THE ROMANCE OF 
 THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 SIR ARTHUR K.YAPP. K.B.E 
 
 7 
 
 Y M C A 
 
Class 
 Book. 
 
 
 Copyrights 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 SIR ARTHUR K. YAPP, K.B.E. 
 
THE ROMANCE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 RED TRIANGLE 
 
 THE STORY OF THE COMING OF 
 THE RED TRIANGLE AND THE 
 SERVICE RENDERED BY THE 
 Y. M. C. A. TO THE SAILORS AND 
 SOLDIERS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR ARTHUR K. YAPP, K.B.E. 
 
 HODDER & STOUGHTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GEORGE H, DORAN COMPANY 
 

 Copyright, 1918, 
 By Arthur K. Yapp 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 DEC 18 1918 
 ©CI.A506940 
 
DEDICATION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION 
 
 TO 
 DR. JOHN R. MOTT, 
 WHOSE CLEAR VISION AND BRILLIANT 
 LEADERSHIP HAVE MEANT SO MUCH TO 
 THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSO- 
 CIATION THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. 
 
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 
 TO Y. M. C. A. LEADERS AND WORKERS AT 
 HOME AND ABROAD IN GRATEFUL APPRE- 
 CIATION OF THEIR FAITHFUL AND LOYAL 
 SERVICE. MUCH OF THIS WORK HAS BEEN 
 DONE OUT OF SIGHT AND ENDLESS DIFFI- 
 CULTIES HAVE HAD TO BE SURMOUNTED. 
 NAMES HAVE NOT BEEN MENTIONED IN 
 THE BOOK, BUT THE WRITER WOULD LIKE 
 TO CONVEY HIS PERSONAL GRATITUDE AND 
 APPRECIATION FOR THE SUCCESS OF THE 
 GREAT WORK OF THE RED TRIANGLE TO 
 DR. JOHN R. MOTT, WHOSE CLEAR VISION 
 AND BRILLIANT LEADERSHIP HAVE MEANT 
 SO MUCH TO THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN 
 ASSOCIATION THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 THE final proofs of the American edition of this 
 book were corrected during the concluding days of the 
 writer's first visit to North America. During that all 
 too brief visit he had many opportunities of seeing for 
 himself the great work the Association is doing in the 
 United States and Canada; of getting to know and 
 love many of the men who are administrating that 
 work, and of observing the tremendous hold the Y. M. 
 C. A. has on the community. 
 
 It was an inspiration to visit some of the great Asso- 
 ciation buildings of America and to note the efficiency 
 of the work, also to go to a number of the great Mili- 
 tary camps and see something of the effective service 
 the Y. M. C. A. is rendering to the men of the Army 
 and Navy. 
 
 Whilst expressing gratitude for the warmth of the 
 welcome he received everywhere, he is particularly 
 grateful for the hospitality accorded by the Y. M. 
 C. A.'s of North America to Sailors and Soldiers of 
 Britain when they have visited the United States. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PACE 
 
 I. THE COMING OF THE RED TRIANGLE 13 
 
 II. BLAZING THE TRAIL WITH THE RED TRIANGLE . 27 
 
 III. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 37 
 
 IV. THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 43 
 
 V. THE LADIES OF THE RED TRIANGLE 59 
 
 VI. "GUNGA DIN" OF THE RED TRIANGLE .... 67 
 
 VII. IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 75 
 
 VIII. THE BARRAGE AND AFTER 9 1 
 
 ix. "les parents b lessees" 99 
 
 X. CELLARS AND DUG-OUTS ON THE WESTERN 
 
 FRONT 107 
 
 XI. CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 113 
 
 XII. STORIES OF "LE TRIANGLE ROUGE " 1 23 
 
 XIII. THE RED TRIANGLE IN THE EAST 135 
 
 XIV. SIDE LINES OF THE RED TRIANGLE 1 45 
 
 XV. THE RED TRIANGLE AND THE WHITE ENSIGN . 1 57 
 
 XVI. THE RELIGION OF THE RED TRIANGLE .... 163 
 
 XVII. STORIES OF THE INVERTED TRIANGLE . . . . 1 75 
 
 XVIII. THE RED TRIANGLE IN THE RECONSTRUCTION . 191 
 
CHAPTER I 
 THE COMING OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
THE ROMANCE OF THE 
 RED TRIANGLE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE COMING OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 His Majesty congratulates the Association on the successful 
 results of its War Work, which has done everything conducive 
 to the comfort and well-being of the armies, supplying the special 
 and peculiar needs of men drawn from countries so different 
 and distant. It has worked in a practical, economical and un- 
 ostentatious manner, with consummate knowledge of those 
 with whom it has to deal. At the same time the Association, 
 by its spirit of discipline, has earned the respect and approbation 
 of the Military Authorities. — His Majesty The King. 
 
 IT was in the summer of 1901, in the old Volunteer 
 days, that the Y. M. C. A. for the first time had its 
 recreation tents at Conway in North Wales. The 
 Lancashire Fusiliers were in camp, and the men had 
 thronged the marquee all day, turning up in great force 
 for the service that Sunday evening. It seemed as if 
 they would never tire of singing the old familiar 
 hymns, and when the time came for the address the 
 attention of every man was riveted from start to 
 finish. At length the tent cleared and the men re- 
 
 13 
 
14 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 tired for the night. Now and then the chorus of a 
 hymn could be heard coming from a bell tent, but soon 
 the "Last Post" sounded, and a few minutes later the 
 plaintive notes of the bugle gave the signal for "Lights 
 Out." Thereupon two of the Y. M. C. A. leaders, 
 leaving the camp behind, walked up and down the 
 sands of Morfa. It was a perfect night; not a sound 
 was to be heard except the gentle ripple of the waves, 
 three or four hundred yards away. The moon was 
 near the full; everything seemed almost as light as 
 day, and the bold outline of the Conway Mountain 
 stood in clear relief against the sky. "I wonder what 
 all this means," said one of the two, referring to the 
 impressive service of the evening and to the crowds 
 that had thronged the tents all day. "I have been 
 wondering," said he, "if there is a great European 
 War looming in the distance, and if God is preparing 
 the Y. M. C. A. for some great work it is destined to 
 perform then." How often have those words come 
 back since the beginning of the war! God was indeed 
 preparing the Association for a work infinitely bigger 
 than any of its leaders knew or even dared to hope. 
 In those days H. R. H. the Duke of Connaught be- 
 came Patron of our Military Camp department and 
 he has ever since been a warm friend. 
 
 How far distant now seem those early days of 
 August, 19 1 4. For weeks there had been rumours of 
 war, but all arrangements had been completed for the 
 work of the Y. M. C. A. in the Territorial Camps to 
 proceed as usual during the August holidays. Then 
 
COMING OF THE RED TRIANGLE 15 
 
 came the order for mobilisation and on August the 4th 
 a council of war was held, attended by Association 
 leaders from all parts of the country. Many of the 
 districts were in financial difficulties owing to the sud- 
 den break up of the summer camps, and the only pos- 
 sible policy was the one agreed upon at the meeting — 
 a common programme and a common purse. No one 
 knew where the men, or the money, were to come from, 
 but it was decided to go right ahead and from that 
 resolve there could be no turning back. It is still true 
 that "He that saveth his life shall lose it, and he that 
 loseth his life shall find it." In that great crisis, had 
 the leaders of the Y. M. C. A. stopped to consider the 
 immediate or future interests of the Association, the 
 Association would have gone under and deservedly so. 
 Britain was in danger and her interests had to be con- 
 sidered first. 
 
 What stirring days those were! We think of one 
 tiny village to the south-west of Salisbury Plain, with 
 a normal population of two or three hundred. Within 
 a few days of the opening of hostilities, thirty-four 
 thousand men were dumped down in the immediate 
 vicinity. They had no tents, no uniforms, no rifles, 
 nowhere to go and nothing to do, for the simple rea- 
 son that England did not desire war and had not pre- 
 pared for it. The General in Command had known the 
 Y. M. C. A. in India and came to London to ask our 
 help, which was gladly given. Huge recreation tents 
 were opened there and all over the country. North, 
 South, East and West, Britain was suddenly trans- 
 formed into one armed camp, and the Y. M. C. A. was 
 
16 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 never more needed than it was in those early days. 
 Some of the centres were very small, others very large. 
 At the Y. M. C. A. in the White City, for instance, it 
 was no uncommon thing to see four or five thousand 
 men gathered together in the great hall. At the Crystal 
 Palace too and in many of the Camps the work was 
 carried out on a very large scale whilst in other centres 
 a farm building, a private house or a tiny tent met the 
 need. Thanks to the loyal co-operation and energy 
 of Association leaders and workers 250 of these cen- 
 tres were established within 10 days. They were 
 dotted down all over the country, and every week 
 that passed by showed an increase in strength and in 
 the number of centres until the sign of the Red Tri- 
 angle was to be found in more than 4,000 centres in 
 all parts of the United Kingdom, in every part of the 
 Empire, all over America, on every battle-front and in 
 some places where the Allied flags do not yet fly. The 
 hands of the Military in those days were so full up 
 with other things that they had little time to devote 
 to the recreation of the troops, and our help was 
 warmly welcomed. We have acted throughout in close 
 co-operation with the Military, and we should like to 
 add our tribute of praise to the efficiency of the Mili- 
 tary Machine, as we have come in touch with it. Much 
 has been said during the war as to the marvels of Ger- 
 man organisation, and possibly not too much. At the 
 same time there is quite as much to be said in praise 
 of British organisation. Germany wanted war whilst 
 we did not. Germany prepared for war, tirelessly, 
 ceaselessly; with her eye on the goal — world-wide 
 
COMING OF THE RED TRIANGLE 17 
 
 dominion — she brought all her organising ability to 
 bear on the preparations for the war she was deter- 
 mined to force on humanity. Britain, on the other 
 hand, has had to improvise her war organisation since 
 war has been actually forced on her. A run round the 
 great base camps in France will show how wonder- 
 fully complete that organisation has been — transport, 
 supply, commissariat. Of course there have been mis- 
 takes, but singularly few under the circumstances. 
 Many people like to have a shot at the War Office, but 
 those who know most of the difficulties that have been 
 overcome and the successes achieved will be the least 
 inclined to join hands with the critics. 
 
 It is like a nightmare to think of that first winter of 
 the war with its gales, rain and mud, and it was when 
 the weather was at its worst that the men of the first 
 Canadian Contingent were encamped on Salisbury 
 Plain. It is difficult to conceive what they would have 
 done but for the timely help of the Red Triangle. The 
 roads were almost impassable and the mud in the 
 vicinity of the camps appalling, but the Canadians 
 stuck to it, and so did our leaders and workers. The 
 tents were crowded to their utmost capacity, but it 
 was soon found that no tent could weather the gales 
 of Salisbury Plain in winter. That discovery led to 
 the evolution of the Y. M. C. A. hut. Wooden frames 
 covered with canvas were tried first of all, but they 
 too, were incapable of withstanding the fury of the 
 gales, and something much stronger had to be pro- 
 vided. 
 
 It meant a great deal to the country during that 
 
18 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 first winter of the war that the men were happy and 
 contented because they had their leisure hours pleas- 
 antly occupied, and because the most popular place 
 in camp was almost without exception the one that 
 bore the sign of the Red Triangle. And what did they 
 find at the sign of the Red Triangle? They found 
 there an open house, a warm welcome, a place of 
 recreation and enjoyment where they could meet their 
 friends on terms thoroughly cordial and unofficial. 
 Coffee and buns were always a great attraction, and 
 as for music — the piano was hardly ever silent. 
 Tommy Atkins loves a good tune and loves a crowd ; 
 the quiet place does not so much appeal to him. At 
 the Y. M. C. A. he found diversion for his hours of 
 leisure; opportunity for study if he cared for it; 
 libraries, classes and lectures. There, too, he found 
 an expression of religious life that appealed to him — 
 the inspiration that comes from religion without the 
 controversy and sectarian bitterness which, alas, too 
 often accompany it, a religion to work by and a reli- 
 gion that can do things. Before the war nobody had 
 heard of our mystic sign, but within a few weeks let- 
 ters bearing it had found their way into hundreds of 
 thousands of homes, bringing joy and consolation 
 wherever they went. That in brief is the story of the 
 coming of the Red Triangle. And what is its signifi- 
 cance? As the emblem of the war work of the Y. M. 
 C. A. it has not been chosen by chance, but because 
 it exactly typifies the movement it represents. The 
 threefold needs of men are its concern and its pro- 
 gramme is adapted to meet the needs of body, mind 
 
COMING OF THE RED TRIANGLE 19 
 
 and spirit, whilst its colour symbolises sacrifice. In an 
 old book of signs and wonders called "The Great 
 Mystery," (Mysterium Magnum), the inverted tri- 
 angle appears as a symbol of the divine spirit, and 
 in the third year of the war a famous Belgian painter 
 asked, "Qu'est-ce-que c'est— cet Y. M. C. A.?" and 
 without waiting for an answer went on to say that the 
 Red Triangle meant emblematically — "Spirit inform- 
 ing and penetrating matter," which was, he supposed, 
 the function of the Y. M. C. A. "The Y. M. C. A. 
 is attempting the impossible," said one of its critics; 
 "it is building on the apex of the triangle." Thank 
 God it is. Yes! and thank God it has achieved the 
 impossible. If any one had dared to foretell three 
 years ago, a tithe of what has already been accom- 
 plished, no one would have believed it. The secret of 
 the inverted triangle is that it is upheld by invisible 
 hands, and it is the full programme of the Red Tri- 
 angle that appeals so irresistibly to the men. If we 
 were merely out to run a canteen others could perhaps 
 have done the canteen work as well or nearly as well 
 as the Y. M. C. A. Others could run lectures for the 
 troops and others cater for their spiritual needs, but 
 it has been left to the Y. M. C. A. to formulate the 
 appeal to the whole man — Body, Mind and Spirit — 
 and the appeal to every man, irrespective of creed or 
 party. Every man is equally welcome in the Y. M. 
 C. A. — Protestant; Catholic; Anglican; Free-church- 
 man; Jew; Mohammedan; Buddhist; Hindoo or 
 Brahmin — the men of every religion and no religion, 
 and yet the religious note is ever dominant though 
 
20 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 no man's religion will ever be attacked from a Y. M. 
 C. A. platform. 
 
 The story of the Red Triangle is indeed one of the 
 great romances of the war. Its work has never been 
 regarded as an end in itself, but rather as auxiliary to 
 that of other organisations. It is auxiliary to the 
 Church and its doors have been thrown wide open to 
 the Padres of all denominations. Protestants, Cath- 
 olics, Jews — even Mohammedans — have worshipped 
 God in their own way within the hospitable walls 
 of the Association. It has been auxiliary to the 
 official medical services of the Army, the R. A. M. C, 
 and the Red Cross — in hospitals and convalescent 
 camps, and with the walking wounded at the clearing 
 stations at the front. It has arranged concerts and 
 entertainments by the thousand for patients and 
 nurses; has looked after the friends of dangerously 
 wounded men, and has often handed over its huts to 
 be used as emergency hospitals ; while in hosts of other 
 ways which can never be recorded it has been able 
 to render vitally important service. It has been auxili- 
 ary to the military machine at every turn of the war. 
 In the midst of the camp though not of it, its secre- 
 taries and workers conform to military rules and are 
 subject to discipline, although they are themselves 
 civilians. In this way the Association has provided 
 the human touch, and officers and men alike have 
 appreciated the fact that there is one place in camp 
 where discipline through being temporarily relaxed, 
 has been permanently strengthened. 
 
 The Romance of the Red Triangle, like the story 
 
COMING OF THE RED TRIANGLE 21 
 
 of the first crusade, has been the romance of the 
 pioneer. The Y. M. C. A. was first in the field, 
 though now there are many others — organised so- 
 cieties and private individuals doing similar work on 
 the lines which it thought out and proved to be practi- 
 cable. Indeed, the whole story of the Y. M. C. A. 
 has been full of adventurous episodes of romance, 
 not merely during the war but long before it, com- 
 mencing seventy-five years ago when young George 
 Williams, a farmer's boy from Somerset, came to Lon- 
 don, and as one of a band of twelve intrepid young 
 men founded the first branch of a movement destined 
 to spread to all corners of the world. It is only during 
 these years of war that the society has fully come into 
 its own, and received universal recognition, but we do 
 not forget that to those pioneers of the early Victorian 
 days and to the Y. M. C. A. leaders who during the 
 years before the war hammered out a policy for work 
 amongst the soldiers in the Volunteer and Territorial 
 Camps, the wide-spread movement of to-day is largely 
 due. 
 
 To know what the Army thinks of the Y. M. C. A. 
 one need only note on the one hand facilities given 
 to the Association by officers in high command, and 
 on the other, how the N. C. O.'s and men — officers 
 and officer-cadets too — make use of the huts. 
 
 Prior to one of our great advances in 191 7 the dis- 
 trict to be attacked was reconstructed behind the line 
 in a large map carefully worked out on the ground, 
 every road and path being clearly marked. Every 
 trench, redoubt and dug-out; every hedge and ditch 
 
22 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 was recorded, and every gun emplacement shown. 
 "Reserved for the Y. M. C. A." was written over a 
 vacant plot near the centre of the map. 
 
 In France "Le Triangle Rouge" is often called "Les 
 Ygrecs" (the Y's), and the Red Triangle will pass 
 the Association worker almost anywhere. It sounds 
 odd in the reserve trenches amidst the roar of guns 
 and the scream of shells to hear the sentry's challenge 
 as we have heard it, "Halt! who goes there?" "Y. M. 
 C. A." "Pass, Y. M. All's well!" 
 
 One of our workers in the valley of the Somme in 
 191 7 was left behind as the troops advanced to follow 
 up the line of the great German retreat. For weeks 
 he shared his Y. M. C. A. shanty with the rats, and 
 late one evening went for a two miles walk. A sentry 
 challenged him and evidently regarded him with sus- 
 picion. After he had convinced the guard of his 
 identity it was explained to him that three German 
 prisoners were at large, and one of them was known 
 to be wearing a Y. M. C. A. uniform. When he awoke 
 that night in his rat infested shanty it seemed to him 
 that if the three Huns chanced to know of his where- 
 abouts it would not be a difficult thing for them to 
 possess themselves of yet another Y. M. C. A. uniform. 
 
 In the early days of the war it was agreed that no 
 request for the help of the Association, which on in- 
 vestigation proved a definite need to exist, should be 
 refused, and God honoured the faith of those who 
 dared to make the resolve. The way the movement 
 has grown and is growing still is nothing short of a 
 romance, and the following pages tell the story of 
 
COMING OF THE RED TRIANGLE 23 
 
 service rendered under the sign of the Red Triangle 
 to the men of His Majesty's Forces irrespective of 
 class, creed or party, in England and north of the 
 Border, in Wales and Ireland, on every battle-front 
 and in every Base; amongst men of every colour and 
 creed who are serving under our great Flag — the Flag 
 that stands for Freedom. 
 
 Possibly the greatest romance of all will be that 
 dealing with the work of the Red Triangle after the 
 war. Who knows? 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 BLAZING THE TRAIL WITH THE RED 
 TRIANGLE 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 BLAZING THE TRAIL WITH THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 "The Y. M. C. A. has fashioned a girdle of mercy and lov- 
 ing-kindness round the world which will stand to their credit as 
 long as the memory of this war exists." — Lord Curzon of Ked- 
 leston. 
 
 THE Red Triangle is often to be found in unex- 
 pected places. "A wonderful, friendly old octopus, 
 this Y. M. C. A.," was the way an Australian put it, 
 and it was not at all a bad description of the ubiquitous 
 Red Triangle. Tommy recognises it to-day as his 
 club, his meeting house, his home from home. It is 
 his and he knows it! It touches him at every point 
 and in almost every place. The recruit finds it at his 
 depot, near his billet and in the training camp where 
 he learns to be a soldier; indeed, it is part of the train- 
 ing, an all important part, too. Passing through Lon- 
 don or a great provincial city, he can stay the night in 
 one of the Y. M. C. A. Hostels; he meets it again at 
 the English ports before he embarks for one of the 
 fighting fronts; it is there to greet him on the other 
 side, not only at the ports of entry and in the base 
 camps but on the lines of communication in France, 
 Italy, Egypt, East Africa, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and 
 right up the line, in cellar or dug-out as well as in rest 
 camp and at railhead. If he should have the mis- 
 
 27 
 
28 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 fortune to be wounded he may expect to find the Asso- 
 ciation at the casualty clearing station or in the hos- 
 pital, and later on in the convalescent camp, or, if 
 invalided out of the army, it will still stick to him 
 and befriend him at a time when he is likely to need 
 a friend. If he is numbered amongst the missing and 
 finds himself in a Prisoner of War camp in Germany, 
 even then he may not be beyond the outreach of the 
 Association. There is at least one redeeming feature 
 to the Prisoner of War camp in Ruhleben in Germany, 
 for right in the heart of it there is a little brown hut 
 with the Red Triangle and the letters "Y. M. C. A." 
 on the roof — one of several in Germany erected with 
 American Y. M. C. A. money at a time when America 
 was a neutral state, and now run entirely by British 
 prisoners of war for the benefit of their fellow-Brit- 
 ishers who also have the misfortune to be prisoners 
 of war. 
 
 It is little we can do for these brave lads who are 
 wearing their hearts out longing to hear the voices 
 of those they love in the Homeland, but the Y. M. 
 C. A. does what it can. 
 
 This girdle of loving-kindness is completed in the 
 Internment Camps of Switzerland — at Miirren, Leysin, 
 Interlaken, Meiringen, and Seeburg, and in those of 
 Holland at The Hague, Scheveningen, Rotterdam, and 
 Groningen. None need our help more than the offi- 
 cers and men in those Internment Camps. It was one 
 of the latter who said he would rather be in Germany 
 than in the Internment Camp in Switzerland, for in 
 Germany, said he, one has, at any rate, the excitement 
 
BLAZING THE TRAIL 29 
 
 of trying to escape. But now, working hand-in-hand 
 with the British Red Cross, the Red Triangle provides 
 recreation and employment for the long hours of 
 leisure, and there can be no doubt as to the apprecia- 
 tion of those it seeks to serve. 
 
