone; it is equally mindful and careful of the numerous labourers who are engaged at the permanent base in the loading and unloading of ships and trains, and in all the operations indispensable to the feeding and comfort of the Army at the front. Out of the 19 huts erected in and around Havre alone, five, I think, are situated at the Docks. It was a dock labourer who said to me of the YMCA, “Sir, we couldn’t live without it.”
There are, of course, other philanthropic and religious agencies doing noble work in France; I do not forget or disparage them; but it happens that my own experience lay chiefly within the sphere of the YMCA; and I feel sure that the Church of England could hardly commit a greater mistake than if she were to drift out of sympathy with this valuable and beneficent organization. Happily, the chaplains of the Church whom I met, were, almost without exception, as friendly to the YMCA as the YMCA was to them.
I remain, Sir, Your obedient servant,
J E C Weldon,
The Deanery, Manchester, Sept 27.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/archive/first-world-war/article4691740.ece
YMCA huts in France
September 21, 1915
The sale of tobacco is one of the mainstays of the organization, for it is obtained out of bond and sold to the troops at the ordinary English prices. In one hut that I saw £60 odd was taken in the canteen during a single night.
From our special correspondent, British Headquarters, Sept 18.
As we pushed through the open flap and moved towards the trestle counter that ran right across one end of the tent a bespectacled young man, in shirt sleeves and apron, came out from behind piles of sandwiches and cigarettes and offered to serve us with the air of an expert shop-hand. Before the war this salesman was one of the “idle rich”, with an independent income, I believe, well over the supertax margin; now he is merely one of the huge staff of voluntary workers who have enrolled themselves under the YMCA and who are doing so much in various ways to make the British Army in the field an Army of contented, clean-living, clean-fighting soldiers.
Hitherto the main work of the YMCA with the Army in the field has lain in the different bases, and there are in round numbers about a dozen main centres of the organization. Each of these centres again is sub-divided into branches. In the Boulogne district, for example, there are nine such branches which look after rest camps, convalescent camps, Indian camps, and so forth.
The work is carried out either in tents or in huts. The huts are quite substantial wooden pavilions - they cost upwards of £500 to build and equip - and their stout construction will make them especially welcome as soon as the cold and wet weather sets in.
The Queen Mary Hut, into which I was taken the other day, may be regarded as a typical example. The main room was some 50ft long, with a canteen at one end. The body of the tent was filled with tables and benches at which men were sitting eating, smoking, or playing games. At the far end was a “quiet” room, where men can read or write undisturbed, while off one wall ran an annexe which housed on one side a billiard-room with three tables, and on the other a bathroom, in which hot baths are now being installed. The tents, of course, are altogether less elaborate but as they are pitched in more open country, their disadvantages indoors are largely compensated by the possibility of playing cricket, football, or badminton in the immediately surrounding fields.
FREE GAMES AND CONCERTS
The fundamental ideal of the YMCA, as was earnestly impressed upon me by one of the workers (an old Cambridge man, who was studying theology), is religious and moral. In war time, perhaps even more than in peace, mischief is begotten of idleness and want of homely surroundings, and therefore, if the soldiers are to be kept away from the estimanets and the company of women, they must have as many opportunities as possible of going to places where they can amuse and occupy themselves in a wholesome manner. The huts normally close in the evening at 8.30 with simple prayers, and services are always held on Sundays, but these religious exercises are not imposed upon anybody who does not care to attend them, and all the YMCA buildings are available equally to Atheist and Nonconformist, Protestant and Roman Catholic.
As for amusements, great trouble is taken to make these as varied as possible. Apart from the permanent features such as sets of games, billiards, and books, concert parties are arranged from London at intervals of about three weeks, among the visitors having been the Westminster Glee Singers, Miss Carrie Tubb, and other well-known artists. Special arrangements have also been made for the Indian troops and gramophone records provided with songs in different Indian tongues.
All these entertainments and facilities are provided free of charge. The only things for which any money is charged are refreshments (all alcohol is, of course, barred) and tobacco. The sale of tobacco, indeed, is one of the mainstays of the organization, for it is obtained out of bond and sold to the troops at the ordinary English prices. In one hut that I saw £60 odd was taken in the canteen during a single night. On the other hand, the expenses are very considerable, one of the main items being for stationery. During one week £1,000 worth of writing paper was used in the YMCA buildings, and though this is the “record” expenditure, it may serve to show both what a heavy drain the soldiers’ correspondence entails and also what a great use is made of the facilities offered by the Association.
To meet special calls the tents are open at special hours. Thus one tent in a vast camp which is used often by 500 men a night is opened at 5.30am, and occasionally the tents may be kept open very late if there are exceptionally large drafts passing through on their way to the front.
Another special department is a hostel, in which the wives or other near female relatives of wounded men may lodge while visiting the patient.