 A worker at Cambridge went to a neighbouring vil- 
 lage to arrange a flag day on behalf of our war fund. 
 He was advised to get in touch with the postmistress 
 who was keenly interested in the movement. "Of 
 course, I am interested," she said when he saw her, 
 "and if you will come into my sitting-room I will show 
 you why." There on the wall in a little room at the 
 back of the Post Office was what she called her Roll 
 of Honour — the photographs of twelve lads from her 
 Bible class, all serving with His Majesty's Forces. 
 "Eleven out of the twelve," said she, "write me almost 
 every week and tell me what a boon the Y. M. C. A. 
 is to them. That is why I am ready to do all I can to 
 help you with your Flag Day." The sequel was inter- 
 esting. Half an hour later No. 12 called to see her. 
 "How strange," she cried. "I was just talking about 
 you, and saying you were the only one of the boys 
 who never wrote expressing appreciation of the Y. M. 
 C. A." "That is easily explained," was the reply. "I 
 have been at sea since the early days of the war and 
 had no opportunity of getting ashore and using the 
 Y. M. C. A. until three months ago when I was sent 
 to Egypt and stationed at the Mena Camp. There 
 I used the Association hut within sight of the great 
 pyramid, and I appreciate the work as much as any- 
 one to-day." 
 
30 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 A young soldier, who was formerly a Y. M. C. A. 
 worker, wrote from France : "We came upon the Prus- 
 sian Guard about ten days ago, and for five days and 
 nights we fought hand to hand like demons, but in the 
 end we gained our objective. You talk of the work 
 of the Y. M. C. A. at home as splendid. I know it is, 
 but here the Y. M. C. A.'s are more. In this place, 
 famous for its wonderful bell tower, the Y. M. C. A. 
 is in full swing, although only yesterday it was shelled 
 heavily and shrapnel was falling pretty thick along 
 the road. Cheero!" Another young soldier wrote 
 from Malta and gave his experience of the Y. M. C. A. 
 "The Association is the finest thing that was ever 
 instituted without doubt. The army has blessed the 
 fact many a time. I have served in France and a few 
 other countries, and am in a position to know." 
 
 In the early days of the war Y. M. C. A. secretaries 
 learned to adapt all kinds of premises, no matter how 
 primitive, to meet the needs of the troops. A cow- 
 house amid the trenches of the East Coast, a pigsty 
 in the south-west of England, neither of them much 
 to look at, but doing good service and helping to blaze 
 the trail ; a dug-out at Anzac and three tiny marquees 
 at Cape Helles; a cellar at Meroc just behind the 
 British lines in the neighbourhood of Loos ; a chateau 
 formerly the residence of the Lord of the Manor at 
 Mazingarb, and a palatial but ruined Technical Insti- 
 tute at Armentieres. It was fixed up in a convent at 
 Aire — the first Y. M. C. A. to be opened in a forward 
 position in France — and inside a ruined hospice at 
 Ypres ; in a Trappist Monastery on the Mont des Cats ; 
 
BLAZING THE TRAIL 31 
 
 in the most southern city in the world at Invercargill ; 
 above the clouds with the British troops in Italy; inside 
 some of the German Prisoner of War camps in Ger- 
 many; in the old German Consulate at Jaffa, in the 
 heart of the Holy City, and on the Palestine lines of 
 communication at Gaza and Beersheba. "The Jolly 
 Farmer' ' near Aldershot, and the more notorious 
 "Bolger's" public house in Sackville Street, Dublin, 
 made their appearance early in the war under the 
 sign of the Red Triangle, whilst Ciro's, the once 
 famous night club in the heart of London, and the 
 mansions of Viscount Wimborne and Lord Brassey 
 have also been thrown open for the service of the 
 Association. 
 
 The trail of the Red Triangle was first blazed in the 
 United Kingdom. Since then it has become familiar 
 on every fighting front and in all sorts of queer and 
 unexpected places. In the jungle of India; on the 
 banks of the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Nile; amid 
 the swamps of East Africa; along the valley of the 
 Jordan; in the Egyptian desert; in the great training 
 camps of North America; in Australasia and South 
 Africa, as well as on the plains of Flanders and 
 Picardy; in the valleys of the Somme, the Marne, the 
 Meuse, and the Aisne. It is to be found on the Varda 
 and the Struma, and we have seen for ourselves how 
 that trail has been welcomed by men of many nationali- 
 ties — Britons from the Homeland and from the out- 
 posts of Empire, from Canada, Newfoundland, Aus- 
 tralia, New Zealand and South Africa, Indians, Chi- 
 nese, Cape Boys and Kaffirs, Frenchmen, Portuguese 
 
32 THE ROMANCE OP THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 and Belgians — wherever the trail of the Red Triangle 
 goes it stands for reconstruction even amid the horrors 
 and desolation of war. 
 
 An officer cadet who had spent two years in France, 
 said he had noticed a great change in the attitude of 
 the men. "In the early days of the war," said he, 
 "men on arriving in new billets at the front would 
 say, 'Is there no Y. M. C. A. in the village?' Later 
 on they took it for granted that the Red Triangle was 
 there and asked, 'Where is the Y. M. C. A. ?' Now 
 they always say, 'Where is it?' And everyone knows 
 to what they refer." It brings comfort, hope, good 
 cheer and inspiration with it. An English boy writing 
 home from Egypt to his people in the Midlands said 
 that the Y. M. C. A. was to him as "a bit of Heaven 
 in a world that was otherwise all hell." A visitor to 
 the Association at Kantara expressed his surprise at 
 finding such a splendid Y. M. C. A. building in that 
 Egyptian centre, fitted up even with hot and cold 
 baths ! 
 
 A sum of £400 was taken in a single day over the 
 refreshment counter in one of the Y. M. C. A. mar- 
 quees in the heart of the Sinai Peninsula. And it 
 will give an idea of the immense amount of work in- 
 volved to the staff of the Association, when it is re- 
 membered that all stores for that centre had to be 
 conveyed from the railhead to the Y. M. C. A. on the 
 backs of camels. 
 
 A British soldier writing from the "Adam & Eve" 
 hut in Mesopotamia said, "I should like to comment 
 upon the wonderful work the Y. M. C. A. is doing 
 
BLAZING THE TRAIL 33 
 
 here among the troops. In almost every large camp 
 there is a Y. M. C. A. hut, a veritable haven in the 
 desert, not only for canteen but religious work also. 
 I attended a service in the hut and it made a good 
 impression on me. We sang the good old hymns, and 
 I am sure we all felt refreshed. ,, 
 
 As might be expected the Dominions have done 
 their full share of pioneering, and have blazed the 
 trail in many different directions. The Canadians 
 have done a great work at Shorncliffe, Sandling, 
 Bramshott and Witley ; in the Forestry camps at home 
 and right up the line in France. The Australians on 
 Salisbury Plain, at Weymouth and in many other 
 home centres have served their troops splendidly, 
 whilst in France, Egypt, the Dardanelles and Pales- 
 tine their pioneering work has been great. The New 
 Zealanders at Sling Plantation, Hornchurch and other 
 centres in England have done equally well, and their 
 pioneering work overseas has been most efficient. The 
 South Africans have done valuable work in the Mili- 
 tary Expedition to Swakipund and in East Africa. 
 India has made a great contribution to the Empire 
 work of the Red Triangle, first of all by catering for 
 the needs of British troops quartered in India itself, 
 and also in Mesopotamia and East Africa, where the 
 work has been directed from India, as has that for the 
 Indian troops in France. Passing reference should 
 also be made here to the great programme of work 
 undertaken and planned by the Y. M. C. A.'s of the 
 United States. In the United Kingdom, in France, 
 Russia and Italy, as well as in North America, they 
 
34 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 have projected work on an enormous scale; in fact, all 
 the Allied countries are closely co-operating in the 
 work of the Red Triangle. It has been the privilege 
 of the British Associations to provide huts for the 
 exclusive use of Belgian, Serbian, and Portuguese 
 troops, and in seventy places in France for Chinese 
 coolies; also to cater for the needs of American and 
 Colonial soldiers in hundreds of centres. In London, 
 for instance, special facilities have been given to New 
 Zealanders at the Shakespeare hut; we were able to 
 procure for the Canadian Y. M. C. A. the magnificent 
 Tivoli site on which their fine hostel now stands, and 
 to hand over the group of huts to the Americans which 
 formed the nucleus of the Eagle Hut. The Australians 
 rented and furnished the Aldwych Theatre on their 
 own account. The New Zealand Y. M. C. A.'s made 
 a handsome contribution towards the cost of the 
 Shakespeare Hut, and the whole of the cost of the 
 Eagle and Beaver Huts has been borne by the Ameri- 
 can and Canadian Y. M. C. A's respectively. The 
 American and Colonial Associations have taken over 
 a number of British huts in camps, and in some cases 
 have enlarged them. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 
 
 Few Organisations have done so much in caring for the 
 comfort and well-being of our soldiers as your Associations. 
 They have given invaluable help to the Army and have im- 
 measurably lightened the hardships which have to be endured 
 by our troops. In recognising the excellent work that has 
 already been done I should like to wish you success in that 
 which you still propose to undertake. I consider that your plans 
 for after the war are not the least important of your activities. 
 — The Right Hon. David Lloyd George, M.P. 
 
 THE Romance of the Red Triangle is a twenty- four 
 hours a day romance, for many of its centres never 
 close their doors. When we are comfortably sleeping 
 at night and in the early hours of the morning, Y. M. 
 C. A. workers are hard at work on motor patrol con- 
 veying leave men from station to station or hut to hut, 
 and others are on foot meeting the men and guiding 
 them to their destination. Alighting from the Edin- 
 burgh train at Leeds, very early one morning, it was 
 raining and a young Scottish trooper stepped down to 
 the platform from the adjoining compartment. We 
 knew we were all right, a room having been retained 
 for us at the station hotel, but what of him, had he 
 anywhere to go? He evidently had no plans, but at 
 that moment a gentleman in civilian attire stepped up 
 to him and without patronising and in the most natural 
 
 37 
 
88 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 way possible said to him, "Have you long to wait? 
 Have you anywhere to go?" The lad replied that he 
 had several hours to wait for his connection and had 
 nowhere to go. "Well, come along with me, and I will 
 see you all right at the Y. M. C. A." People who do 
 this work or devote themselves night after night to that 
 of the motor patrols don't often get their photos in the 
 papers, but they are rendering national service of a 
 high order without fee or reward, and in almost every 
 case, at the end of a hard day's work. 
 
 The International Hospitality League of the Y. M. 
 C. A. is doing similar work on a very large scale and 
 in its kiosks and enquiry rooms, not only in London 
 but in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and many of our large 
 provincial centres hundreds of thousands of enquiries 
 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 Triangle 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 
 
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 30 
 
 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 
 at 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 on their way back 
 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 volun- 
 tarily 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 Shake- 
 speare Hut, which was built on the site of the proposed 
 
40 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 National Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, kindly loaned 
 for the purpose. The huge building by London Bridge 
 was lent by the city of London. Many of these huts 
 occupy central and important sites, as for instance, the 
 stations 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 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 
 
 In my opinion nothing can exceed the value of the work 
 which has been and is being done for H. M. Forces by the 
 Y. M. C. A. I offer my best wishes for continued success. — 
 The Rt. Hon. H. H. Asquith, K.C., M.P. 
 
 ON August 4th, 1 9 14, 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 could- 
 n'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 tele- 
 grams and letters were sent out from Headquarters 
 to friends all over the country — the first war emergency 
 
 43 
 
44 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 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 thou- 
 sand pounds, until in August, 191 8, the war fund 
 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 one and a 
 half million pounds, the second more than ten millions, 
 and their appeal a year later in October, 19 18, was for 
 twenty million 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 have 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 
 
THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 45 
 
 been widely adopted by other organisations, even in- 
 cluding the government ! 
 
 Many touching stories are told concerning gifts to 
 the war fund, gifts many of which have not been se- 
 cured 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 thankofTering for what 
 they are doing for us chaps out here/' One of our 
 centres had been nearly destroyed by a Zeppelin bomb. 
 It was re-built and the day came for the re-opening. 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 in- 
 estimable 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. 
 
 A lady called one day with a novel suggestion. She 
 had been reading a statement attributed to the Kaiser, 
 
46 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 in which the All Highest is alleged to have said that 
 if the worst came to the worst every dog and cat in 
 Germany would be armed in defence of the Fatherland. 
 "If the dogs and cats of Germany are going to do that 
 for their country," she said, "why shouldn't the dogs 
 and cats of England pay for one of your huts?" Quite 
 frankly there did not appear to be much money in the 
 scheme, but it could do no harm, so we encouraged it ! 
 Imagine our surprise when a few days later the same 
 lady walked in with a cheque for four hundred and 
 fifty pounds. There was one gift of five pounds, all 
 the rest had been given in smaller amounts, and alto- 
 gether upwards of two thousand dogs and cats — or 
 their masters and mistresses — had contributed. A few 
 weeks later the fund was closed, at just over one thou- 
 sand pounds, and there has been no more useful centre 
 of Y. M. C. A. war work, than the "Dogs & Cats 
 Hut" at Rouen, paid for entirely by this fund. 
 
 The Boys and Girls fund has reached upwards of 
 twenty thousand pounds. We had been speaking to the 
 boys at Harrow School and the suggestion had been 
 thrown out that it would be a good plan to have a 
 "Harrow" Hut at the Front. At the close of the meet- 
 ing the Headmaster supporting the suggestion said he 
 would give the collection in Chapel the following Sun- 
 day to the fund. The head boy approached him after- 
 wards and said, "I think, sir, it would be a mistake to 
 make a collection for the Y. M. C. A. on Sunday. If 
 you do the boys will think they have done their bit 
 and won't bother any further. Won't you let us make 
 a whip up round the houses and see what we can do?" 
 
THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 47 
 
 Thus it was agreed, and the five hundred pounds, which 
 in those days was the cost of a hut, was raised in less 
 than a week. We have seen that hut in France and 
 know how much it was appreciated. During the Ger- 
 man advance in Picardy it had to be temporarily aban- 
 doned, but fortunately was speedily occupied again. 
 
 In the early days of the Euston hut, the vicar of a 
 neighbouring parish was keenly interested, and told the 
 children in his day school what he had seen in the hut. 
 At the close of his address a deputation of the older 
 children waited on him and told him they were inter- 
 ested in what he told them, and would much like to help 
 the Y. M. C. A. in its work for the soldiers. "You 
 help?" queried the vicar, "how can you help?" He 
 knew how poor they were. To his surprise they had 
 their scheme ready, and their plans cut and dried. 
 "This time every year," said the spokesman, "we put 
 by our pennies and our ha'pennies for our annual 
 treat. We don't feel like having a treat this year 
 when all this terrible fighting is taking place. We 
 would rather give the money to the Y. M. C. A. to 
 spend on the soldiers and sailors." A few days later, 
 the leader of the Euston Hut was sitting at a table in 
 the central hall when his attention was attracted by a 
 group of ragged children, standing round the entrance. 
 Curiously they would peer inside and then step back, 
 until two or three bolder than the others walked right 
 in as if the whole place belonged to them. That was 
 too much for the leader. He went up to them and cried, 
 "You must run away; this place isn't for boys and 
 girls, it's for soldiers and sailors." Looking up into 
 
48 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 his face a little ragged youngster retorted, "Please, sir, 
 we've given our money towards this show, and we want 
 to see how it's run!" On enquiry, it was ascertained 
 that the children belonged to one of the poorest of the 
 schools in the north of London, and out of their pov- 
 erty they had given no less than thirty shillings, nearly 
 the whole of it in pennies and farthings. Many 
 memorial gifts have been received, and a hut that will 
 be an inspiration and help to tens of thousands, is 
 surely one of the most suitable of memorials. 
 
 Business firms and merchant princes have given their 
 thousands; others with equal generosity have contrib- 
 uted shillings. In the Channel Islands, there was a 
 fish-hawker named Richards who eked out a slender 
 livelihood by selling fish on the streets of Jersey. The 
 coming of the war hit him so hard that he was com- 
 pelled to leave for France to seek other employment. 
 He got a job under the contractors who were building 
 the hutments in the Harfleur Valley. He did well, and 
 eventually returned home to Jersey. The Sunday after 
 his return his Minister was taking up special collections 
 for the hut fund. Richards had found the Red Tri- 
 angle huts at Havre a great boon, and on entering the 
 Church at the evening service handed his Minister a 
 little paper packet containing coins. The padre fin- 
 gered the parcel and said to himself, "He has given six 
 pennies, a generous gift, too, under the circumstances !" 
 Imagine his surprise on opening the packet to find there 
 six half-crowns, and he said, "You ought not to 
 give so much; you can't possibly afford it." "When I 
 remember all the Y. M. C. A. did for me when a 
 
THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 49 
 
 stranger in France and homeless," was his reply, "I 
 can't possibly do less and wish I could give more." 
 
 A flower-seller at a popular seaside holiday resort 
 for many months has given to the local Y. M. C. A. hut 
 a shillingsworth of flowers each week, as a thank-offer- 
 ing for what the Association has done for her husband 
 
 and son. 
 
 At Taunton a farm labourer called at the back door 
 of the house of the president of the local Y. M. C. A. 
 and said he wanted to help the war fund. It was the 
 only thing he could do to help the men at the Front. 
 He had tried to enlist several times but they would not 
 have him. He laid on the table fifty one-pound notes 
 and went back to his work on the farm. Enquiries 
 elicited the fact that he had given practically the whole 
 of his savings, and had done it in spite of his employer's 
 urgent advice to the contrary. 
 
 At the close of a meeting held by one of our workers, 
 an elderly lady came to him and said if he would go to 
 her house she would give him a sovereign. He went 
 and she gave him the coin, and then closing the door of 
 her private room, said, "And now I am going to give 
 you the most precious possession I have in the world." 
 Her voice choked with emotion as she proceeded, 
 "Years, many years ago, I was to have been married. 
 The arrangements were made, the day fixed and the 
 ring bought, and— then he died!" And she sobbed as 
 she spoke. Going to a bureau she took out a little box 
 and handing it to him, said, "The wedding ring is in 
 there. I have kept it all these years, but I promised the 
 Lord I would only keep it until He showed me what 
 
50 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 He would have me do with it, and He told me while 
 you were speaking. I give it to you for the Y. M. C. A. 
 and for the boys," and she turned away utterly broken 
 up. Thousands of incidents could be related of equal 
 interest to the foregoing, did space permit, and all these 
 incidents combine to give a personal interest to the 
 fund. We can only add that the greatest possible care 
 has been taken to administer the fund wisely and so 
 avoid waste, or anything that savours of extravagance. 
 Of course, Y. M. C. A. finance has come in for criti- 
 cism. Certain people who have visited the huts and 
 have seen the enormous business there transacted have 
 come to the conclusion that either very large profits 
 are being made, or that the business methods of the 
 Association leave much to be desired. The question 
 has frequently been asked, "What is done with the 
 profits ?" and the fiction has got abroad that the Y. M. 
 C. A. publishes no accounts and is amassing huge sums 
 of money. The real position is easily stated : 
 
 The Y. M. C. A. does not do trading for trading's 
 sake but because through its trading department it is 
 the better enabled to meet the needs of the troops and 
 also because profits on trading mean further extension. 
 So rapid has been the development of the war work 
 of the Y. M. C. A. that not only has every penny of 
 profit been spent on the maintenance and development 
 of this work for soldiers and sailors, but it has been 
 necessary to raise large sums of money in subscriptions 
 to meet the ever-increasing demand for extension. 
 Every new centre means, or may mean, an additional 
 burden on the central fund or on the divisional funds 
 for which the National Council is ultimately respon- 
 
THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 51 
 
 sible. First, there is the cost of the hut which may 
 mean £750 or may run into thousands — it all depends 
 upon size and site. The initial cost may be defrayed 
 by an individual gift to the central war fund, but usu- 
 ally to make the hut large enough for its purpose, addi- 
 tional money has to be spent, whilst the furnishing will 
 probably cost from one to three hundred pounds, or 
 more. Also, it must carry stock to the value of a hun- 
 dred pounds or possibly much more if it is a big camp. 
 A very big turn-over in a Triangle hut may represent 
 a very small profit, e. g., there are enormous sales of 
 stamps and postal orders, and all these are sold for 
 actual cost, and, what is more, the Association has to 
 bear the loss of shortages. Then there are the things 
 the Y. M. C. A. does free of any charge whatever, 
 e. g., there are no club fees and no charges for admis- 
 sion to concerts, lectures or entertainments in the ordi- 
 nary hut. Free writing paper and envelopes are at the 
 present time costing more than £90,000 a year. Thou- 
 sands of pounds are spent on cricket and football out- 
 fits, games generally, books, pictures, and literature for 
 free distribution. Hot drinks and refreshments are 
 given free to the walking wounded on a very large 
 scale and practically every one of the two thousand 
 war Y. M. C. A.'s keeps "open house" at Christmas. 
 The work of the Y. M. C. A. for the relatives of 
 wounded is very costly, especially in France, many 
 hostels being maintained for that purpose. Motor 
 transport is an expensive item for which there is no 
 return, and very large sums of money are spent on lec- 
 tures and educational work. It is estimated that the 
 Y. M. C. A. educational programme in France alone, 
 may ultimately cost the Association fifty thousand 
 pounds a year. When the request has come to open a 
 new centre, the determining factor has been, "Is it 
 needed?" not "Will it pay?" Indeed many huts in iso- 
 
52 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 lated centres cannot possibly be made to pay, and yet 
 they mean everything to the men who use them. The 
 spending department of the Association has been built 
 up with the greatest care. A body of well-known busi- 
 ness men meets for hours every week and watches ex- 
 penditure as a cat watches a mouse. The Acting Treas- 
 urer of the War Emergency Fund is a partner in a big 
 firm of Indian Merchants, and devotes himself with 
 untiring energy and conspicuous ability to the super- 
 vision of accounts and expenditure. The accounts are 
 audited by a leading firm of chartered accountants, and 
 the audited statement of receipts and expenditure to- 
 gether with balance sheet, is published in "The Times" 
 and other papers every six months. Through the profit 
 made on the sale of temperance refreshments, etc., in 
 the war Y. M. C. A.'s the British soldier and sailor 
 contributes indirectly one pound for every twenty shil- 
 lings put up by the public, and this whilst at the same 
 time getting full value for his money. In every camp 
 the prices are fixed by the Military, who stipulate 
 that we must not undersell their official canteens. 
 Owing chiefly to the enormous stores that have to be 
 maintained in France and Overseas generally the Bank 
 overdraft of the war fund has often reached four to 
 five hundred thousand pounds. It is thus not difficult 
 to see what is done with the profits. The Y. M. C. A. 
 might, had it so chosen, have feathered its nest during 
 the war, but with a sublime, though by no means a reck- 
 less disregard of the future, it stepped right into the 
 breach and went straight forward to meet the national 
 need. 
 
 As a Y. M. C. A. we pride ourselves on the business 
 management of our work. We insist on business meth- 
 ods being adopted and we do not mix our business with 
 philanthropy — the Association hut is not a charity as 
 
THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 53 
 
 far as its business side is concerned. The average hut 
 in a large camp is expected to pay its way so that sub- 
 scriptions from the general public can be applied to the 
 extension of the work and to the maintenance of 
 centres that cannot be self-supporting on their own. 
 
 The War Office, in the early stages of the war, asked 
 us to pay a rebate of 10 per cent on the gross takings 
 of the refreshment department. After full considera- 
 tion, we came to the conclusion that we could only do 
 this by extracting the money from the pockets of the 
 men who for the most part are miserably paid, by pay- 
 ing it out of subscriptions given by the public, or by 
 limiting the extension of the work. Neither alternative 
 seemed desirable or in the interests of the men, and 
 after many conferences with the Quartermaster-Gen- 
 eral's department at the War Office it was agreed by 
 mutual consent and at the suggestion of the War Office 
 to refer the matter for decision to the Secretary of 
 State for War. It was at the time Lord Kitchener was 
 in Gallipoli, and Mr. Asquith was personally in charge 
 at the War Office. At a conference at Downing Street 
 the representatives of the Board of Control Regimental 
 Institutes stated their case, and we had the opportunity 
 of replying. Mr. Asquith took several weeks to con- 
 sider the question in all its bearings, and ultimately 
 gave the decision entirely in our favour, and decided 
 for the duration of the war we should not be asked to 
 pay the rebate. Later on, the matter was reopened 
 by Lord Derby and eventually it was found necessary 
 for the Y. M. C. A. to pay 6 per cent on their gross 
 takings in huts on military ground, to regimental 
 
54 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 funds, and this is a great tax on its resources. Many 
 of the huts are loaned free to the military for Church 
 Parades and for Military Lectures. 
 
 The figures of the Red Triangle are colossal, and yet 
 figures by themselves fail to give an adequate idea of 
 the magnitude of the work, and for obvious reasons 
 it is impossible to make those statistics complete. On 
 a given date it was ascertained that upwards of 45,000 
 workers were giving regular service to the war work 
 of the Y. M. C. A. By August 31st, 1918, 929,590,430 
 pieces of stationery had been sent out from Y. M. C. A. 
 Headquarters in London for distribution amongst the 
 men of His Majesty's Forces. The stationery bill by 
 the summer of 1918 had risen to the rate of upwards of 
 £90,000 per annum. 
 
 In two months 105 tents were sent out to replace the 
 huts and tents lost in Picardy and Flanders. 
 
 In eighteen months, Triangle House, London — the 
 Headquarters of our Trading Department — sent out 
 to the Y. M. C. A. overseas : 
 
 875 Gramophones and 8,386 Records. 
 
 322 Pianos and Organs. 
 
 572 Billiard and Bagatelle Tables. 
 
 1,341 Sets of Boxing Gloves. 
 
 108 Optical Lanterns. 
 
 10,188 Sets of Draughts. 
 
 1,335 Sets of Chess. 
 
 3,140 Sets of Dominoes. 
 
 4,263 Footballs. 
 
 1,080 Sets of Quoits. 
 
 657 Sets of Cricket. 
 
 4,992 Extra Balls. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF FINANCE 55 
 
 1,540 Extra Bats. 
 1,798 Hockey Sticks. 
 
 520 Balls. 
 
 426 Golf Balls. 
 
 100 Tennis Sets. 
 
 330 Tennis Racquets. 
 2,364 Tennis Balls. 
 61 Sets Bowls. 
 
 358 Badminton Sets. 
 60 Baseball Sets. 
 
 It will be noted that the items in this list are not 
 trading goods to be sold at a profit, but excepting in the 
 case of some of the billiard tables, are non-remunera- 
 tive and provided absolutely free for the use of the 
 men serving overseas. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 THE LADIES OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE LADIES OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 Her Majesty feels sure that the useful work which is being 
 carried on by the Young Men's Christian Association in so many 
 different centres is highly appreciated, not only by the soldiers, 
 but also by the Community. — Her Majesty The Queen. 
 
 BEFORE the war it was one of our stock sayings 
 that the Y. M. C. A. was a work "for young men by 
 young men/' and one must recognise the fact that the 
 man who is a man, virile, strong, athletic, is the one 
 to whose leadership men will most readily respond. 
 But in the early days of the war most of our young 
 male workers joined up. And whether we liked it or 
 not we had to get the help of ladies, and our more 
 enterprising leaders felt that after all there were some 
 things in Y. M. C. A. hut work ladies could do almost 
 as well as men. Things have moved since then and 
 now we know that much of the work can be done 
 infinitely better by women. In many cases women 
 have been entrusted with the actual leadership of huts 
 and have carried through the duties magnificently. 
 The Red Triangle has given the woman her niche in 
 the Y. M. C. A., and for the great programme that 
 awaits us after the war her help will be indispensable. 
 It has, moreover, given the woman who had home 
 claims an opportunity of doing war work that really 
 
 59 
 
60 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 counts, in her spare time. The Queen and Queen 
 Alexandra have been graciously interested in the work 
 of the ladies of the Red Triangle, and many of the 
 ladies of the Royal House have rendered conspicuous 
 personal service, amongst whom might be mentioned 
 H. R. H. Princess Christian; H. R. H. Princess 
 Louise ; H. R. H. Princess Patricia of Connaught, and 
 H. H. Princess Marie Louise, whilst H. H. Princess 
 Helena Victoria as lady President has given time and 
 strength to the work without reserve, and we owe very 
 much to her. In the camps ladies have given the home 
 touch that means so much to the men — games, music, 
 decorations and flowers have come within their do- 
 main; they have managed the libraries, and have in 
 most cases taken full responsibility for the refreshment 
 department. Their personal influence has been in- 
 valuable. We remember visiting a camp somewhere 
 in France. It seemed to us the roughest camp we had 
 ever seen. The leader told us of an encounter he had 
 with one of the worst of the men on the occasion of 
 his first visit to the place. He had just got his tent 
 erected and the man, chancing to see it, asked what it 
 was. When told that it was the Y. M. C. A., he re- 
 plied, "You b men are just what we d men 
 
 b well want," and that was the language of the 
 
 camp. Eighteen months later we were there again 
 and the camp was like another place, so great was the 
 change for the better. The C. O. told us he attributed 
 that change almost entirely to the ladies of the Red 
 Triangle. It so happened that one of the ladies com- 
 mitted an unpardonable military offence. She returned 
 
LADIES OF THE RED TRIANGLE 61 
 
 to England two or three days before her permit ex- 
 pired. Later on, application was made in the usual 
 way for the renewal of her permit. The General 
 concerned, who is no longer in France, returned the 
 application with the words written across it over his 
 initials — "Keep this woman out." The Base Com- 
 mandant sent it in again, having written on it — "Talk 
 about keeping this woman out, she is of more value to 
 me than truckloads of parsons and chaplains !" That 
 was his way of putting it, not ours. We have the 
 greatest possible admiration for the work of the chap- 
 lains at the front. There is no finer body of men on 
 active service to-day, and it is a privilege we greatly 
 esteem to be permitted to co-operate with them and to 
 be of some service to them in their great work. 
 
 The ladies have always been ready to share the 
 risks with the men, and there are quite a number who 
 have made the supreme sacrifice, including Miss Small- 
 page, killed by shrapnel in one of our munition huts 
 in England; Miss Betty Stevenson, killed in an air 
 attack in France; Miss Edith Lowe, died of cerebro- 
 spinal meningitis; and Miss Lee, who lost her life in 
 a fire in one of the huts on Salisbury Plain. 
 
 In one of the great bases in France there is a small 
 camp in which at one time there were boys only. They 
 were too young to fight, their job day by day was 
 the prosaic one of filling up petrol cans. One of these 
 little chaps had badly hurt his hand, and it seemed to 
 him the natural thing to go for sympathy and help to 
 the lady of the Red Triangle. A brief examination 
 
62 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 convinced her that the damage was serious; she bade 
 him go to the doctor whose tent was just across the 
 way. Very grudgingly he trudged across to the doc- 
 tor, but a few minutes later he returned with the re- 
 quest that she would look at the damaged hand and 
 see if the doctor had attended to it properly. She re- 
 plied that it would never do to interfere with the doc- 
 tor's work and, moreover, the doctor had no doubt 
 done it far better than she could have done. Five 
 times the lad came back with the request, "Oh ! Missis, 
 do look at my hand and see if he's done it right." The 
 fifth time he brought with him as an ally the Y. M. 
 C. A. secretary in charge, who said, "If I were you, 
 Miss, I would look at his hand. The little chap will 
 never be happy until you do." Then she undid the 
 bandage, looked at the dressing, and bandaging it up 
 again said, "There, it's just as I told you, the doctor 
 has done it far better than I could, run away and be 
 quite happy about it!" He went away, but returned 
 again a few minutes later, and that time his eyes were 
 full of tears as he cried, "Oh, Missis, I did think you'd 
 have kissed me when you saw how bad it was," and 
 like the good woman she was she kissed him as his 
 mother would have done. Let no one think that's 
 what the ladies of the Red Triangle usually do, for it's 
 not, and yet in that simple story you have the whole 
 secret of the success of the war work of the Y. M. 
 C. A. 
 
 Time, and time again, one has been through every 
 base camp in France, and has traversed the whole 
 British line in France and Flanders, and wherever 
 
LADIES OF THE RED TRIANGLE 63 
 
 one has gone one has found the men yearning for 
 sympathy and longing for home. Not that they want 
 to return home until this fight ends in victory, for 
 out there they have learned what war means; they 
 see it robbed of its romance, and they are determined 
 to see it through, they fight that this war may end war. 
 With unfailing loyalty to the high aims of the Red 
 Triangle and with conspicuous ability ladies have 
 served the Y. M. C. A., and through the Association 
 the men of His Majesty's Forces and the munition 
 workers in all parts of the United Kingdom, in France, 
 and every part of the Empire, and have won for them- 
 selves a permanent place in the movement, whatever its 
 future may be. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 "GUNGA DIN" OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 'gunga din" of the red triangle 
 
 This work has been admirably done, both at home and at 
 the front. Its spiritual and material value to the men lies be- 
 yond all reckoning, and the services of its personnel are deeply 
 appreciated by the men themselves. — The Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour, 
 O.M., M.P. 
 
 ONE of the most striking of Kipling's characters 
 was Gunga Din, the Indian water carrier. He was 
 not a fighting man, but when fighting was taking place 
 he was in the thick of it, risking his life that he might 
 carry water to slake the thirst of the fighting man. 
 "Gunga Din" was the appropriate name given to one 
 of our leaders in France by a British Tommy. Those 
 who do not know are sometimes inclined to sneer at 
 the Y. M. C. A. man for having a "cushy" job, but 
 it is hard work from start to finish. His job is never 
 done, and very often is attended with considerable 
 risk. His work may carry him right into the front 
 line trenches, and though it does not take him "over 
 the top," yet unlike the soldier, he has not the privilege 
 of hitting back. His day's work will vary according 
 to the camp. In all probability he will have to be up 
 early in the morning to get the coffee ready. The hut 
 must be cleaned and there will be a lot of canteen work 
 to be done. The buying will occupy some time, and 
 
 67 
 
68 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 then there will be the evening programme to arrange 
 and carry through. He must maintain personal touch 
 with the men using the hut, so that the ideal leader 
 must be half-a-dozen men rolled into one. 
 
 Our greatest difficulty during the war has been that 
 of getting a sufficiency of workers of the right type. 
 Every male worker is registered with the Director of 
 Recruiting, and we are unable to recruit new men 
 classified A between the ages of 18 and 52, or 18 and 
 45 for service overseas. 
 
 Twelve members of the Y. M. C. A. have won the 
 Victoria Cross, 3 the D.S.O., 25 the D.C.M., 33 the 
 M.C., and 53 the M.M., whilst registered at head- 
 quarters are the names of 1,223 wno have made the 
 supreme sacrifice. We think of many whose war 
 work for the Y. M. C. A. has earned the title of 
 "Gunga Din," as, for example, the young leader of 
 the New Zealand work in France. He looks a boy, 
 but is a genius for organising, and the pioneer of the 
 work of the Red Triangle in advanced positions. An- 
 other man who has the instincts of the pioneer is the 
 leader of the Australian workers in Egypt and Pales- 
 tine, and yet another, a well-known Y. M. C. A. worker 
 who, after doing good service in England in the early 
 days of the war, went to represent Headquarters in 
 Egypt. Torpedoed en route he took up his new work 
 with characteristic enthusiasm and made good. Hun- 
 dreds have rendered equally valuable service, so that 
 it would be invidious to mention names. 
 
 In the great retreat, it was the D.A.Q.M.G. of the 
 Corps who asked us to open up a Stragglers' Post 
 
"GUNGA DIN" 69 
 
 at Westoutre. "You are the people who can cheer 
 up the men," said he. "I want you to get hold of the 
 stragglers before they become deserters." It was 
 "Gunga Din" he needed, but this time with cocoa urn 
 instead of water bottle, and it was only an old bank 
 to which our workers fixed their Red Triangle, but it 
 was just what was needed. A bursting shell forced 
 them to quit, but half-an-hour later they had opened 
 up again in the village shop, opposite the church, and 
 the Mayor thanked them later on for their successful 
 efforts. 
 
 Our officers' hut at Romerih was set on fire by a 
 shell; shells were falling fast and the larger hut soon 
 became untenable, but the Y. M. C. A. man was run- 
 ning his show in the open under a tree and was as busy 
 as ever. The ubiquitous "Ford" did its bit, and its 
 load would sometimes consist of the Divisional Secre- 
 tary himself, one or two other workers or Belgian 
 refugees, a big caterer's boiler, a tea urn, together 
 with cases of biscuits and cigarettes. Thus equipped 
 it would proceed to some advanced dressing station. 
 Sometimes there would only be a Sergeant and order- 
 lies in charge, heroically doing their best to help the 
 wounded, and the mere presence of a man like one of 
 our secretaries gave them confidence, whilst the steam- 
 ing hot drinks he soon had ready gave new courage 
 to the wounded men who thronged the casualty clear- 
 ing stations. A great work of the "Gunga-Din" type 
 was done by our men on the Nieppe-Bailleul road dur- 
 ing the retreat. What an amazing scene it must have 
 been; an endless stream of refugees and wounded; 
 
70 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 units lost ; batteries firing ; men who had been for days 
 without food, moving about like ghosts and digging 
 themselves in at the side of the road. The Huns were 
 only about eight hundred yards further along the road, 
 and our soldiers fired as they walked. For three nights 
 none of our workers even thought of going to bed; 
 they stood by with cars ready to help where and how 
 they were most needed, and gave help to soldiers and 
 refugees alike. At dressing and casualty clearing sta- 
 tions they gave emergency help. At Remy, for in- 
 stance, one of our men was told off to undress the 
 wounded and rig them out in new pajamas, whilst an- 
 other made himself useful in cleaning the floors. Hot 
 drinks were given out freely in all these centres just 
 behind the line. 
 
 Following the British victory at Messines on June 
 7th, 191 7, a Leeds minister serving on the staff of the 
 Y. M. C. A. wrote home describing the work for the 
 walking wounded as he had seen it : 
 
 "It was about three o'clock in the morning when 
 the signal to advance was given, and the boys went 
 over the parapet. About two hours later the wounded 
 began to arrive at our hospital in ambulance vans. It 
 had been previously arranged that only as far as pos- 
 sible walking cases — men slightly wounded — should be 
 dealt with at our station, and the expeditious and effi- 
 cient way in which their wounds were attended to 
 reflected great credit on the medical staff. As soon 
 as they left the dressing room they were passed on to 
 our Y. M. C. A., where we supplied them with various 
 kinds of refreshments free. It was my great privilege 
 to serve the first patient, who had a broken arm, with 
 
"GUNGA DIN" 71 
 
 a freshly-made cup of tea and a sandwich, and never 
 shall I forget his look and words of appreciation. 
 Some were too ill to eat anything for a time, especially 
 those who had been gassed or were suffering from 
 shell-shock, but they were very glad of a seat on the 
 grass in the shade of our tent. Some were so badly 
 wounded that they were unable to speak, while others 
 were half deaf and dumb as the result of shock. It 
 was pathetic to see such men scribbling their request 
 for a drink on a piece of paper. All were loud in their 
 praise of the Y. M. C. A., and many were quite over- 
 come when they realised that the tea, lemonade, ciga- 
 rettes and various kinds of eatables were provided 
 free. One Scottish-New Zealander, whose father is 
 a well-known seed merchant in Edinburgh, declared 
 that the Y. M. C. A. was the greatest thing in the war. 
 In addition to attending to the needs of the "inner 
 man" — and some of them we had to feed like babies, 
 as both hands were wounded — we wrote letters and 
 field cards for them, and tried in every possible way to 
 add to their comfort. The spirit manifested by the 
 majority of them was simply splendid, and scarcely 
 ever did they refer to their own suffering and hard- 
 ships." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 
 
 No one can be long in this country without realising the im- 
 mense value of your organisation, and the constant extension of 
 your activities itself testifies to the high regard in which it is 
 held by our soldiers. — Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. 
 
 THE history of the British Empire has been written 
 over again, and written in blood, in the valleys of the 
 Somme, the Ancre, and the Scarpe. Tens of thousands 
 of our noblest and best lie buried in these valleys or on 
 the tableland of Peronne situated between the insignifi- 
 cant rivers that have within the past few months earned 
 a world-wide notoriety. No one can visit a modern 
 battle-field without realising something of the appall- 
 ing waste of war. Towns and villages have been 
 blotted out of existence or are marked to-day by a few 
 unrecognisable ruins. Thanks to the efficiency of 
 British organisation, excellent roads were quickly es- 
 tablished right through the stricken district and it was 
 impossible to traverse any of them without marvelling 
 at the obstacles overcome and the successes gained. 
 The road, for instance, from Albert to Bapaume, 
 through Pozieres, Le Sars and Warlincourt, passing 
 close by Contalmaison and Martincourt, was contested 
 almost yard by yard, and the same thing may be said 
 of the road that leads along the side of the Ancre from 
 Albert past the Leipzig Redoubt, near Thiepval and 
 
 75 
 
76 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 Beaumont Hamel, through Achiet-le-Grande to Ba- 
 paume, or the one from Peronne through Le Transloy. 
 
 It was in December, 1916, that I paid my first visit 
 to the valley of the Somme. The scene was dreary be- 
 yond description. Many villages known to us by name 
 as the scenes of desperate fighting were names only. 
 Hardly a vestige of a house or cottage remained where 
 many had been before the war. Here and there one 
 could see the entrance to a cellar; the charred stump of 
 a strafed tree; the remains of a garden; or a bit of a 
 cemetery. Everything else was churned up into the 
 most appalling mud. 
 
 One day I had tea with an Army Commander who 
 has done great things since then, and he showed me a 
 series of photographs — the most interesting I have ever 
 seen — which were taken the day before my visit, by our 
 airmen, over the German lines. For seventeen and a 
 half miles back, the enemy, with infinite care and pa- 
 tience, had constructed trenches, "and," said the Com- 
 mander, "every time we destroy his front line trench he 
 constructs another one in the rear." "But," I cried, 
 "if this kind of thing goes on, and unless the unex- 
 pected happens, the war must surely continue indefi- 
 nitely." His only reply was, "Is it not always the un- 
 expected that happens in war?" I was back again in 
 Picardy in the summer of 191 7, and the unexpected 
 had happened. The whole of the seventeen and a half 
 miles of trenches were in the hands of the British ! The 
 enemy had retired to the much advertised "Hinden- 
 burg Line," and leaving nothing to chance was tire- 
 lessly, ceaselessly massing and training his men, getting 
 
IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 77 
 
 together huge reserves of munitions, husbanding his 
 resources in every possible way, and preparing, always 
 preparing day and night for his next great move. 
 Meanwhile Italy's defences had to be strengthened by 
 troops we could ill-afford to spare from our western 
 front, and Russia, in loyalty to whom we first entered 
 the war, failed us altogether, German intrigue being the 
 underlying cause in each case. In his great advance in 
 March and April, 191 8, he did not achieve all he set out 
 to do by any means, but his gains were enormous. It 
 made one sad to think of the territory we had tempo- 
 rarily to relinquish to the Hun in Picardy, even though 
 the country itself was not of any intrinsic value. The 
 land is desolate, and the enemy ruined every village and 
 hamlet, every farm and cottage, before his retreat. 
 Ninety-three Red Triangle centres — huts, marquees, 
 cellars, dug-outs and "strafed" houses — had to be aban- 
 doned in Picardy alone — most of them, destroyed be- 
 fore they fell into the hands of the Germans. 
 