VOLUNTEER HELPERS
At the actual front the YMCA have, at present, only a few branches, but fresh centres are on the point of being opened, and an invitation which was shown me to open a hut not far from Headquarters was so warmly worded as to leave no doubt that the work of the YMCA is heartily approved by the military authorities. As it happened, I knew the officer from whom the invitation came, and when I mentioned this fact I was struck by the careful inquiries which the commissioner who was conducting me round put to me as to the particular type of men to be found in this proposed new centre. He was obviously at pains that only the most suitable man should be sent, and if this anxiety is always shown - as there is no reason to doubt - it goes far to explain the success of the work. And, as a matter of fact, the YMCA has been exceedingly fortunate in the type of men and women who have joined it since the war began. Only about 10 per cent of those now working over here had had anything to do with the YMCA before the war; the remaining 90 per cent are special volunteers.
Of the men out here the very large majority are said to be old public school or university men, and a correspondingly good class of women have come forward. About one half of the work is done by women. The number of volunteers, I am told, is still large, and therefore there is every reason to expect that, whatever may be the developments of the YMCA at the front, the work will continue to be administered by capable and tactful people.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/archive/first-world-war/article4691739.ece
In a YMCA hut
December 21, 1915
The day boat train was in, and the night one had not yet drawn out from the railway station opposite, so there were men with Flanders mud still on their clothes and others with the reflection of farewells still upon their faces
From a correspondent.
The hut was at its busiest on the evening when I saw it first, for a fog had come down outside and slime squelched away from the omnibus wheels and splashed my skirt as I groped my way to it out of the untempting street. Moreover, the day boat train was in, and the night one had not yet drawn out from the railway station opposite, so there were men with Flanders mud still on their clothes and others with the reflection of farewells still upon their faces, as well as the crowd of those who were on their way to or from some camp at home.
The air smelt of wet cloth and leather and food. The tap of billiard cues came from the far end, and the blows of a finger striking “Tipperary” out of a piano. The smoke of Woodbines was so thick that this made a background of sound rather than sight for the groups round the stoves half-way up the room. The centre of one of these was a man wrapped up to the ears in his treach coat of goat-skin, which was steaming with the heat. He looked in it like a being out of another age and country. By the opposite fire only one man sat, so still that you would have thought he was asleep if his eyes had not been open, staring on the ground.
When he had been there perhaps an hour without stirring someone went down to him from behind the canteen counter (there are a good many jobs for a woman to do in a YMCA hut besides ladling out “sausage and mashed”). She asked him if there was anything he wanted. “No,” he said; and then, since she did not go away, “I only got home tonight. I got a chap to write I was comin’, but there weren’t nobody at the station.”
“And you’ve had nothing to eat?”
“Don’t fancy anythin’, thank you, Miss.”
“Oh, nonsense. I expect they never got your letter. I’ll fetch you some coffee.”
It was something to get him to shift his eyes off his boots anyhow, and when the coffee had gone down he lugged a postcard out of his pocket. “She mus’a’ got my letter, Miss. It went to the address all right.”
Hurried reading of post-card, though with very faint hope that it could turn this tragedy into comedy. It did, however. “But she says here she is moving - going down to the country, look - to this address.”
” Lor’ bless yer, Miss. Yer don’t tell me! I never was much of a reader and I didn’t get that bit spelt out.”
TORPEDO ME THOSE SAUSAGES
Such is Thomas Atkins. As simple as a child and quite as irritating. One wonders sometimes how he rubbed through the world at all before he got the British Government to manage his personal affairs for him. Fifty or 60 specimens of him sat in the hut that evening, and the queue in front of the canteen counter got longer and lenger. Every now and then a Colonial shouldered himself through the crowd, moving about like a giant among pygmies and making his requests with a more imperturbable serenity than theirs.
“Ten minutes to my train, Miss, so torpedo me those sausages, if you please.”
I made a dash for the kitchen to where cook brooded over a dozen spluttering pans. For five hours at a stretch that wonderful woman stood there repelling the gusts of our fusses by the calm that comes of competence. She never forgot either who wanted what, nor the chronology of the orders. Above the frizzling of rashers her voice flowed evenly on, “You’ll burn your fingers, Ma’am. Turn that toast, please, Miss. No, Ma’am, the other oven, if you don’t mind. There’s your order, Ma’am. Three eggs and four sausages, I think you said.”
With these I flew, imitating as nearly as might be the motion of the required torpedo. The plateful disappeared in an incredibly short time, and when I went down the room again to clear away the remains the man had gone, and another trooper from oversea had sat down at the table, which was looking as if someone had been doing a relief map in bacon fat all over it.
I attacked the chief range of mountains with a damp cloth and much valiance, until a grave voice said, “Give that over here, Miss. I reckon it’s the first time you’ve ever tried it.”
I took the dishes back, reflecting on the great gulf which is fixed between the amateur and the professional. The past 16 months have taught some of us women how to measure it, but to say how many of us will learn to bridge it might be be too hard a problem, even for those prophets who can tell us (within a week or two) the precise date on which this war is going to end.