 During the first visit to the battlefields of the Somme 
 in the winter of 19 16 the outstanding feature of the 
 landscape was the mud and the general desolation. In 
 the summer of 191 7 the scenes of desolation were as 
 great as ever, but there was a difference — the roads 
 were in excellent condition and bridges had been re- 
 placed. There were shell-holes everywhere and the 
 countryside was strewn with dud shells; barbed wire 
 entanglements ; with here and there a stranded tank that 
 had to be abandoned in the mud; the remains of 
 trenches and dug-outs or the cages in which the Huns 
 had collected their British prisoners. There were no 
 
78 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 domestic animals to be seen and no civilians. The 
 whole district from Albert to Peronne, to Bapaume or 
 to Arras, was one huge cemetery, and one saw side by 
 side the elaborate cross that marked the burying place 
 of German dead, the smaller cross with the tricolour on 
 it, that marked the last resting place of a soldier of 
 France, and everywhere for miles and miles could be 
 seen the little plain brown crosses of wood, that marked 
 the spots where lay our own loved dead. We climbed 
 to the top of the famous Butte of Warlincourt that so 
 often changed hands in the course of desperate fight- 
 ing and there on the top were those little brown crosses. 
 We stood at the edge of the vast crater of La Boiselle 
 that inaugurated the first battle of the Somme and saw 
 in its depths several of those little symbols of our Chris- 
 tian faith, but looking away across the desolation of the 
 battlefield one marvelled at the efforts of nature to 
 hide up the ravages of war. There were the most glori- 
 ous masses of colour everywhere — the colour given by 
 the wild flowers of the battlefields. One felt one had 
 never seen more vivid blue than that of the acres of 
 cornflowers which rivalled the hues of the gentian of 
 the Alps. It may have been imagination, but looking 
 out from the Butte of Warlincourt over miles of 
 poppies, one felt one had never seen such vivid red, and 
 instinctively those words came into one's mind : 
 
 "O Cross that liftest up my head, 
 I dare not seek to fly from thee ; 
 I lay in dust life's glory dead, 
 And from the earth there blossoms red, 
 Life that shall endless be." 
 
IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 79 
 
 The wild flowers of Picardy bloomed over British 
 graves again in the summer of 191 8 though Ger- 
 man, not British eyes, saw them during the early 
 months, but those flowers speak of eternal hope and 
 tell us that if we but do our part the sacrifice of our 
 bravest and best will not have been made in vain. 
 
 Amid the ruins of Picardy the Y. M. C. A. did some 
 of its best work. Lord Derby spoke of the Association 
 as "essential in peace time, indispensable in war time," 
 and never was the Association more indispensable than 
 during those terrible days of the German advance in 
 19 1 8. "Amid the everchanging scenes of war it has 
 been one of the forces working for reconstruction." 
 
 We mourn the loss of huts and Red Triangle centres 
 that have cost money and on which labour has been 
 lavished. Not much to look at — many of these places, 
 and yet to those who knew them they possessed an in- 
 describable charm and fascination. It was only a little 
 marquee for instance that formed the Headquarters 
 of the Red Triangle at Henin in 19 17, only a couple 
 of padres, one Church of England and one a Free 
 Churchman, there to represent the Y. M. C. A., but the 
 whole story is a romance. Whilst we were sharing 
 their lunch of bully beef and potatoes, bread, biscuits 
 and coffee, a "strafe" began. The British artillery, 
 half a mile away, were pouring lead into the Hun lines. 
 Fritz soon replied and things became lively. A shell 
 burst near us but our padres took no notice of it and 
 seemed to regard a little incident of that kind as a 
 matter of course. Another shell burst on the cross 
 roads we had just traversed. It was here we had our 
 
80 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 first glimpse of the Hindenburg Line with Crucifix 
 Corner in the foreground. Whilst we were still at 
 lunch the Germans began to throw over some of their 
 heavy stuff in the direction of Monchy which was not 
 far away. The British camp at Henin had been 
 heavily bombarded a few days before our visit, and the 
 troops quite properly had run like rabbits to their 
 burrows. The last to take refuge in the dug-outs were 
 our two padres, who with a keen and commendable 
 sense of duty had waited to gather up the cash before 
 taking refuge from the shells. 
 
 It was only when the grey clad Germans were actu- 
 ally in sight that the workers at St. Leger left their 
 loved Y. M. C. A. I only visited St. Leger once, but 
 that little shanty strangely fascinated me. It was not 
 much to look at, just a group of ruined farm buildings, 
 and in it "the swallows had found a house," and re- 
 gardless of our presence, yes, regardless of the shells, 
 for St. Leger was bombarded every day even then, they 
 flew backwards and forwards feeding their young 
 and twittering as merrily and unconcernedly as if it 
 had been a farm building in one of our English coun- 
 ties. It must have been with a heavy heart that those 
 Y. M. C. A. men turned their backs on St. Leger and 
 trudged to Boisleaux-au-Mont, where the five splendid 
 huts that formed our equipment, shortly afterwards 
 shared the fate of St. Leger and were all destroyed 
 before the advance of the Huns. 
 
 At Boyelles the tent was amid the ruins by the road- 
 side and the enamelled Triangle sign was attached to 
 the bottom of the trunk of a tree that had been cut 
 
IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 81 
 
 down by the enemy and was lying in the hedge just as 
 it fell. Achiet-le-Petit Y. M. C. A. was in an orchard, 
 the equipment consisting of a big marquee and several 
 little shanties ingeniously constructed by the workers 
 from empty petrol cans and biscuit boxes. High up 
 in an elm tree was a sort of crow's nest used by the 
 Germans as an observation post during the time of 
 their occupation. At Haplincourt the Y. M. C. A. was 
 anything but imposing — an insignificant house fitted up 
 as a club room, but in the paddock behind it, the secre- 
 taries had erected a platform, and arranged an open-air 
 auditorium on a grand scale. A hundred yards or so 
 away was a large plunge bath, deep enough for a good 
 high dive. It had been constructed by the Germans 
 when they were in occupation, but when we saw it a 
 score of our own Tommies were disporting themselves 
 in the water and having a high old time. 
 
 Albert was a scene of desolation, with its ruined 
 Church as the most conspicuous feature. High up on 
 top of the spire dislodged by German shells, and jut- 
 ting out at right angles to the spire, was the famous 
 figure of the Virgin holding in her hands the infant 
 Christ. For many months the figure had remained in 
 this position and was only finally brought down during 
 the enemy's advance in 1918. The Y. M. C. A. in 
 Albert was established in one big hut and two badly 
 ruined houses. It was on the Saturday that St. Leger 
 fell, and the Sunday at Albert was a memorable day. 
 The town was crowded with an endless stream of men, 
 horses, guns and service waggons passing through. 
 Little was sold in our canteen, but free refreshments 
 
82 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 were handed out by tired but willing workers all day 
 long. Nearly all those workers had thrilling stories 
 to tell of narrow escapes from death. Albert was 
 evacuated on the Sunday night and the place must have 
 presented somewhat the appearance of a shambles. 
 The Boche aeroplanes were dropping bombs or firing 
 their machine guns all the time, but still our men kept 
 on serving the hot tea and cocoa, biscuits and cigarettes 
 that were so much appreciated by officers and men 
 alike, only leaving their posts and abandoning their 
 hut when ordered to do so by the Military. The re- 
 treat from Albert must have been like an awful night- 
 mare. Some of our men in the darkness became en- 
 tangled in the fallen wires and whilst trying to extract 
 themselves heard the hum of an aeroplane just over 
 head, and a bomb was dropped only a few yards in 
 front of them. 
 
 At Bapaume we had several centres in and closely 
 adjacent to the town. Bapaume, like Peronne, was 
 not destroyed by enemy shell-fire but deliberately 
 wrecked by the Hun before he was forced to evacuate, 
 and the foe we face to-day is a past master in the art 
 of destruction. Hardly a building of any description 
 remained intact in either of these towns when the 
 British entered into occupation. That very fact made 
 us marvel when, standing for the first time in front of 
 the big building occupied by the Y. M. C. A. in Peronne, 
 we noticed that it was practically intact. On entering 
 the building we marvelled still more, for the first object 
 we saw was a fine German piano. Surely it was an 
 act of kindness on the part of the wily Hun to leave it 
 
IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 83 
 
 for our men. Was it? When the British occupied 
 Peronne a company of troops from the West of Eng- 
 land were the first to enter that house. A Tommy who 
 was musical made a bee-line for the piano, but his 
 officer restrained him, bidding him first look inside. 
 It was well he did so, for three powerful bombs were 
 attached to the strings of the piano, and had he touched 
 one of the keys concerned, he himself, the piano and 
 the building would have been utterly destroyed. In the 
 hut attached to the house a boxing match was taking 
 place on the evening of our arrival, and men had come 
 from outposts miles away to take part. Underneath 
 the house was a German dug-out of almost incredible 
 depth. The original staircase was missing — the Ger- 
 mans having commandeered the wood for the construc- 
 tion of the dug-out — but it had been replaced by an 
 ingenious Y. M. C. A. secretary who had searched 
 amid the ruins of Peronne until at last he had found 
 another staircase, which, with infinite pains and labour 
 and not a little ingenuity, he had built in to replace the 
 original one. The day before our visit the old lady 
 who had lived in the house before the war paid a visit to 
 her old home. She was a refugee and had trudged 
 miles to get back to Peronne. She requested permis- 
 sion to dig in the garden and soon unearthed the uni- 
 form of her husband who fought against the Germans 
 in 1870. She had buried it there before the fall of the 
 town. Digging again she came across his sword and 
 accoutrements, and deeper still her silver spoons and 
 other trinkets that she valued. Could anything bring 
 home more clearly the horrors of war? If instead of 
 
84 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 Peronne in Northern France it had been that sweet 
 little town in England or Scotland, or that village in 
 Wales or Ireland, Canada or the United States in 
 which you live ! If you had heard the cry one evening, 
 "The Huns are coming," and if you had just half an 
 hour in which to rush round your home and gather 
 together any things you specially treasured and take 
 them out into your garden and bury them knowing that 
 anything you left behind would be either looted and 
 sent to Germany, or deliberately destroyed for sheer 
 hate! How easily this might have been, but for the 
 mercy of God ; the mistakes and miscalculations of the 
 enemy, and the bravery and self-sacrifice of our heroes 
 in blue and khaki ; yes and our workers in fustian and 
 print — for England must never forget the debt she 
 owes to her munition workers as well as to her sailors, 
 soldiers and airmen. They see nothing of the romance 
 of war; they know nothing of its excitement, and yet 
 apart from their patriotic service the best efforts of our 
 fighting men would have been in vain. 
 
 During the months that preceded the great retreat 
 in the spring of 191 8, new Red Triangle huts were 
 springing up like mushrooms, especially in the Fifth 
 Army area, that part of the line that had recently been 
 taken over from the French. Supported by the gener- 
 ous gifts of friends at home, ably directed by our divi- 
 sional secretaries and those associated with them in the 
 work, and supported and encouraged in every way by 
 the Military authorities, the progress made was re- 
 markable. Then came the unexpected advance of the 
 German hordes and the laborious work of months was 
 
IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 85 
 
 destroyed in a few hours. At Noyon the secretary had 
 to quit in a hurry but returned to the hut later to bring 
 away the money belonging to the Y. M. C. A. Thrice 
 he returned and the third time found it impossible to get 
 away. After remaining in hiding for twenty-four 
 hours he at length managed to escape with ten thou- 
 sand francs in his pocket, saved for the Association, 
 which lost so heavily during those terrible days. At 
 Amiens the Y. M. C. A. workers hung on for ten days 
 after the official canteens had been removed, because 
 the town had become too hot for them. Day and night 
 the "J°v" hut close to the railway station was kept 
 open, thronged with officers and men, and the service 
 rendered to the troops may be gauged from the amount 
 of the takings, which ranged between 20 and 30 thou- 
 sand francs a day. 
 
 Our total loss in the retreat was exceedingly heavy 
 — more than 130 huts and other centres in Picardy and 
 Flanders, and in cash, upwards of one hundred and 
 fifty thousand pounds. Serious as was that loss it 
 might have been very much worse. Eight trucks of 
 stores and equipment were stopped in the nick of time. 
 The axle of one of our big lorries broke within a hun- 
 dred yards of the most heavily shelled area in one of 
 the towns bombarded by the enemy, but it was got 
 away and, excepting in two cases, all the money and 
 notes from tills and cash-boxes were removed safely 
 before the huts were abandoned — striking testimony to 
 the devotion of those in charge. "What I think im- 
 pressed me most," wrote the organising secretary for 
 France, "has been the undaunted spirit of our workers, 
 
86 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 who, when shelled out of huts, persisted in the attempt 
 to return to them under very great personal danger. 
 'Although we have lost everything that we had,' wrote 
 one, 'we have still hope within us and are trusting to 
 get back right into the thick of things in the very near 
 future,' yet another, writing in the spirit of Eastertide, 
 said, 'We believe that our work will rise in new fresh- 
 ness and power out of its apparent extinction!' 
 There was a singular unanimity of effort on the part 
 of the workers who were isolated one from the other, 
 and had no opportunity of arranging a common policy. 
 The sale of such articles as the soldiers needed con- 
 tinued in the huts up to the last moment possible, and 
 then, when the danger of the hut and stores falling into 
 the hands of the enemy became imminent, biscuits and 
 cigarettes were handed out as largely as possible to men 
 in the neighbourhood taking part in the fighting. One 
 would have thought that having done this the workers 
 would have considered their own personal safety and 
 retired, but in several cases I found them running 
 stunts for walking wounded in the open, outside the 
 hut or in its immediate neighbourhood, in close touch 
 with the medical authorities." 
 
 "The confusion of the retreat opened up to our 
 workers opportunities of service which they gladly 
 utilised. Last night was a night of uncertainty," he 
 wrote. "We could not go to bed owing to the uncer- 
 tainty of the military position where our headquarters 
 were, and so stood on a high hill beside an old Trappist 
 monastery, watching the village at the foot in flames, 
 and trying to ascertain the progress of the fighting 
 
IN THE TRAIL OF THE HUN 87 
 
 through the darkness. Our workers even under these 
 circumstances seized an opportunity of doing a very 
 fine bit of service. A stream of poor refugees were 
 passing, people of all conditions and ages, fleeing for 
 safety and shelter, and so at 11.30 at night at the cross 
 roads a little table was set up with a hot urn of cocoa 
 and supplies of biscuits, which were handed out to 
 French and Flemish people as they passed. 
 
 "I have never seen anything that has touched me 
 more than these streams of all sorts and conditions of 
 people straggling along with their little belongings, in- 
 fants in arms to old people who had not walked a mile 
 for years. It was a great opportunity for rendering a 
 truly Christian service. The other day we lent one of 
 our large lorries for a whole day for the purpose of 
 carrying these people in some degree of comfort to a 
 place of safety." 
 
 Thus by every device that resourcefulness and ex- 
 perience could suggest the workers of the Y. M. C. A. 
 in France ministered to the comfort of the men who 
 were so bravely sustaining that terrible onslaught. 
 The organisation of the Red Triangle is the embodied 
 goodwill of the British people towards its beloved 
 army. An emergency like the one in the spring of 
 19 1 8 was just the time when the services of the Red 
 Triangle were most sorely needed by our soldiers. 
 
 Fortunately, all the Y. M. C. A. workers got away 
 safely. Sixty from the Fifth Army took refuge at 
 Amiens, whilst more than eighty from the area of the 
 Third Army found sanctuary at Doullens. 
 
 A few months later, thanks to the arrival of the 
 
88 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 Americans in France, and the brilliant strategy of Foch 
 and Haig; thanks above all to the mercy of God, the 
 tide turned and the Huns were once more in full re- 
 treat. A distinguished war correspondent wrote his 
 impressions of Bapaume a day or two after it had again 
 been captured by the British. Said he, "I prowled 
 about the streets of Bapaume through gaping walls of 
 houses, over piled wreckage, and found it the same old 
 Bapaume as when I had left it except that some of our 
 huts and an officers club, and some Y. M. C. A. tents 
 and shelters have been blown to bits like everything 
 else." A ruined town without a Y. M. C. A. ! Could 
 anything be more desolate ? 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE BARRAGE AND AFTER 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE BARRAGE AND AFTER 
 
 The problem of dealing with conditions, at such a time and 
 under existing circumstances, at the rest camps has always been 
 a most difficult one; but the erection of huts by the Young 
 Men's Christian Association has made this far easier. 
 
 The extra comfort thereby afforded to the men, and the op- 
 portunities for reading and writing, have been of incalculable 
 service, and I wish to tender to your Association and all those 
 who have assisted my most grateful thanks. — Field-Marshal 
 Viscount French. 
 
 IT was on the afternoon of July 30th, 191 7, that 
 we reached Bailleul in Flanders. Proceeding directly 
 to the Headquarters of the Y. M. C. A., we had tea 
 and then set out to visit the huts in the vicinity. It 
 was a novel experience, for every hut was empty. The 
 reason was not far to find. The troops were in their 
 camps formed up in marching order, and later in the 
 evening we watched them march out to take part in 
 the great offensive. We were told that the barrage 
 was timed for 3.50 in the morning, and were asked to 
 have our work for the walking wounded ready at 
 five a. m., so we determined to spend the night on the 
 top of Kemmel Hill, the highest hill in Flanders. It 
 was just after midnight when we reached the summit 
 
 91 
 
92 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 of the hill; and we wondered if the barrage had not 
 already commenced, so heavy was the firing. From 
 our point of vantage we could see the whole of the 
 sector, from Armentieres in the South, across the 
 battlefields of Messines and Wytschaete and away be- 
 yond Ypres in the North. Silently, close to us, an 
 observation balloon stole up in the darkness, and a 
 few minutes later as silently descended. Involuntarily 
 we ducked as a monster shell shrieked overhead, and 
 someone cried, "There goes the Bailleul Express!" 
 About 3 a. m. things began to quiet down. Our 
 guns might have been knocked out; they were hardly 
 replying at all to the enemy's fire. Later on we saw 
 a series of .signal flashes high up across the battlefield, 
 and then at 3.50, promptly to the moment, the barrage 
 began and there was no possibility of mistaking it — 
 two thousand guns, as we learned afterwards, all firing 
 at the same time. As one looked at that hell of flame 
 and bursting shell, one felt it was impossible for any 
 life to continue to exist beneath it, and one thought 
 of the boys, as steady as if they had been on parade, 
 creeping up behind that barrage of fire. We had 
 seen them as they left their camp the night before 
 and we saw them when they returned — some of them 
 — during the two days following the barrage; not in 
 regiments a thousand strong, with colours flying and 
 bands playing, but dribbling back one or two at a time 
 — the walking wounded — and each one came in to our 
 little Y. M. C. A. tents attached to the clearing station. 
 One of these was as an island in a sea of mud — near 
 Dickibusch huts in Flanders. There was a queue in- 
 
THE BARRAGE AND AFTER 93 
 
 side of two or three hundred men. Every man in that 
 queue was wounded, and waiting to have his wounds 
 attended to; every man was hungry until he entered 
 that tent ; every man plastered from head to foot with 
 the most appalling mud, and unless one has seen the 
 mud of Flanders or of the Somme, it is impossible to 
 imagine what it is really like. As I mingled with the 
 men in the queue and assisted our workers to hand out 
 hot tea, coffee and cocoa, biscuits, bread and butter, 
 chocolate, cigarettes or organes, I thanked God for the 
 opportunity He had given to the Y. M. C. A. The 
 thing that impressed me more than anything else was 
 the fact that one did not hear a single complaint, not 
 one word of grousing. And why not? Was it because 
 the men liked that kind of thing? Don't make any mis- 
 take about it — no one could possibly like it, but out 
 there they know they are fighting not for truth and 
 freedom in the abstract, but for their own liberty and, 
 what is infinitely more important to them than that, 
 for their homes and loved ones. They know that what 
 the Hun has done for Northern France and Flanders 
 is as nothing compared with what he would do for the 
 places and the people we love if he once got the oppor- 
 tunity of wreaking his vengeance on us. There is no 
 finer bit of work that the Y. M. C. A. is doing to-day 
 than this work for the walking wounded, which before 
 any great push takes place is carefully organised down 
 to the last detail. Before one of the great battles, our 
 men took up their positions at thirty-four different 
 centres where they were able to minister to the needs 
 of the wounded, and thus to co-operate with the mag- 
 
94 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 nificent work that is being done under the sign of the 
 Red Cross. As in France, so in Italy and in the East, 
 at Beersheba and other centres on the lines of com- 
 munication in Palestine, records show how efficiently 
 the same type of service is being rendered to our brave 
 troops. 
 
 To return to the barrage. It is always interesting 
 to note the effect a scene of that kind has on people 
 of different temperaments. We had been sitting round 
 a huge shell-hole near the top of Kemmel Hill feeling, 
 it must be confessed, a trifle "fed-up" with things. 
 We were all tired and had had a very heavy day's 
 work. It was an uncomfortable night, to say the least 
 of it, with drizzling rain and very cold for the time of 
 year. At the first sound of the drum-fire of the bar- 
 rage set up by the British guns, we sprang to our feet, 
 y wild with excitement. A distinguished padre from 
 the Midlands was lost in admiration for the work 
 of the munitioneers whose labours made possible this 
 great strafing of the Hun. The leader of the party, a 
 colonial from far-off Australia, simply danced with 
 excitement which he made no attempt to suppress, 
 contenting himself with ejaculating from time to time 
 expressions to the effect that that was the most dra- 
 matic moment of his life. An unemotional Professor 
 from one of our great Universities stood with 
 clenched fists, and was overheard to say, "Give 'em 
 hell, boys!" Another padre in the company began 
 to quote Browning, the quotation referring to the 
 signal flashes to which reference has already been 
 made: 
 
THE BARRAGE AND AFTER 95 
 
 . "From sky to sky. Sudden there went, 
 Like horror and astonishment, 
 A fierce vindictive scribble of red, 
 Which came across, as if one said, 
 . . . There'— 
 'Burn it!' " 
 
 How often it happens that in the greatest moments 
 of one's life, it is the trivial thing that appeals most 
 strongly to one's imagination. So in this case. The 
 thing never to be forgotten was connected with the 
 early dawn. I can see even now, that long grey streak 
 on the horizon across the battlefield. And as the day- 
 light came, a thrush from a bush close to where we 
 were standing began to pour out its song of praise and 
 thanksgiving, heedless of falling shells and the roar 
 of guns. There was something unspeakably pathetic 
 in that song on the battlefield, yes and prophetic of 
 the great day that is coming in spite of all reverses; 
 the day of victory and peace, peace purchased at the 
 price of struggle and of blood. 
 
 As one watched the barrage from Kemmel the on- 
 slaught seemed to be irresistible. It seemed impossible 
 for the German hordes to hold our men back. Neither 
 could they have held them, but what the Hun could 
 not do, the rain did for him. It just teemed down, 
 and in a few hours Flanders was churned up into a 
 swamp of mud. It was impossible to bring the big 
 guns up and the whole advance was stayed. One 
 thought how often the same thing had happened be- 
 fore, and wondered, only wondered, if we at home 
 were supporting the boys at the front as they had a 
 
96 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 right to expect us to support them? It is so easy at 
 a time like this to put one's trust merely in "reek- 
 ing tube and iron shard/' and to leave God out of our 
 calculations. After all, in this great struggle we are 
 not fighting merely against "flesh and blood," but 
 against "principalities and powers, against spiritual 
 wickedness in high places," and even to-day "more 
 things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams 
 of." It was that great soldier, Sir William Robertson, 
 who said, "Let us never forget in all that we do that 
 the measure of our ultimate success will be governed 
 largely, if not mainly, by the extent to which we put 
 our religious convictions into our actions and hold 
 fast firmly and fearlessly to the faith of our fore- 
 fathers." Had the Germans beaten us two years ago 
 everyone would have known the reason why — they had 
 more men, bigger guns, and more of them, more aero- 
 planes, and an infinitely better supply of munitions of 
 war, but by the summer of 191 7 we were superior to 
 them in every particular, and yet victory tarried. 
 Why ! Could it be that God was waiting for his people 
 to seek his aid ? 
 
 With Russia out of the war, with our Allies, we 
 were once again to stand with our backs to the wall — 
 the position in which the British are always seen at 
 their best — and the National crisis came as one more 
 challenge to the Nation to turn to the God of our 
 fathers. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 "LES PARENTS BLESSEES" 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 f LES PARENTS BLESSEES" 
 
 The Y. M. C. A.? Why, they could no more do without the 
 Y. M. C. A. than they could do without munitions at the front! 
 I have seen it in operation. — The Rt. Hon. Will Crooks, M.P. 
 
 "A GREAT Mother Hen" — so wrote one who for 
 the first time saw the work of the Y. M. C. A. for the 
 relatives of dangerously wounded men. This work is 
 carried on in London and a number of provincial 
 centres, but it is seen at its best in France, for there it 
 is on a much larger scale. If a man is dangerously 
 wounded and lying in one of the hospitals on the other 
 side of the Channel, a message is sent to his people at 
 home containing the requisite permission to visit him 
 and telling them moreover, that from the moment they 
 reach France the Y. M. C. A. will take care of them. 
 Red Triangle motors meet every boat as it reaches a 
 French port; automatically the relatives of wounded, 
 or "Les Parents Blessees" as the French call them, are 
 handed over to our care, and we motor them to their 
 destination — assisted sometimes by the Red Cross. As 
 this may mean a run of eighty or a hundred miles, 
 and in war time may mean a whole day, or possibly two 
 days on the French railways, the motor run is in itself 
 a great boon. During the whole of the time they are in 
 France, the relatives are entertained as the guests of 
 
100 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 the Red Triangle in the special hostels that have been 
 established for the purpose in the principal bases. Many 
 of them have never been away from their own homes 
 before; they know no language but their own, and a 
 journey of the kind would have its terrors at any time, 
 but to all the ordinary difficulties has now to be added 
 the fact that they are consumed with anxiety on ac- 
 count of those who are dearer than life itself. It 
 means everything to them that the Y. M. C. A. as a 
 "Great Mother Hen" takes them under its protection, 
 soothes and protects them, so that in the darkest mo- 
 ments of their lives they are not dealt with by offi- 
 cials who have to get through so many cases in a given 
 time, but by sympathetic friends, actuated only by the 
 love of God, and of country. One of the most beauti- 
 ful of these hostels is "Les Iris." It is hidden away in 
 the depths of a wood near the sea, and in the spring- 
 time the nights are full of the melody of the nightin- 
 gales. This hostel is reserved largely for the use of the 
 relatives of dangerously wounded officers. The lady 
 who presides over another of the hostels has been called 
 the Florence Nightingale of the Red Triangle, and in- 
 deed that would be a suitable name for any of these 
 ladies who take the relatives to their hearts and do 
 everything possible to comfort and cheer them and 
 make them feel at home. As we write, a letter from 
 one of our guests lies before us. We quote from it 
 because it is typical of thousands of letters received 
 from grateful friends : 
 
 "Many thanks for the photo of my son's grave re- 
 ceived this morning. How very kind you Y. M. C. A. 
 
"LES PARENTS BLESSfiES" 101 
 
 people are. I little thought last November when I was 
 begging (Hut Week in Brighton) that I should reap 
 personal benefit from the Y. M. C. A. The kindness 
 and hospitality extended to my husband and I when we 
 came to France nearly three months ago, we shall never 
 forget. It is not in our power to help with money 
 except in a small way, but we tell all we can, and help 
 in every way in our power." 
 
 During a recent visit to France we had the privilege 
 of being shown over one of the British hospitals which 
 like all our hospitals, was wonderfully efficient. Every- 
 thing that could be done to alleviate suffering was done. 
 In one ward every man was seriously wounded, and 
 side by side were two beds, one occupied by a young 
 Canadian and the other by a young Britisher. The 
 latter had his mother with him who was one of our 
 guests. The Canadian watched them together for some 
 time in silence but followed them with his eyes as a cat 
 might a mouse. Suddenly, without any warning, he 
 flung himself over on to his side and burst out crying. 
 Questioned as to what was the matter he replied, 
 "Nothing." "Then what makes you cry? Is the pain 
 worse?" "No, thanks, the pain is better." "Then 
 what makes you cry like that?" Drying his eyes, the 
 boy replied, "It's all very well for him, he's got his 
 mother with him. My mother is more than six thou- 
 sand miles away!" Is it not worth any effort and any 
 cost to help the loved ones of these men who have made 
 such great sacrifices for us ? 
 
 The whole of this work for "Les Parents Blessees" 
 is full of pathos. On one occasion we reached a big 
 
102 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 hospital centre just as another Association car arrived 
 from a big base port, bringing three English women 
 to see their husbands. The Y. M. C. A. leader took 
 them to the wards they were seeking. At the first, the 
 sister in charge came to speak to one of our guests and 
 said, "I am very sorry but am afraid your husband 
 won't know you. He has been terribly ill and all sorts 
 of complications have set in, but you had better come 
 in and see him." Twenty minutes later we saw her 
 again and she told us that for ten minutes she sat by 
 her husband's bedside but he did not know her. Then 
 stooping over him she whispered, "You remember little 
 Lizzie and little Willie at home, don't you ?" For one 
 second he gave her that look of love and recognition 
 that made the long journey from home worth while. 
 
 Passing on to another ward we sent in a message and 
 the sister came to greet our guest and said, "I am glad 
 to say your husband is much better. I'll tell him you 
 are here." When she came back she said she had asked 
 the invalid, "What would you like best in all the 
 world?" Without a moment's hesitation he replied, 
 "To go back to Blighty, Sister." "Blighty"— how 
 many of those who use it realise the meaning of 
 the word? It comes from the Indian "Vilayhti" and 
 means "The home across the sea." "Blighty," said the 
 sister, "you know that's impossible. What would you 
 like next best?" "To see my wife," was the prompt 
 reply. "And what would you say if I told you your 
 wife was waiting outside to see you?" queried the sister 
 as she moved from his bedside and opened the door. 
 Yes, to these people many thousands of them, the Red 
 
"LES PARENTS BLESSEES" 103 
 
 Triangle has indeed been as a Great Mother Hen at a 
 time when they most needed its care. We are all very 
 much like big children, and to all of us there are times 
 when we need someone to take us by the hand and 
 speak words of consolation and good cheer. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 CELLARS AND DUG-OUTS ON THE 
 WESTERN FRONT 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 CELLARS AND DUG-OUTS ON THE WESTERN FRONT 
 
 The work of this Young Men's Christian Association has sunk 
 so deep into the minds and into the lives of our fellow country- 
 men that its work in the future can never be diminished and 
 must be extended. And it is going to do more, to my mind, than 
 simply minister to the wants of the men in camp ; it is going 
 to be a bond between this country and the great Englands be- 
 yond the sea. — The Right Hon. The Earl of Derby, K.G., 
 G.C.V.O. 
 
 UNLESS one has seen for oneself the ravages of 
 war, it is impossible to conceive the horror and desola- 
 tion of a place like Ypres. Before the war it was one 
 of the most beautiful cities in Europe, to-day it is 
 nothing more than a heap of ruins. It is enough to 
 make even the most unemotional of men cry, to stand 
 in that once beautiful Cloth Hall Square and see how 
 complete is the destruction — not one house, not a single 
 room left intact — everything destroyed beyond recog- 
 nition. And what of the Y. M. C. A. in Ypres? There 
 we found the Red Triangle standing erect amid the 
 ruins, and following the hand that pointed down we 
 came to a little cellar Y. M. C. A. — only a cellar and 
 yet it had been a source of helpfulness and inspiration 
 to tens of thousands of our brave men. It was won- 
 derfully fitted up, contained a small circulating library, 
 piano and everything needed for the canteen side of 
 things. Not only that, it was a centre to work from. 
 
 107 
 
108 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 Between the cellar and the enemy were nine dug-outs at 
 advanced stations. As these were all evacuated by order 
 of the Military during the German offensive in April, 
 19 18, there can be no objection to their location being 
 indicated. The first consisted of a ruined house and a 
 Nissen hut at the Asylum; the second was at ''Salva- 
 tion Corner," and the third at Dead End, on the Canal 
 Bank. There was a Y. M. C. A. at Wells Cross Roads, 
 another at St. Jean and Wiel, and a sixth at Potyze 
 Chateau. The seventh had a homely ring about it for 
 it was situated at "Oxford Circus," the eighth was at 
 St. Julien, the ninth at Lille Gate (Ypres), and the 
 tenth was the cellar Y. M. C. A. at the corner of Lille 
 Road referred to above. For many months it was the 
 centre of the social life of the stricken town, but in 
 August, 191 7, it received a direct hit from an enemy 
 shell and was knocked in. This dug-out work is in- 
 tensely interesting, though naturally it has its limita- 
 tions. Large meetings are, of course, impossible; 
 sometimes even the singing of a hymn would be suffi- 
 cient to attract the attention of Fritz, but the man who 
 is resourceful and courageous and who can see an 
 opportunity for Christian service in meeting the com- 
 mon everyday needs of men, will find endless oppor- 
 tunities of putting in a word for the Master — and the 
 sordid dug-out under shell-fire, can easily be trans- 
 formed into a temple to His praise, an enquiry room 
 where resolutions are made that change the lives of 
 men and help the soldier to realise that he is called to 
 be a crusader. 
 
 In the Red Triangle dug-outs of the Ypres salient, 
 
CELLARS AND DUG-OUTS 109 
 
 from three to four thousand bloaters were supplied to 
 the troops week by week; 1,500 kilos of apples and 
 more than 100,000 eggs! It was a miracle how these 
 latter were collected in the villages behind the line. 
 Corps provided a lorry and two drivers for five months 
 to bring them into Ypres, and also assisted us with 
 thirty orderlies. It was that timely help that made our 
 work possible. It would be difficult to overestimate the 
 boon to the troops of this variety to their diet. Iron 
 rations will keep body and soul together but it is the 
 little extra that helps so much in keeping up the health 
 and spirits of the men. They would follow the egg 
 lorry for a mile and gladly pay the three-pence each 
 that the eggs cost. In February, 19 18, the turnover 
 from the Red Triangle centres round Ypres amounted 
 to 245,000 francs, whilst in March it had risen to 260,- 
 000. For many weeks in this salient we gave away 
 from five to six thousand gallons of hot drinks each 
 week. All honour to the band of Y. M. C. A. leaders 
 who kept the Red Triangle flag flying under these diffi- 
 cult conditions. For six weeks one of our leaders was 
 unable to leave his cellar home owing to the incessant 
 shelling and bombing of the immediate vicinity. These 
 were men who "counted not their own lives dear unto 
 them" but were ready to take any risk and to put up 
 with any personal inconvenience that they might serve 
 the country they loved — yes, and they too endured "as 
 seeing Him who is invisible." 
 
 The King, who is the Patron of the Y. M. C. A. and 
 very keenly interested in the work, visited our tiny 
 centre at Messines. The dug-out at Wytschaete was 
 
110 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 knocked out and the Red Triangle cellar at Meroc, just 
 behind Loos, was destroyed by a direct hit. The latter 
 was approached by a long communication trench and 
 was fitted up in the ordinary way — a few tables and 
 chairs, reading and writing materials, games, pictures 
 and the inevitable and always appreciated piano. A 
 few days before we were there a dud shell from one of 
 the German "heavies" fell only two or three yards in 
 front of the divisional secretary's car. The cellar was 
 immediately under a ruined Brasserie and in the 
 grounds of the latter was a solitary German grave. 
 The story goes that in the early days of the war enemy 
 patrols passed through Meroc, and a shot alleged to 
 have been fired from a window of the Brasserie found 
 its billet in one of the Huns. In revenge the Germans 
 killed every man, woman and child in the Brasserie. In 
 striking contrast was the story told us by the matron of 
 one of our splendid British hospitals. "Every one in 
 this ward is desperately wounded and too ill to travel. 
 All in that row," said she, pointing, "are Germans. 
 Yesterday a man occupying one of those beds lay dy- 
 ing, and could not make his head comfortable. I went 
 into the next ward and said to the Tommies, 'Here's a 
 German dying, will one of you lend him your pillow ?' 
 Without a moment's hesitation," said she, "every one 
 of those dangerously wounded Britishers whipped out 
 his pillow to help his dying enemy." That is the spirit 
 of our men and that accounts quite as" much as their 
 valour, for the fact that they have won the respect even 
 of an enemy trained from infancy to regard the British 
 soldier as an object of scorn and derision. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 
 
 "My son, who is somewhere in France, tells me what a real 
 comfort your Y. M. C. A. has been to him from the time he 
 
 started his training at , and all through his stopping 
 
 places almost up to the trenches." 
 
 A STRIKING feature of the war work of the 
 Y. M. C. A. has been the promptness with which a 
 new situation has been seized and a new opening en- 
 tered. There has been an utter absence of red tape 
 and freedom of action has been given to all accredited 
 representatives of the Association. The Red Triangle 
 has always been first in the field and has been likened 
 to a Tank in its knack of overcoming apparently in- 
 superable obstacles. The day after the British troops 
 first entered Bapaume a Y. M. C. A. man appeared 
 leading a packhorse loaded up with cigarettes, biscuits 
 and dolly cakes which he distributed amongst the 
 troops. He had got a foothold for the Association, 
 and that foothold was retained until Bapaume was 
 
 evacuated. 
 
 * * * 
 
 In the British offensive in the early days of August, 
 19 1 8, a noted war correspondent at the front wrote : 
 
 "In one part of the line three hours after the troops 
 reached their final objective they were eating a hot 
 breakfast as part of the programme of the day. The 
 
 113 
 
114 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 familiar, ever-welcome sign of the 'Y. M. C. A.' blos- 
 somed on a roofless French cafe six miles within the 
 crumpled German line, before the tanks had finished 
 chasing the nth Corps staff out of Framerville and 
 down the Peronne road. Food, and even books and 
 paper, were set out under the Red Triangle for tired 
 and hungry fighting men, as they trooped into the 
 rickety building to eat and be refreshed in a room 
 carpeted with German papers." 
 
 * * j{c 
 
 What thrilling memories the name of Arras will 
 always conjure up in the minds of Y. M. C. A. workers 
 who served in that city of ruins ! One wrote home the 
 day after a strong attack by the British on the enemy 
 lines. He wrote the letter from a dug-out, which only 
 the day before was occupied by the Huns, in which he 
 was carrying on for the Y. M. C. A. So precipitate 
 was their flight that he partook of the repast served 
 up by German cooks for German officers. At one time 
 the rival trenches were in places less than ten yards 
 apart! It was here that Sir Douglas Haig personally 
 complimented the Association on the work its repre- 
 sentatives were doing on the field of battle. 
 
 The most memorable motor run we ever had was 
 from Souastre to Arras in 191 6. The hut was closed 
 when we reached Souastre in the morning, the leader 
 having received a letter from the Town Major politely 
 requesting him to close it from 7.30 a. m., as it was 
 expected that the Huns would strafe the village at 
 8 a. m. and again at 4.30, and so it happened. This 
 seemed strange as the village had not been strafed of 
 late. How could the British have known when Fritz 
 
CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 115 
 
 would fire again? It seemed uncanny until a strange 
 unwritten reciprocal working arrangement between 
 friend and foe was explained, which means in effect 
 that Fritz refrains from bombing or bombarding 
 
 A , three or four miles behind the British lines, 
 
 if Tommy leaves village B , behind his lines alone, 
 
 and vice versa. As both villages are used as billets 
 for the rival armies both have been glad at times to 
 honour this understanding. The run from Souastre 
 to the railhead at Saulty was uneventful. Night was 
 closing in as we left for Arras and there was no moon. 
 For twenty kilometres or more we had to travel with 
 lights extinguished. We were less than a mile from the 
 enemy trenches, which ran parallel to the road we were 
 traversing. "Verey" lights, or star shells, sent up by 
 the enemy, continually made everything as light as day 
 for the few seconds they were in the air. There were 
 mysterious noises from the gun emplacements that ran 
 along the roadside, and mysterious shapes loomed up 
 ahead of us from time to time as we overhauled and 
 passed transport wagons and the like. At last we 
 reached our destination, and it was the writer's first 
 visit to a town of considerable size that had been 
 wrecked by bombardment. There were barricades in 
 the streets, shell-holes and ruins everywhere. We 
 motored through the famous Grand Place and passed 
 through street after street in that city of the dead, 
 until turning a corner we entered a narrow street near 
 the ruined Cathedral, and hearing a piano playing rag- 
 time it was obvious that we were near the Y. M. C. A. 
 The memory of that old Chateau in the narrow street 
 
116 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 will always remain with us as we saw it then — the 
 entrance hall, where free hot drinks were being dis- 
 pensed ; the canteen crammed with British soldiers, in- 
 cluding many "Bantams," who were then stationed at 
 Arras ; the little concert room with possibly a hundred 
 men gathered round a piano singing choruses and 
 snatches of songs or listening to the rag-time, and ac- 
 companying it at times by whistling the refrain or 
 stamping on the floor. Another crowd upstairs had 
 been entertained to a lantern lecture, and the day's pro- 
 gramme was being concluded with family prayers. As 
 we lay awake that night we heard many familiar noises 
 that sounded strange there — a cat call, the cry of a 
 baby, whilst ever and anon a shell would go shrieking 
 over the town. In the morning we visited the ruined 
 Cathedral, which was a sight to make men or angels 
 weep, but even there one saw erect amid the ruins, at 
 the highest point, the Cross, the emblem of our Chris- 
 tian faith, and one knew that though it might be 
 by way of the Cross, yet truth and freedom would 
 
 triumph in the end. 
 
 * * * 
 
 A well-known correspondent, writing from British 
 Headquarters in France to the "Daily Mail," on 
 August 13th, 191 8, told the story of a village under 
 shell-fire and still within reach of machine-gun bullets, 
 in which was a German notice board pointing to 
 an incinerator, and wrote, "I hear from an officer 
 who visited the spot again a day later that another 
 notice, 'This way to the Y. M. C. A.,' was added. A 
 dashing Cavalry Officer, very much of the old school, 
 
CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 117 
 
 possessing a voice that would carry two miles, begged 
 me with great earnestness to do him one service, 
 Would I mention the Y. M. C. A. ?' It had provided 
 his men with hot coffee before riding out." That is 
 the kind of service the Red Triangle has the privilege 
 of rendering to our fighting men in the course of prac- 
 tically every battle. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The Bois Caree, in 19 16, was a very unhealthy spot. 
 At the edge of a wood in a tiny natural amphitheatre 
 the Y. M. C. A. had one of its outposts. An orderly 
 was usually in charge, and day and night he kept up 
 a good supply of hot drinks for free distribution to 
 the troops. There they could buy biscuits, cigarettes, 
 soap and other necessaries, or receive free of charge 
 the ever-welcome writing paper and materials. The 
 supervising secretary, visiting the dug-out one day in 
 the course of his rounds, found it had been blown in 
 by a big shell. The orderly was terribly wounded, 
 part of his side having been blown away, but smiling 
 amid his agony, he said, "The money's safe here, sir I" 
 Careless of himself the brave fellow's first considera- 
 tion was to safeguard the money in the Y. M. C. A. 
 till. 
 
 We have vivid recollections of our visit to the Bois 
 Caree in 19 16. Late in the evening we reached Dicke- 
 busch. The Y. M. C. A. was there in the main street 
 of the little Belgian village, and immediately behind it 
 was the ruined church. It was only a small strafed 
 building in a ruined street on which the Red Triangle 
 first made its appearance in Dickebusch, but the secre- 
 
118 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 tary held that to be the most convenient type of Y. M. 
 C. A. building, "for," said he, "if it becomes too small, 
 all you have to do is to knock a hole through the wall 
 on either side, and take on additional houses." This 
 was exactly what we had done and, unattractive as it 
 was, the place drew crowds of men. At the Dicke- 
 busch Y. M. C. A. we were provided with shrapnel and 
 gas helmets and instructed in the use of the latter. A 
 
 two-mile trudge across a duck-walk over "b y 
 
 meadow" brought us to the famous Ridgewood Dug- 
 outs. It was here that the Canadians lost their guns 
 in the early days of the war, and afterwards so glori- 
 ously regained them. We entered the wood at mid- 
 night. A huge rat crossed our path, and as we entered 
 the first of the Y. M. C. A. dug-outs where free cocoa 
 was being dispensed in empty jam tins we remem- 
 bered a yarn told us the day before by one of our 
 workers. He had come to Ridgewood as a special 
 speaker, and after the evening meeting lay down on 
 the floor of the dug-out to sleep, but as he was begin- 
 ning to feel drowsy, a huge rat ran over his legs, and 
 later one passed across his face. With an electric 
 flash-lamp he scared them away, but soon getting used 
 to it they came on "in close formation." He lit a 
 candle and a few minutes later the rat ran away with 
 the candle — so he said! From the Ridgewood we 
 went on to the Bois Caree. Shells were screaming 
 overhead all the time, but it was not a long walk, 
 though it provided many thrills. For a couple of hun- 
 dred yards we were on open ground and within easy 
 reach of the Hun snipers. Only two of us were allowed 
 
CAMEOS FROM FRANCE 119 
 
 to pass at a time, and my guide and I had to keep 
 fifty yards apart, and when a "Verey" light went up, 
 had to stand absolutely still until it fell to earth and 
 its light was extinguished. Weird things those star 
 shells! They shoot up to a good height like rockets, 
 burst into brilliant light, poise in mid-air and gradually 
 shimmer down and out. A few minutes brought us 
 to the shelter of a ruined Brasserie, and from its fur- 
 ther side we entered the communication trenches and 
 thus passed to the Bois Caree. Standing back to 
 visualise the scene the Orderly caught my arm and 
 pulled me into the shelter of the dug-out, a second 
 later came the patter of machine-gun bullets on the 
 sandbags where we had stood not ten seconds before. 
 There was something fascinating about that little dug- 
 out Y. M. C. A., with its caterer's boiler, urns and 
 stores, and it is sad to think that since then it has been 
 destroyed by shell-fire. 
 
 A year later we revisited that old Brasserie. There 
 was little of it left. The central hall remained and the 
 Red Triangle was on it, marking it out as a centre for 
 walking wounded. A dressing station had been rigged 
 up in the cellar underneath. 
 
 A distinguished preacher serving with the Y. M. 
 C. A. conducted a memorable Watchnight service in 
 the Ridgewood. Two or three hundred men gathered 
 round and listened with marked attention. A shell 
 burst quite close during the prayer, and every man 
 instinctively glanced up to see the effect on the padre. 
 He carried on exactly as if nothing had happened and 
 won his way to every heart. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 STORIES OF "LE TRIANGLE ROUGE" 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 STORIES OF "LE TRIANGLE ROUGE" 
 
 "It is with very great pleasure I send a small contribution 
 (3/ — ) to the Y. M. C. A. funds, and only wish it could match 
 my inclination. Few things have brought so much comfort to 
 the parents at home as the knowledge of the splendid work done 
 by your organisation. As one boy puts it, 'When we get inside 
 the Y. M. C. A. hut we feel as if we are at home again.' " 
 
 AT the close of a Y. M. C. A. Conference held in 
 the Hotel McMahon in Paris, a French lady came tim- 
 idly forward with a lovely bouquet of red roses and in 
 a pretty little speech presented them as a thankoflering 
 for the war work of the Y. M. C. A. It was the gift 
 of a mother who had four sons serving with the British 
 army. Those flowers have long since faded but the 
 kind thought that prompted them will always remain a 
 
 gracious memory. 
 
 * * * 
 
 A soldier home on leave brought an interesting 
 souvenir of the first "Threapwood" hut, which did such 
 good work in the Ploegsteert Woods, but was ulti- 
 mately destroyed by shell-fire — a 2 franc and a 50 
 centimes piece which had become welded together in 
 the heat of the conflagration. Another Tommy saw a 
 fierce fight take place between British and Germans, 
 actually inside the hut at Neuve Eglise. The incident 
 
 123 
 
124 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 that seemed to have appealed most strongly to his im- 
 agination was the fact that the pictures were still hang- 
 ing on the walls. 
 
 It is interesting to notice the curious freaks of dud 
 shells. Outside the hut at Tilloy we saw one which 
 had pierced its way through the trunk of a tree with- 
 out exploding — the nose of the shell protruded at the 
 other side of the trunk, the shell itself remaining firmly 
 
 embedded in the tree. 
 
 * * * 
 
 An Australian officer one day sauntered into the 
 "Crystal Palace," an important Y. M. C. A. centre in 
 Havre. He was interested and well he might be. It 
 is a huge building and swarms of men assemble there 
 in the evenings. The Australian's interest took a prac- 
 tical form. Before leaving he handed two one-pound 
 notes to the leader expressing regret that he could not 
 make it more, and adding, "I think you Y. M. C. A. 
 people will make a religious man of me before the war 
 is over." "What do you mean?" said the secretary. 
 "Well," said he, "I have never had any use for religion, 
 
 but at the battle of I felt down and out. I 
 
 didn't care much if the Boche killed me. I had had 
 nothing to eat for days — when suddenly a Y. M. C. A. 
 man appeared, heaven knows where he came from, but 
 he was there right enough, and he handed me a good 
 hot drink, a packet of biscuits and some cigarettes. 
 Yes," said he, "I believe you Y. M. C. A. men will 
 make a religious man of me before you have finished." 
 * * * 
 
 In war-time fortunately, people often forget their 
 
"LE TRIANGLE ROUGE" 125 
 
 differences and in Paris one of our splendid British 
 soldiers, who was a Roman Catholic, lay badly 
 wounded and terribly ill. He wanted to confess but 
 there was no English Priest near. Ultimately a French 
 Priest confessed and absolved him through an Ameri- 
 can Y. M. C. A. lady — a Protestant — who acted as 
 interpreter. 
 
 In the early days of the war, a valued worker on 
 Salisbury Plain was the grandson of a famous Cornish 
 revivalist. He was an ordained man and a very strong 
 Protestant. He went out to France later on as a Chap- 
 lain of the United Board. Returning home on fur- 
 lough he called at Headquarters and told his expe- 
 riences on the battlefield. "You will be surprised," said 
 he, "when I tell you that my greatest friend in Flanders 
 was a Roman Catholic Padre. He was one of the best 
 men I ever knew, and we had an excellent working ar- 
 rangement. On the battlefield if I came across any of 
 his men, I would hand them on to him, and he would 
 pass my men on to me. If he were not at hand, I would 
 try my best to help the dying Roman Catholic soldier 
 as I thought my friend would have helped him had he 
 been there, and vice versa. I shall never forget," said 
 he, "my last night in Flanders and our affectionate 
 farewell. You know how strong a Protestant I have 
 always been and my convictions have never been 
 stronger than they are to-day, but see this," — and he 
 unbuttoned his tunic and brought out a Crucifix which 
 was hanging from his neck — "this was the parting gift 
 of my Roman Catholic friend and as long as I live I 
 
126 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 shall keep it as one of my most treasured possessions." 
 * * * 
 
 As a rule there is not much romance in the story of a 
 department that concerns itself with nothing but trad- 
 ing. But the story of the growth and development of 
 the trading department of the Red Triangle is a ro- 
 mance. All along we have discouraged trading for 
 trading's sake in our huts, but in a crisis like the one 
 brought about by the war, it is not for each individual 
 or organisation to pick and choose, but to do what is 
 needed by the state, and on that principle we have had 
 to develop the trading side of our work enormously. 
 Home and overseas the department has been brilliantly 
 led by men animated with the highest ideals of Chris- 
 tian service, who have been ready to take any risks and 
 whenever necessary to work day and night. Their task 
 has been colossal and they have done magnificently. 
 During the six months ending 21st of May, 191 5, 
 our turnover in France amounted to £32,594 whilst 
 three years later the six months turnover had risen to 
 £680,000. 
 
 It was thrilling work during the German advance 
 in March, 19 18, chasing our ever-moving centres 
 in the Somme area and keeping up their supplies or 
 maintaining touch with Amiens during those terrible 
 days, when for a whole week more than £600 daily was 
 taken in the little "Joy" hut outside the Central Station. 
 That meant day and night work, at our Base Stores 
 in France, and thanks to the cordial co-operation of 
 the military we were able to send forward 200 trucks 
 from one port alone containing 45,000 cases or 1,500 
 
"LE TRIANGLE ROUGE" 127 
 
 tons of food-stuffs, smokes and ingredients for hot 
 drinks — tea, coffee and cocoa. From December, 1914, 
 to the middle of May, 1918,-1,350,000 cases were 
 handled by our Stores in France representing the 
 double handling of 50,500 tons of goods. During the 
 retreat Y. M. C. A. motor lorries travelled from 80 to 
 90 miles a day. The motor drivers would often finish 
 up the day's work utterly exhausted. One boy of 
 iy l / 2 years did 40 miles in a day and, in addition, 
 loaded and unloaded his lorry. For the six months 
 ending November 30th, 19 17, our free gifts to the 
 troops in France amounted to £157,000. This figure 
 does not include the cost of huts and equipment, nor 
 yet the general expenditure on the work — but it em- 
 braces the cost of the hostels for the Relatives of 
 Wounded, and free food and drink for the walking 
 wounded and for the men serving in advanced posi- 
 tions. 
 
 # * * 
 
 A distinguished officer of the Danish Army called at 
 the headquarters of the British Y. M. C. A. after a 
 visit to France to acquaint himself with the history of 
 our war work : "One day I stood on Messines Ridge," 
 said he, "and all around me was the devastation caused 
 by the war, shells were to be seen bursting all round, ac- 
 companied by the deafening roar of the big guns. 
 Overhead amidst the din could be heard the whirr of 
 the engines of the German and Allied fighting ma- 
 chines. I felt thrilled to think I was in the midst of 
 the greatest battle of history. Stepping aside a few 
 yards I was surprised to find a dug-out with the Red 
 
 
128 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 Triangle sign. I could only exclaim, "What, these 
 
 people here! ! !" 
 
 * * * 
 
 One of the funniest sights we saw in France was that 
 of a tiny British Corporal marching behind ten stal- 
 wart German prisoners, escorting them back to their 
 quarters after they had finished orderly duty in one of 
 our tents. The humour of the situation evidently ap- 
 pealed to him for he winked as he passed us — quite an 
 unsoldierly thing to do. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Tommy has a knack of making himself comfortable, 
 though his surroundings very often do not naturally 
 suggest comfort. It is surprising what a snug bed and 
 living room combined can be made out of a discarded 
 hen house! A barn occupied by men of the Horse 
 Guards Blue was ingeniously rigged up by its tempo- 
 rary tenants. One wall was missing and was made up 
 with sacking — on the other side of this flimsy partition 
 were the horses. The harness was hung round the 
 walls, and four stakes driven into the ground for each 
 bed. The wire that had bound hay bales had been 
 ingeniously woven into wire mattresses stretched from 
 stake to stake; over it was stretched the sacking, also 
 from hay bales — and over that again was a good thick 
 layer of straw. There is never anything to be gained 
 by grumbling but everything by taking things cheer- 
 fully as they come and making the best of one's circum- 
 stances. 
 
 * * * 
 
 A Y. M. C. A. hut is a poor substitute for home, but 
 
"LE TRIANGLE ROUGE" 129 
 
 our aim is to make every Y. M. C. A. as much like 
 home as it is possible for it to be. It is surprising how 
 much can be done by pictures, decorations and flowers 
 to give the home touch. A canary singing over the 
 counter; a cat on the hearth; a bunch of primroses or 
 forget-me-nots; a smile or a word of welcome; a wo- 
 man's voice; a piano; family prayers at the close of 
 the day— these are some of the things that count, and 
 are numbered amongst the greatest assets of the Red 
 
 Triangle. 
 
 * * * 
 
 It is strange how often scenes and sounds of war and 
 peace are intermingled. It is a common sight to see 
 men and women going unconcernedly about their work, 
 and children playing in towns that are habitually 
 shelled or bombed. Stranger still is it to note the habits 
 of the wild birds constructing their nests amid scenes 
 of war and in localities subject to constant bombard- 
 ment. The Y. M. C. A. hut in Ploegstert Wood was 
 destroyed during a three hours' bombardment one 
 night in May, 1916, but whenever there came a few 
 seconds' pause in the booming of the guns, the nightin- 
 gales sang as unconcernedly as in the piping times 
 of peace. We once heard near Hersin a sort of duet 
 between a cuckoo and a big gun ; the bird punctuating 
 with its call the thunder of the guns, and as stated 
 elsewhere whilst the barrage was in full swing the 
 thrushes on Kemmel, only a few hundred yards behind 
 the guns, sang as sweetly and merrily as in the lanes 
 and gardens of England. In the course of a brief visit 
 to the American front in France we called to see a 
 
130 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 little Y. M. C. A. shanty, badly strafed, within a mile 
 or so of the enemy. Through the open window, from 
 which all glass had long since vanished, a swallow 
 entered, and perching on a wire stretched across the 
 room carolled joyously its simple little song — a mes- 
 sage truly of peace and eternal hope! 
 
 * * * 
 
 The "Walthamstow" hut at Remy had to be tem- 
 porarily abandoned during the German offensive. The 
 leader in charge transferred operations to a dug-out 
 across the way, which adjoined a clearing station. The 
 inevitable caterer's boiler enabled him to keep up a 
 constant supply of hot tea and coffee for the wounded. 
 An Australian, terribly mutilated, was brought in. 
 A happy smile, a few cheery words and a cup of 
 steaming hot cocoa made him feel he had met a 
 friend* — and speaking slowly, in a voice that was 
 scarcely louder than a whisper, he said, "I wonder why 
 I am allowed to suffer like this." "I know why," re- 
 plied the Y. M. C. A. man. "You are suffering like this 
 so that two women I love — my mother and my sister 
 — may live in peace and safety in the North of London. 
 If it were not for the sacrifices you and thousands of 
 other Boys are making out here, that would be im- 
 possible. The soldier lad was quiet for some time and 
 then whispered to his new-found friend — "I'm content 
 to go on suffering !" 
 
 * * * 
 
 The same secretary tells an interesting story of one 
 of the bitter fights round Passchendaele. The wounded 
 were being brought in on stretchers and he was on the 
 
"LE TRIANGLE ROUGE" 131 
 
 spot with hot drinks for the boys. The guns were quiet 
 for a moment and a voice was heard singing clearly 
 and distinctly: 
 
 "Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom ; 
 
 Lead Thou me on. 
 The night is dark, and I am far from home ; 
 
 Lead Thou me on ! 
 Keep Thou my feet ; I do not ask to see 
 The distant scene ; one step enough for me." 
 
 The singer was a private, badly wounded and being 
 carried in on a stretcher. The subsequent verses were 
 drowned in the roar of battle, but those standing round 
 could see from the movement of the wounded man's 
 lips that he was still singing. Thus it is possible for 
 a man to find his Saviour near him even amid the 
 horror and noise of war. 
 
 * * * 
 
 One day in 191 7 we stood outside a little Y. M. C. A. 
 at Erquingham, lost during the German advance in the 
 following spring, and standing there we heard "Grand- 
 mother" speak. "Grandmother" it should be explained 
 was a mighty howitzer. It was concealed under an 
 improvised shed carefully camouflaged, and was 
 brought out on rails, in a horizontal position. As we 
 watched, it was brought to the vertical and out shot a 
 tongue of flame. The projectile was so huge we could 
 watch its flight for miles until it disappeared from view 
 in the distance. Listening intently we could hear the 
 explosion in the enemy's lines. Many a Y. M. C. A. 
 
132 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 on the Western Front is situated right amid the guns 
 and when they are fired one knows it — " Grandmother" 
 speaking, seems to shake the very foundations of the 
 earth. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 THE RED TRIANGLE IN THE EAST 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE RED TRIANGLE IN THE EAST 
 
 You and your Association seem to me to be truly hi ' : ng the 
 nail on the head and working for the good of our soldier lads 
 one and all. I have watched the Y. M. C. A. procedure at 
 many camps, and have found it exactly adapted to the wants 
 of large numbers of young men taken temporarily away from 
 their homes and normal associations. — General Sir Ian Hamil- 
 ton. 
 
 THE Macedonian call, "Come over and help us," 
 has been repeated in our own days and has come from 
 near and far East. The Red Triangle has been quick 
 to respond to the call, and a few incidents of its work 
 are recorded here, though the story itself must be told 
 after the war. The Chief Executive Officer of the 
 Indian National Council is himself an Indian, and not 
 only has he with the assistance of his Council been 
 responsible for the great work of the Red Triangle in 
 India, but also for the extensive programme of work 
 the Association has undertaken for Indian troops in 
 East Africa, Mesopotamia and Europe. In addition 
 to work for British troops in India, the Y. M. C. A. 
 has established work for Indian troops in a number 
 of Cantonments, where service parallel to that under- 
 taken for British troops is carried on with the excep- 
 tion that no religious work is done, unless in the case 
 of Christian Sepoys. 
 
 135 
 
136 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 The number of branches with British troops on 
 August ist, 19 1 7, was 43, worked by 40 European 
 and American and 9 Indian Secretaries, and 1 honor- 
 ary lady secretary. With Indian troops there were 
 8 branches worked by 1 European and 8 Indian Secre- 
 taries. These figures do not include the temporary 
 work undertaken by the Army Y. M. C. A. with the 
 Waziristan Field Force, which terminated during 
 August, 191 7, and which included 4 British and 4 
 Indian branches, with 3 European and 2 Indian Secre- 
 taries. There was also one European Secretary at 
 Headquarters on August ist, 191 7, for Army work 
 in India; and in addition Secretaries engaged in 
 civilian Y. M. C. A. work in several stations gave part 
 of their time to Army work as did many voluntary 
 workers. 
 
 In Burma a large Barrack Room, made of wood and 
 bamboo with a grass thatched roof, houses the Asso- 
 ciation which works amongst the men of the newly 
 formed Burmese regiments. The whole building is 
 on piles, and stands about six feet off the ground, thus 
 preventing snakes and other unwelcome guests from 
 coming inside. The regiments comprise not only Bur- 
 mans, but Karens, Chinese and Arakanese. Most of 
 the men are from the deep jungle, and very few of 
 them can read or write. The gramophone interests 
 them enormously, and they look inside it to see who is 
 producing the sound, and will sit round in a circle 
 listening to it for hours. Picture papers interest them, 
 but usually they prefer holding the pictures upside 
 down. The better educated men write a good deal 
 
RED TRIANGLE IN THE EAST 137 
 
 on the free note-paper provided by the Y. M. C. A. 
 Quartettes are sung by Karen and Chinese Christians. 
 At the far end of the building is a huge image of the 
 Buddha, which was there before we came, and is used 
 by some of the boys as a sort of chapel for private 
 devotions. The boys have to take their choice between 
 Christianity and Buddhism, and as we have three 
 exceptionally good lamps there is much more light at 
 the Y. M. C. A. end of the hall, and we have the better 
 attendance in numbers at all events. 
 
 Egypt, handicapped at first through lack of money, 
 has also done magnificently. There is no more im- 
 portant centre of Association activity in the world 
 than the Esbekia Gardens in Cairo. Ever since the 
 early days of the war, thousands of khaki-clad 
 warriors have congregated night after night in these 
 lovely gardens, which under other auspices might 
 easily have been one of the danger spots of Cairo, in- 
 stead of a kind of modern "City of Refuge" from the 
 temptations of the city. The Anzac hostel is another 
 striking feature of the work in Cairo. In June, 191 7, 
 no fewer than 6,893 soldiers slept in it, and that was 
 not by any means a record month. The money for 
 the purchase of this hostel as the permanent property 
 of the Y. M. C. A., has been subscribed by members 
 of the Baltic, but the discovery of the existence of a 
 third mortgage has delayed the completion of the pur- 
 chase. At Alexandria; Khartoum; Port Soudan, on 
 both sides of the Canal and far into the Sinai Penin- 
 sula, the Association outposts have been busy. A Red 
 Triangle hut in the desert was destroyed by a bomb 
 
138 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 dropped from a hostile aeroplane, but when the smoke 
 subsided the centre pole was still standing and the 
 Association flag flying. The Huts at Kantara are 
 amongst the finest in the world, and neither here nor 
 anywhere else has it been necessary to put up a notice 
 intimating that the Y. M. C. A. is "open to all." 
 Tommy knows it and regards the Red Triangle as his 
 own peculiar possession. One cannot conceive of any 
 place on earth where it is more needed than in one of 
 these desert camps, where there is nothing to do, no- 
 where to go and nothing to see but endless stretches of 
 monotonous and dreary sand. Under such circum- 
 stances the Red Triangle is Tommy's tuck shop; his 
 Church — with the Chaplain as the Parson; his post 
 office; concert hall; social room; school, and home. 
 This is true of every fighting front, and that is why 
 the Association has won for itself a lasting place in the 
 affections of the manhood of the Empire. 
 
 A young soldier writing home the day after his 
 arrival in Mesopotamia said the first thing he struck 
 on landing was the welcome sign of the Red Triangle. 
 "And," said he, "if we are ordered next to the North 
 Pole, I am sure we shall find it there!" The Y. M. 
 C. A. Secretary for Mesopotamia tells of a visit he 
 paid to a centre on the way to Bagdad. It was a big 
 bare marquee, crammed with men, with very little 
 furniture in it — the difficulties of transport being so 
 great in those days — just half a dozen tables and a 
 few chairs, a heap of books and a number of games. 
 There were six inches of dust all over the floor, and 
 the temperature was 120 in the shade, yet one thing 
 
RED TRIANGLE IN THE EAST 139 
 
 that attracted the men to the Y. M. C. A. marquee was 
 that it enabled them to escape the heat of their own 
 bell tents. Through the kindness of a generous friend, 
 a Red Triangle motor launch has since then been 
 provided for use on the Tigris and has greatly simpli- 
 fied transport. The central Y. M. C. A. at Bagdad 
 is one of the best of our war buildings, and is situated 
 on the banks of the Tigris. An Association centre has 
 been established on the reputed site of the Garden of 
 Eden. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The story of the Red Triangle in Palestine is an epic 
 in itself. For months the Association had occupied 
 dug-outs along the Palestine front. In those days one 
 secretary devoted the whole of his time to making 
 personal purchases for Officers and men who could 
 not themselves get away to any centre of civilisation 
 to make purchases on their own account. Gaza was 
 the first centre occupied in the Holy Land ; Beersheba, 
 Jaffa and Jerusalem being occupied later. At Jaffa 
 the former German Consulate was fitted up as a Y. M. 
 C. A., and the Red Triangle as a matter of course 
 made its appearance on a big building in Jerusalem. 
 Malta was a very important centre in the early days 
 of the war, and the Y. M. C. A. flourished in its numer- 
 ous hospital camps. In Macedonia the work has been 
 difficult, but greatly appreciated in Salonica itself as 
 well as on the Varda and the Struma. The need has 
 been urgent, and every effort has been made to meet 
 that need. Transport difficulties have led to inevitable 
 delays in the delivery of stores and equipment, but 
 
140 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 there are more than 40 centres now, including some for 
 Serbian soldiers. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The Y. M. C. A. had its part in the ill-fated expedi- 
 tion to the Dardanelles. Mudros, Imbros and Tenedos 
 were centres of importance in those days, and the Red 
 Triangle was at work in each island. The urgent need 
 of the troops was for soft drinks, and those ordinary 
 canteen supplies that give variety to the soldiers' menu 
 and make the official rations palatable. The official 
 canteens were powerless to meet the demand. We 
 were anxious to help, but transport was the difficulty. 
 At last, through the kindness of another generous 
 friend, we were enabled to charter the S. S. "Nero/' of 
 the Wilson Line, and despatch it with a cargo of can- 
 teen supplies to the value of eleven thousand pounds to 
 Mudros. A few days after its arrival the Peninsula 
 was evacuated, but whilst they were there the men 
 availed themselves to the full of the opportunity of 
 buying supplementary food at British prices. When 
 the "Nero" reached Mudros, Greek vendors were sell- 
 ing our Tommies tinned fruit at twelve shillings a tin 
 and other prices were correspondingly high. 
 
 In the centre of an official photograph of Anzacs 
 showing the bay, the camp and the surrounding sand 
 hills are to be seen the letters "Y. M. C. A." They ap- 
 pear on a tiny marquee, and close to it was a big dug- 
 out, measuring 30x19 ft., in which the Red Triangle 
 carried through its programme of friendliness and 
 good cheer, always under shell-fire. One night a frag- 
 ment of a Turkish shell weighing twelve and a half 
 
RED TRIANGLE IN THE EAST 141 
 
 pounds found its way through the roof of that dug-out. 
 At Cape Helles there were three tiny tents fastened end 
 on end. Had they been larger they could scarcely have 
 escaped the attention of "Asiatic Annie," the big 
 Turkish gun that dominated the position. As it was, 
 the Officer Commanding the advanced base at Lan- 
 cashire Landing wrote to Headquarters to say how 
 much the men appreciated those tents, and explained 
 that the previous day an eight-inch high explosive shell 
 from a Turkish gun had burst in the centre of the 
 middle tent and completely destroyed it. "Fortu- 
 nately," said he, "it didn't damage the piano, and still 
 more fortunately," he added, "it didn't harm the 
 gramophone." That was curious, and we thought of 
 some of the gramophones we had known, and felt it 
 would have been no disaster if a shell had destroyed 
 the lot ! This gramophone was different, however, for 
 it had only just been wound up when the shell burst, 
 but regardless of the bustle and confusion caused by 
 the explosion it kept on playing until it had finished 
 the last note of the tune ! What a splendid object les- 
 son for the Allies, to stick to the job they have on 
 hand to the finish, or in other words, till victory crowns 
 their efforts. Many months after the incident here 
 recorded the Irish Y. M. C. A. was invited to open up 
 at Rathdrum. The Secretary responsible interviewed 
 the O. C, and learning that he was a Catholic, asked 
 politely if he knew the work of the Y. M. C. A. "In- 
 deed I do," was the reply, "I was at Cape Helles when 
 a shell burst in your tent. I was the officer in charge, 
 and it was my duty to remove casualties. I went up 
 
142 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 to the tents fearing the worst, and shall never forget 
 the smiling face of the Y. M. C. A. man behind the 
 counter. It won me over completely." 
 
 * * * 
 
 A distinguished officer wrote : 
 
 "Your work has been of inestimable value to the 
 troops, filling a gap which it is impossible for the Mili- 
 tary Authorities to provide for. 'Always first up, 
 always working hard, and always welcome' — the Red 
 Triangle will always be gratefully remembered by the 
 soldiers in the Great War." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 SIDE LINES OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 SIDE LINES OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 The Y. M. C. A. is doing excellent work — its efforts are ap- 
 preciated immensely by all ranks in this force. Experience of 
 Y. M. C. A. work in the Army has long since convinced me how 
 invaluable its services are to us both in peace and war. — The 
 Late Lieut. -General Sir Stanley Maude. 
 
 THERE are numerous side lines to this work, that 
 are important enough in themselves, the significance of 
 which is scarcely realised by the general public, or even 
 by those who are supporting the movement. Take for 
 example the "Snapshots from Home" movement which 
 represented the combined voluntary work of the 
 photographers of the United Kingdom, organised under 
 the Red Triangle. Upwards of 650,000 snapshots 
 were sent out to soldiers and sailors on active service, 
 each one bearing a message of love and a reminder of 
 home. 
 
 Field-Marshal, Sir Evelyn Wood, V. C, was one of 
 the first to recognise the significance of the letter- writ- 
 ing that is done on such a large scale in the Y. M. C. A. 
 tents. The veteran Field-Marshal pointed out that the 
 benefit was two-fold, first it occupied the time of the 
 men, and secondly, it kept them in touch with their 
 
 145 
 
146 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 homes, both matters of first importance. "That's what 
 my Dad always puts on his letters to Mummy," said a 
 little girl, pointing to the Red Triangle on the note- 
 paper, when on a visit to the Crystal Palace. Twenty- 
 five million pieces of stationery are distributed free of 
 charge to the troops monthly by the Y. M. C. A., 
 and in four years the total issued from headquar- 
 ters amounted to upwards of nine hundred million 
 pieces. Workers are often called upon to write let- 
 ters for the men and the latter make all sorts of 
 mistakes with their correspondence. Sometimes they 
 stamp their letters but forget to address them, often 
 they address them but forget the stamps. One lad 
 was greatly excited and wanted the secretary in 
 charge of the post office to rescue two letters he had 
 posted earlier in the afternoon. When asked why he 
 wanted them back he blushed like a schoolgirl and 
 stammered out, "I've written two letters — one to my 
 mother and the other to my sweetheart — and I've put 
 them in the wrong envelopes !" The letters were not 
 rescued, for more than five thousand had been posted 
 before he discovered his mistake, and one wonders 
 what happened ! 
 
 * * * 
 
 In Paris the Association has established a central 
 enquiry bureau under the Hotel Edouard VII off the 
 Grand Boulevarde. Two daily excursions are ar- 
 ranged around Paris and two each week to Versailles. 
 Representatives of the Red Triangle meet all the prin- 
 cipal trains, day and night. The Hotel Florida is now 
 run under the Association for British and Colonial 
 
SIDE LINES OF THE RED TRIANGLE 147 
 
 Troops, whilst the American Y. M. C. A. has its head- 
 quarters for France in the city and has taken over sev- 
 eral large hotels and other buildings. 
 * # * 
 
 There is not the romance about the work of the Red 
 Triangle in the munition areas that there is in what it 
 is doing for our fighting men, but there can be no 
 doubt as to its importance. The munitions workers as 
 a class are as patriotic as any other class, but their work 
 is drab, monotonous and strenuous. Little has been 
 done officially to bring home to the man who makes the 
 shell the relationship of his work to the man who fires 
 it; or of the woman who works on the aeroplane to the 
 man who is to fly in it, and yet the one can do nothing 
 without the other. Things have changed for the better, 
 but earlier in the war the output of munitions was 
 positively hindered by the inadequacy of the canteen 
 facilities available to the munition workers. The 
 Y. M. C. A. was the first organisation to attempt to 
 meet this need on anything like a large scale, and event- 
 ually the work grew to considerable dimensions. Our 
 work in the munition areas has been essentially a ladies' 
 movement and has largely consisted of canteen work. 
 Other features are being increasingly added, music 
 and singing have been organised successfully, lectures 
 have been greatly appreciated and several big athletic 
 features introduced. Sporting events, also cricket and 
 football leagues for munition workers have been well 
 supported. It is intensely interesting to see these people 
 at work and no other proof of British organising power 
 and ability is necessary than a visit to some of the 
 
148 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 great works, many of which were not built for the pur- 
 pose of manufacturing munitions of war and others 
 improvised since the commencement of hostilities. At 
 one place in which a canteen was formally opened by 
 Princess Helena Victoria, who has taken the keenest 
 interest in the development of our munitions depart- 
 ment — from ordinary ship-building before the war 
 great changes had taken place — a Super-Dreadnought 
 was approaching completion, several T. B. D.'s were 
 on the stocks, and some of the latest type of submarines 
 were being built. Aeroplanes were being turned out at 
 an incredible rate; shells made by the thousand; rigid 
 air-ships were under construction, and perhaps as won- 
 derful as anything — artificial feet were being made in 
 
 the same workshops. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Incidentally might be mentioned here, the work the 
 Association is doing for officers. There are six large 
 Y. M. C. A. hostels in London for the accommodation 
 of officers and one for officer-cadets. The young officer 
 is often not blessed with too much of this world's 
 goods, and hotel life is expensive and not always too 
 comfortable. The success of these hostels has demon- 
 strated the need. At Havre, Calais, St. Omer, Etaples 
 and many centres up the line, as well as in home camps 
 such as Ripon, we have the pleasure of doing something 
 to serve the officer, and in many English camps we 
 have opened huts for the exclusive use of officer-cadets. 
 Gidea Park, Berkhampstead and Denham were 
 amongst the first and most successful of these centres. 
 The interned officers, U. C. O.'s, and men in Switzer- 
 
SIDE LINES OF THE RED TRIANGLE 149 
 
 land and Holland are largely catered for by the Y. M. 
 
 C. A. 
 
 * * * 
 
 It has been a pleasure to co-operate from time to time 
 with the work of the R. A. M. C. and the Red Cross. 
 In huts, stationed in hospitals and convalescent camps, 
 in caring for the relatives of wounded, in work for the 
 walking wounded and in many other ways the Red 
 Cross and the Red Triangle have worked closely to- 
 gether. An officer of the R. A. M. C, T., Captain C. 
 S. Stewart Black, has written the following interesting 
 description of the work of the Y. M. C. A. for the 
 walking wounded : — "The O. C, The Divisional Walk- 
 ing Wounded Collecting Post," was frankly worried as 
 he sat in his tiny sandbagged hut with the D. A. D. M. 
 S., and talked over all the problems which faced him in 
 view of the "stunt" due to come off at dawn a few days 
 later. "I've got plenty of dressings, and everything 
 of that sort," he said, "and, of course, I can get plenty 
 more brought up by returning ambulance cars. But 
 there is the question of food — there's the rub. The 
 numbers of wounded vary so greatly, and it's not so 
 easy to lay in a huge reserve of grub as it is of dress- 
 ings. Of course, I've done my best, but I'm rather 
 worried." "If that is all your worry we'll soon put 
 that right," answered the optimist of the staff. "We'll 
 get the Y. M. C. A. chap on the job." "What can he 
 do ?" "What can he not do rather ? You wait and see. 
 Come along and we'll call on him now." 
 
 In a little shed of corrugated iron by the side of a 
 shell-swept road they found him. With his coat off 
 
150 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 and his sleeves rolled up, he was pushing across the 
 counter steaming mugs of cocoa and piles of buns 
 to the crowd of hungry and clamouring Tommies who 
 besieged his premises. He was not a young man. Not 
 the hardest hearted of Medical Boards would have 
 passed him for service. To put it briefly he had no 
 right in the world to be where he was, in one of the 
 nastiest corners of that particularly nasty place, Flan- 
 ders. But there he was, roughing it with the rest of 
 them, and to judge from his smiling countenance, thor- 
 oughly enjoying every particle of his experience. 
 "Hallo, Major!", he called out cheerfully on seeing the 
 two officers. "Anything I can do for you to-day." 
 "Rather! A whole lot. Can we have a talk in your 
 own place away from the crowd." The Y. M. C. A. 
 man led the way to the six feet square hole in the 
 ground which he called his billet, and there the medical 
 staff officer explained his needs. "There's a stunt on 
 in a few days," he said. "You may have guessed that. 
 What can you do to help us ? You know the pressure 
 under which the R. A. M. C. will be working. It'll be 
 a big job dressing all the casualties there's likely to be; 
 but we'll manage that bit. What we want is a hand in 
 the feeding of them. You understand?" The face of 
 the secretary glowed with excitement. "I'll do any 
 mortal thing I can," he answered eagerly. "There'll be 
 nothing doing here once the show starts, so I'll shut 
 down, and bring my whole stock over to your dressing 
 station and my staff too. We can feed several hundred 
 if you'll let us." "What about the cost of the grub?" 
 "Not a word about cost, sir! You're welcome to it 
 
SIDE LINES OF THE RED TRIANGLE 151 
 
 free, gratis and for nothing, with all the pleasure in the 
 world." "Thanks awfully," said the D. A. D. M. S. 
 "That's just what I wanted you to offer, and I thought 
 you would; your folks have helped us so often before." 
 "Jolly good job," mused the Y. M. C. A. man, "that 
 I have kept hidden those extra cases of chocolates and 
 sweet biscuits. I thought there might be something of 
 this sort coming off." 
 
 Ere the grey dawn of a certain morning brought the 
 nerve racking inferno of barrage and counter-barrage, 
 the entire stock of the canteen was installed in the 
 larger of the two huts which formed the collecting post. 
 Boxes of biscuits, chocolates and cigarettes, with the 
 lids knocked off, stood ranged along the wall, ready for 
 the tired and hungry guests who would soon appear. 
 Outside, in two huge cauldrons, gallons of strong cocoa 
 were brewing merrily. Little was spoken by the men 
 standing around, as they waited, nerves a trifle on edge, 
 for the breaking of the storm. Suddenly from some- 
 where in the rear came the hollow boom of a "heavy," 
 the artillery signal and in an instant every battery in 
 the area had hurled its first salvo of the barrage. The 
 air was full of noise, the rolling roar of the guns at 
 "drum fire," the hissing and screaming of flying shells, 
 the echoes of far-away explosions. The ground 
 trembled as if an earthquake had come. The battle had 
 begun. 
 
 The O. C. looked in at the door of the hut. "Every- 
 thing ready?" he asked. "Ready and waiting," an- 
 swered the Y. M. C. A. man, and very soon in twos 
 and threes the wounded began to dribble in, and shortly 
 
152 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 a steady stream of battered humanity was straggling 
 down the road, to halt at the welcome sight of the hut 
 with the Red Cross flag by its door. How some of 
 them limped over every weary step of the way was be- 
 yond understanding. With shattered limbs and 
 mangled flesh they came, worn, hungry, thirsty, in 
 agony, some stumbling alone, some helped along by less 
 grievously injured comrades. In a pitiful throng they 
 gathered around the dressing station. 
 
 The quick eyes of the R. A. M. C. sergeant picked 
 out the worst cases, and these were hurried into the hut 
 where the medical officers plied their sorrowful trade. 
 The others sat down and waited their turn with the 
 stolid patience of the British soldier when he is 
 wounded, and among them worked an Angel of Mercy, 
 an elderly angel clad in a flannel shirt and a pair of 
 mudstained khaki trousers. Amid the poor jetsam 
 of the fight went the Y. M. C. A. man with his mugs 
 of cocoa and his biscuits, his chocolate and his cigar- 
 ettes, as much a minister of healing as was the surgeon 
 with his dressings and anodynes. All the men were 
 bitterly cold after their long night of waiting in the old 
 front trench : or were dead beat with the nervous strain 
 of the action and the pain of their wounds. All were 
 hungry. A few no longer cared greatly what more 
 might happen to them, for they had reached the limit 
 of endurance assuredly, as they had reached the limit of 
 suffering. But even to those last the warm drink and 
 the food and, perhaps more than anything else, the 
 soothing nicotine, brought back life and hope in place 
 of apathy and despair. "God bless you, sir," murmured 
 
SIDE LINES OF THE RED TRIANGLE 153 
 
 a man here and there. But the greater part could find 
 no words to speak the gratitude which their eyes told 
 forth so clearly. 
 
 This little story is not the tale of one actual incident. 
 It is only the stereotype of scenes that have been acted 
 and re-acted often and often at the front. Time and 
 time again has the Red Triangle come to the aid of the 
 Red Cross, placing its workers and its stores unreserv- 
 edly at the disposal of the Royal Army Medical Corps. 
 When the wounded have been pouring into the dressing 
 stations in hundreds, the Y. M. C. A. workers have 
 taken over the responsibility of feeding them, and have 
 halved the cares of the overwrought R. A. M. C. This 
 they have done not once but un-numbered times and 
 what gratitude they have earned from their guests! 
 The wounded man can scarcely realise what he owes to 
 the surgeon who tends his injuries; but he does appre- 
 ciate his debt to the man who feeds him and gives him 
 the "fag" for which he has been craving. The cocoa 
 and cigarettes of the Y. M. C. A. do not figure among 
 the medicaments of the Pharmacopoea, yet many a 
 "walking wounded" will swear to you that they have 
 saved his life — as perhaps they have. 
 

CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE RED TRIANGLE AND THE WHITE 
 ENSIGN 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE RED TRIANGLE AND THE WHITE ENSIGN 
 
 "I am sending you a pound note, the first I ever received, as 
 I am a poor old woman not able to work. To maintain my home 
 I used to take in washing, but now I cannot even do my own, 
 but the other Sunday, when I shook hands with one that I used 
 to wash for, he put that bit of paper in my hand, but said noth- 
 ing, so I received it as part payment for work done over 7 
 years ago, and when I looked at it, I thanked God and said I 
 would give it to some good cause, and I think I cannot do better 
 than help you to get shelter for the soldiers. God bless 'em." 
 
 THIS chapter is written in a "sleeper" at the close 
 of a busy day in the North. The day has been made 
 a memorable one by a visit to the "Queen Elizabeth" 
 as she lay at her moorings in one of our great naval 
 bases. She is one of the greatest instruments of war 
 in the world, and it was a revelation to enter one of the 
 gun turrets of the super-dreadnought, to look through 
 the periscope or see the ingenious mechanism that 
 moves those mighty guns and lifts into position the 
 huge projectile that is capable of delivering death and 
 destruction to an enemy many miles away. It was 
 more than interesting to visit the wireless rooms where 
 ceaseless watch is kept by day and night, and to see the 
 wonderful orderliness of everything, and to note that 
 everyone on board was ready and their only fear that 
 the German Fleet might never be tempted out again. 
 
 157 
 
158 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 The visit to the "Queen Elizabeth" left one thinking 
 of the service the Red Triangle has been able to render 
 to the white Ensign. During the war there are not 
 as many opportunities for work amongst naval men 
 as in peace time, but there is all the more need that 
 when the men are ashore everything that is possible 
 should be done for them. The Scottish National Coun- 
 cil have up-to-date well-equipped hostels and recreation 
 rooms in several naval centres, and those at Edinburgh 
 and Glasgow are often thronged with bluejackets. 
 South of the border there are many fine hostels and 
 recreation rooms for sailors, and in scores of centres 
 in England, Wales and Ireland the Red Triangle is 
 catering successfully for the needs of our bluejackets. 
 The biggest crowd of all is to be found in the quarters 
 occupied by the Y. M. C. A. at the Crystal Palace, 
 where thousands of men every day use the Y. M. C. A. 
 as their club and find in it their home. We shall never 
 know all we owe to our splendid Navy, and that debt 
 can never be fully paid. At the close of the war we 
 are planning to erect permanent hostels and institutes 
 for sailors in several naval bases at home and in some 
 of the great foreign stations. Much appreciated war 
 work for sailors is being carried on now at Brindisi 
 and Taranto for the men of the drifters employed on 
 minesweeping in the Mediterranean, also at Malta, 
 Mudros and other centres overseas. 
 
 A demand for a Y. M. C. A. on a battleship came 
 from the men of H. M. S. "Conqueror," and it has 
 been found most helpful. 
 
 Many isolated naval stations round the British coast 
 
THE WHITE ENSIGN 159 
 
 are supplied with cabinets, each one containing a 
 gramophone, a library, a supply of writing materials, 
 and games. For obvious reasons it would be impru- 
 dent whilst the war is on to indicate the centres by 
 name in which the Red Triangle is serving the men 
 of the Navy, but there will be a great story to tell when 
 the war is over. 
 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 THE RELIGION OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 "The Y. M. C. A. has been one of the really great things which 
 have come into their own in this world crisis. It has been a 
 Hindenburg Line of the Christian faith." — Dr. Michael Sadler, 
 V ice-Chancellor of Leeds University. 
 
 THE Y. M. C. A. is not in camp as a rival to the 
 ordinary Church organisations, nor yet to supplant or 
 in any conceivable way to undermine the influence of 
 the Chaplains. Its large and commodious huts and 
 tents have been used in thousands of camps for the 
 official Church Parade services, and in many cases 
 there has been no other suitable room available. We 
 have counted it a privilege on Sunday mornings to 
 place our equipment unreservedly at the disposal of all 
 the official Chaplains who desired to use it. We have 
 welcomed the opportunity of assisting the great and 
 important work the Chaplains are doing for the men 
 of His Majesty's Forces, for the Y. M. C. A. is itself 
 a wing of the great Christian army, and has sometimes 
 been described as the Church in action. Apart from 
 the support in men and money it has received from 
 members of the Churches, the war work of the Red 
 Triangle would have been impossible. The Y. M. C. A. 
 is not a Church and will never become one. It adminis- 
 ters no sacraments, its membership is confined to one 
 
 163 
 
164 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 sex; it discourages in all its branches the holding of 
 meetings that clash with those of the Churches, and in 
 every possible way each member unattached is encour- 
 aged to join the Church of his choice. 
 
 In the course of a striking letter to "The Challenge" 
 of July 12th, 1918, a correspondent said: "We turn 
 for an example to the Y. M. C. A. Conceal the un- 
 pleasant truth how we may, the outstanding religious 
 performance of this war in the eyes of the public at 
 large has not been the daily services in Church — not 
 even the Holy Communion — but the work done in 
 the Y. M. C. A. huts. It is along those lines that we 
 must travel if we are to win the world. For the 
 medisevally-minded, for the intellectually timid, there 
 is always Rome. But it is not by those that the new 
 England will be built, and it is the new England we 
 must save for Christ." 
 
 Another writer to the same Anglican journal said 
 it had been stated that "after the war there would be 
 a holy Roman Church and a holy Y. M. C. A., but no 
 more Church of England." The fact of the matter is 
 the Y. M. C. A. is not making the work of the 
 Churches unnecessary, but rather it is giving the ordi- 
 nary man a new conception of what Christianity really 
 is, and is thus helping to interpret the Churches to the 
 masses, and is acting as a bridge or a communication 
 trench between the organised forces of Christianity in 
 the front line, so to speak, and the great masses away 
 back in reserve on which they desire to draw. Some 
 people have spoken sneeringly of "canteen religion," 
 the soldier never does — and why should he? There 
 
RELIGION OF THE RED TRIANGLE 165 
 
 is nothing new about it, for it is as old as the early 
 days of Christianity, only the gospel of the "cup of 
 cold water" has been adapted to the needs of modern 
 warfare, so that the man in the firing line knows it 
 from experience as the gospel of the "cup of hot 
 coffee." Straggling back to a clearing station, 
 wounded, plastered with mud, and racked with pain, 
 the most eloquent of sermons would not help him, but 
 a hot drink, a few biscuits or even a cigarette, if given 
 in the name of the Master may put new heart and life 
 into him, and give him fresh courage for the way. 
 The Churches realise this and have given us of their 
 best as far as helpers are concerned. 
 
 We have a vivid recollection of visiting the big 
 Y. M. C. A. hut in the Cavalry Camp at Rouen in 
 191 5. It was the ordinary week-night service and 
 more than six hundred men were present. A famous 
 Scottish preacher had conducted the service, and at 
 the close we chatted with him for a few minutes in 
 the quiet room. "Before I came out to France," said 
 he, "I knew you had a great opportunity. Now I know 
 that the greatest spiritual opportunity in history rests 
 on your shoulders — is with the Y. M. C. A." And yet 
 there is a way of doing spiritual work that would 
 make all spiritual work in camp absolutely impossible. 
 We remember visiting a big hut one day — it did not 
 sport the Red Triangle, but was beautifully furnished. 
 Over the door was a bold device, "A Home from 
 Home! Welcome!" On entering, the first thing 
 one saw was the text, "Behold your sins will find you 
 out!" And a few yards further on, "The wages of 
 
166 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 sin is death." "No smoking !" was another notice, and 
 yet another, "This hut will be closed every evening 
 from seven to eight for a gospel service.' ' Religion 
 to appeal to the soldier must be natural and not forced, 
 and must be free from controversy and unreality. The 
 British soldier hates a sham and instinctively classes 
 the hypocrite with the Hun. He may not understand 
 our Shibboleths; he has no use for our controversies, 
 but he can and does understand the life of the Master, 
 when he sees the beauty of that life reflected in some 
 humble follower of His, who day by day is risking his 
 life at the front that he may supply a cup of cocoa to 
 a wounded soldier, or who is slaving behind a Y. M. 
 C. A. refreshment counter at home and doing uncon- 
 genial work it may be — for the love of Christ. 
 
 * Jjt Jj« 
 
 When it was decided to send the Indian troops to 
 France, the Y. M. C. A. offered its services to the In- 
 dian Government. The offer was refused. It was felt 
 that if it became known in India that a Christian Asso- 
 ciation was at work amongst the Indians at the front, 
 there would be mutiny. At last, however, permission 
 was given to supply recreation marquees for the use 
 of the Indian Army in France, but only on condition 
 that there should be no proselytising, no preaching, no 
 prayers, no hymn singing, no testaments or Bibles 
 given and no tracts. The Y. M. C. A. accepted the 
 conditions, and though some of its friends felt it meant 
 lowering the flag, it has loyally kept its promise, and 
 most people realise to-day that this was one of the 
 greatest pieces of Christian strategy of our times. A 
 
RELIGION OF THE RED TRIANGLE 167 
 
 visit to one of the Red Triangle huts or tents in an 
 Indian camp is a revelation. You hear the Moham- 
 medan call to prayer, see the tiny mosque, and realise 
 in how many and varied ways it is possible for the 
 Y. M. C. A. to be of service to these brave men of 
 another faith. A Professor reported at one of the 
 big base camps as a worker. He had come to lecture 
 to the troops and when asked by the leader as to his 
 subjects replied, "Sanscrit and Arabic." The leader 
 wondered how on earth he could make use of a man, 
 as a lecturer to British Tommies, who only lectured 
 on these two obscure and difficult topics. The Pro- 
 fessor found his niche, however, teaching the Moham- 
 medan priest to read his Koran — the leader comment- 
 ing — "The more he knows it, the less he will trust it." 
 It is interesting to note how well these Indian heroes 
 get on with our own Tommies. They play their games 
 and sometimes sing their songs. When "Tipperary" 
 was all the rage the Indians had their own version of 
 the chorus, which they sang with great enthusiasm. It 
 ran thus: 
 
 "Bura dur hai Tipperary, 
 Bura dur hai kouch ho, 
 Bura dur hai Tipperary, 
 
 Sukipas powncheniko, 
 Ram, Ram, Piccadilly, 
 Salam Leicester Square. 
 Bura, Bura dur hai Tipperary, 
 
 Likem dil hoa pus ghai." 
 
 On one occasion the secretary of an important base 
 said he had arranged a new stunt for us that evening — 
 
168 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 the formal opening of a hut in the Indian Cavalry 
 Hospital Camp. We arrived to find the hut crowded 
 and a great banquet arranged in our honour. Nothing 
 need be said as to the banquet or its disastrous results 
 as far as we were concerned! The Indians enjoyed it, 
 and that was the important thing. Before the banquet 
 we had the privilege of greeting the men and welcom- 
 ing them to the Y. M. C. A., and after we had finished 
 the leading Mohammedan in the camp mounted the 
 platform and gave a great oration in honour of the 
 Christian association. He was followed by the lead- 
 ing Brahmin and he in turn by the senior Sikh, all 
 speaking in most cordial terms of the Y. M. C. A. In 
 the midst of the orations, a stately Indian advanced 
 solemnly and placed a garland of flowers round my 
 neck. Thrice this garlanding process was repeated on 
 different occasions, lovely roses and sweet peas, and it 
 was a great and much appreciated honour, though it 
 made one feel a trifle foolish at the time. After the 
 banquet we proceeded to the adjoining recreation tent, 
 and it was an inspiration to see it crammed from end 
 to end with men of many religions and different races, 
 all happy and contented and all usefully employed. On 
 the platform a "budginee" or Indian concert was pro- 
 ceeding; a crowd of men at the tables were learning to 
 write; another crowd receiving a lesson in English; 
 a large group looking at pictures and illustrated maga- 
 zines, whilst others were playing games or listening 
 enraptured to the strains of the Indian records on the 
 gramophone. The C. O. who took us round said that 
 when the men came to France not one of them could 
 
RELIGION OF THE RED TRIANGLE 169 
 
 even sign his name to his pay book, they all had to do 
 it by means of thumb-prints. "To-day," said he, 
 "every man can sign his name and many can write an 
 intelligent letter, and they have learned everything in 
 the Y. M. C. A." A few days previously an Indian 
 of some rank, stood with folded arms, his back against 
 the wall, in that very tent. He said nothing, but 
 took in everything, and when the marquee closed for 
 the night and the dusky hero warriors retired to 
 their tents, he spoke to the secretary in charge. "I 
 have watched you men," said he, "you are not paid 
 by the Government, you come when you like and you 
 go when you like. There is only one religion in the 
 world that would send its servants to do what you are 
 doing — to serve and not to proselytise. When this 
 war is over and we return to India, I want you to 
 send one of your men to my village. My people are 
 all Hindus, but they will do what I tell them. I have 
 been watching you carefully, and I have come to the 
 conclusion that Christianity will fit the East as it can 
 never fit the West." One of the lessons of the Red 
 Triangle is that you can never win men by antagonis- 
 ing them, or by speaking disrespectfully of the things 
 they hold dear. Love must ever be. the conqueror, and 
 the love of all loves is the love of God revealed in His 
 
 Son, Jesus Christ. 
 
 * # # 
 
 Our Jewish friends were surprised and delighted in 
 the dark days at the close of 19 14 to find that the 
 doors of the Y. M. C. A. were thrown widely open 
 to their padres, who could gather in soldiers of their 
 
170 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 community to worship God in their own way in the 
 huts of the Red Triangle. They have not been slow 
 to show their appreciation — and a number of Y. M. C. 
 A. huts have been given officially by Jews; one well- 
 known and much used hostel bears the name, "Jew^n 
 Y. M. C. A.," and Jewish Padres will go to any trouble 
 or inconvenience to help our work at home or overseas. 
 No Red Triangle hut can be used for proselytising by 
 Catholic, Protestant, Moslem, or Jew — that goes with- 
 out saying — but any official chaplain is welcome to 
 the use of our huts for instructing his own people 
 in their own faith. 
 
 A striking article recently appeared in a Catholic 
 journal, from which we cull the following paragraphs, 
 expressing as they do another point of view : 
 
 "'R. C,' 'C. of E.,' 'Y. M. C. A.'— these three 
 are the religions of the Front. The drumhead service, 
 whilst nominally 'C. of E.,' is, of course, more a mili- 
 tary parade than a religious function. It is not without 
 a certain amount of picturesque Army ceremonial, but 
 to the Catholic soldier, as a Catholic, the spectacle is 
 an uninteresting one. The Y. M. C. A., too, I think, 
 would not claim to be a religion. It is, perhaps, a reli- 
 gious institution ; a kind of spiritual ration-dump. Its 
 huts, even during a cinema show, and at the counters 
 where they sell Woodbines and chocolates, have a 
 Christianised atmosphere. No soldier fears to be 
 thought 'too good' through attending a Y. M. C. A. 
 service. That is, perhaps, where its undoubtedly great 
 influence comes in. It gives the impression, one sup- 
 poses to these soldiers, that here they have what the 
 P. S. A. fraternity call 'a man's religion for men.' It 
 caters for the frequent English soul which (perhaps in 
 
RELIGION OF THE RED TRIANGLE 171 
 
 the Charity of God) finds a path to Heaven in the 
 singing of second-rate hymns on Sunday evening; in 
 the constant repetition of 'Abide with Me,' and 'O 
 God, our help in ages past.' It is difficult to say if the 
 influence of the Y. M. C. A. is much responsible for 
 the remarkably even, and (considering all things) 
 somewhat high moral code of the Army out here. 
 Rather, perhaps (Deo gratias) it is an English heritage 
 from the past. Most emphatically one cannot help 
 being struck by the excellent moral lives that many of 
 these men live, when all things are considered. Of 
 course, to a large extent, there is the lack of occasions 
 of sin. Drunkenness, most possibly, is rare because 
 the authorities have greatly restricted, and wisely, the 
 hours of drinking, and the beer, etc., available, even 
 if taken in large quantities, is rarely intoxicating. 
 Frankly, it appears that the good influence of the 
 Y. M. C. A. is derived from the temporal comforts and 
 conveniences it offers to the much-tried B. E. F. men. 
 I stood outside a Y. M. C. A. building one night, in the 
 worst of weather, weather as foul as it can be in 
 France in war time. Three rain-sodden Canadian 
 infantry men trudged along towards the place, and 
 their ears caught the sound of some execrable piano- 
 strumming. 'Holy Hell,' said one, 'there's some music 
 there ; come on !' That is the story, in epitome, of the 
 Y. M. C. A. In the mercy of God, it is a good one." 
 
 A young soldier sent to an English paper the follow- 
 ing interesting account of a Communion Service held 
 in one of our huts at the front : 
 
 "The following Tuesday, just as our company was 
 going 'up the line' to the trenches, a Communion serv- 
 ice was held in the rest room of the Y. M. C. A. hut. 
 I attended it along with nine other men, and the service 
 
172 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 was conducted by a well-known Scottish Y. M. C. A 1 . 
 worker, who at the time was acting as the leader of 
 the hut. In that little room we ten men in khaki were 
 verily in the presence of the Unseen. I never realised 
 Christ to be so near as when we handled the elements. 
 For myself I can truly say that in the grey dawn of 
 the following morning I went up to meet the enemy 
 with a strange peace, and a deep assurance in my soul 
 that, come what might, I need fear no evil, knowing 
 that He was with me — and so it proved to be. Our 
 time in the trenches was the most exciting I have yet 
 experienced, but He kept near, and so 'all's well.' " 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 STORIES OF THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 STORIES OF THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 
 
 The work of the Y. M. C. A. is, to my mind, one of the out- 
 standing features of this war. Their efforts, along with other 
 agencies working for the highest welfare of the Army, have 
 shown a true catholic spirit, and made it easier for our soldiers 
 to live a noble, true and clean life. May God's blessing follow 
 their increasing influence. — The Chaplain General of the Forces. 
 
 MORE than 500,000 men have signed the War Roll 
 pledge of allegiance to our Lord Jesus Christ, which 
 has now been formally adopted by the Churches and 
 which reads as follows : 
 
 "I hereby pledge my allegiance to the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, as my Saviour and King, and by God's help will 
 fight His battles for the Victory of His Kingdom." 
 
 Many have no doubt forgotten their promise but for 
 many it has meant the beginning of a new life, and to 
 thousands of parents the knowledge that the boy, who 
 was their all, signed this declaration before making the 
 supreme sacrifice, has brought untold comfort. 
 
 Wherever practicable a Quiet Room for prayer and 
 Bible study is included in our camp outfit, also a book- 
 stall for testaments, pledge cards and religious liter- 
 ature. Millions of testaments and gospel portions have 
 been distributed free of charge, and realising the diffi- 
 culty of obtaining gospel booklets or tracts that appeal 
 
 175 
 
176 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 to men, a new one from the pen of the General Secre- 
 tary was issued each of the first thirty weeks of the 
 war. The approved plan has been to have family 
 prayers, no matter how brief, as far as practicable in 
 every hut, every night, and if this feature of the pro- 
 gramme is not popular, the fault is usually to be found 
 in the one who leads. 
 
 A casual observer after visiting a Y. M. C. A. hut, 
 sometimes comes to the conclusion that the Association 
 is doing a great social work but is not much as a reli- 
 gious force. It is not difficult to understand that point 
 of view. He has seen two or three hundred men 
 clamouring at the refreshment counter for coffee, buns 
 or cigarettes; the billiard tables have been fully occu- 
 pied; hundreds of soldiers were writing letters at the 
 tables provided for the purpose, and hundreds joining 
 in some rowdy chorus or heartily laughing at a hum- 
 ourous song or funny sketch. Where then does the 
 spiritual work of the Red Triangle come in? The best 
 answer is to quote what has actually happened. 
 
 To the south-west of Salisbury Plain there was be- 
 fore the war a tiny village. To-day it is the centre of 
 a big camp, which, incidentally contains several Y. M. 
 C. A. huts. The leader of No. 4 was talking to the 
 Church of England Padre one morning. They were 
 warm friends and the Chaplain was frank in his re- 
 marks — "I think you are overdoing it," said he, "by 
 having prayers in the hut every night. Surely it would 
 be better," he added, "if you concentrated on one even- 
 ing of the week instead." "I have thought and prayed 
 about it," replied the leader, "and it is a matter of prin- 
 
THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 177 
 
 ciple with me. These dear boys are all going to the 
 Front next week, and no matter what the programme 
 of the day, I feel we ought to finish at night with a 
 public acknowledgment of God." "Very good," re- 
 plied the Padre, "if that is your conviction, carry on! 
 Take prayers yourself this evening." And he did. He 
 was no orator ; he was not a college man, neither was 
 he ordained. It was a simple little service and did not 
 take more than ten or fifteen minutes from start to 
 finish. There was an opening hymn, one of the old 
 familiar ones, that took the lads away back to the 
 homes of their childhood. A short passage of scrip- 
 ture was read, followed by a few straight but sym- 
 pathetic words of exhortation and a brief closing 
 prayer. That was all, and the same thing no doubt 
 took place in hundreds of centres the same night. 
 Prayers over and the "King" sung the leader came 
 down from the platform where a young Private greeted 
 him and shook his hand till it hurt saying, "I want to 
 thank you for giving me a new vision of a God I once 
 knew." Walking towards the centre of the hall, a 
 young subaltern greeted him saying, "I want to thank 
 you for that little service; it has been no end of a help 
 to me and I should like to give you this for your work" 
 — so saying he handed him an envelope, and looking 
 inside he found a letter from the lieutenant's mother, 
 containing thirty shillings in postal orders to be spent 
 by him in camp. The service had helped him and that 
 was his thank-offering. The hut cleared, the men re- 
 tired for the night to their sleeping quarters. A soli- 
 tary soldier lingered by the doorway as if he wanted 
 
178 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 someone to speak to him. "Goodnight, my lad," said 
 the leader, "can I do anything for you?" Instead of 
 replying the soldier burst out crying and later said, 
 "If you will you can save me from a great crime!" 
 "Save you from a crime — whatever do you mean?" 
 And then the trooper told his story. There was 
 nothing uncommon about it. He and his brother had 
 made love to the same girl, their mother had inter- 
 vened, "and," he said, "I have written to my mother 
 this evening a letter that no boy should write to his 
 mother, and after attending your service to-night, I 
 feel I would give all I've got to take back that letter !" 
 The letter was found and destroyed and the soldier 
 rejoiced in what he regarded as a great deliverance. 
 This is no story of an orthodox revival but a chapter 
 from real life, a story of the kind of thing that may 
 be taking place hundreds of times any week. 
 * * * 
 In the early days the famous Division as- 
 sembled in one of the great camps near Winchester. 
 Regiments and units were there from India, South 
 Africa — from all parts of the world. Rain came down 
 in torrents and the mud was appalling. The huge Red 
 Triangle tents were crowded from morning till night 
 and the devoted workers, all too few in number, had 
 neither time nor strength for religious work in the ordi- 
 nary acceptance of the term. They could have limited 
 their canteen work and closed the refreshment counter 
 excepting for a few hours daily. That would have 
 been the easier plan and would have given them the 
 opportunity of devoting themselves to concerts and 
 
THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 179 
 
 meetings in the evenings. The alternative would have 
 been to spend and be spent in serving the material 
 needs of the men, trusting that God would use the at- 
 mosphere of the place and the personal contact of the 
 workers to influence the men and thus make up for 
 their inability to do much in the meeting line. They 
 chose the latter plan, and the leader retiring for the 
 night would throw himself on his bed and sometimes 
 fall asleep without undressing. At times suffering 
 from the re-action, he would ask himself the question, 
 "Is it worth while? Am I doing the right thing?" 
 The answer came the night before the men left for the 
 front. It had been a record day, every moment had 
 been crowded and they had sold out. The majority had 
 retired for the night; a few remained to tidy up the 
 tents. This task accomplished, a group of soldiers 
 gathered round the leader and the talk soon turned 
 quite naturally to some of the deepest problems of life. 
 Presently a stalwart young Gordon Highlander told of 
 his home in far away Scotland, of his farewell to his 
 dear old mother before he went out to India, and of the 
 promise he made her — the promise he had not kept — to 
 read his Bible every day, to lead a pure clean life and 
 to keep clear of drink. The atmosphere of that 
 crowded Y. M. C. A. tent had brought it all back to 
 him and, unknown to the staff, he had renewed his 
 vows to God and his mother. In making his confes- 
 sion he was overcome with emotion and throwing his 
 arms round the leader's neck he sobbed out the story of 
 his repentance. There is no more moving sight than 
 the anguish of a strong man, probably no sight that 
 
180 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 gives more joy in Heaven than the tears that tell of 
 
 the return of the one that had been lost. 
 * * * 
 
 A young Canadian officer who had lost a leg and an 
 arm wrote to me before sailing to Montreal from 
 Bristol in May, 1918, and this is what he said: "I 
 would like to tell you how much we have appreciated 
 the Y. M. C. A. I came over with the first batch of 
 Canadians; we were drafted to Larkhill, Salisbury 
 Plain. After leaving my home — a godly home — I fell 
 into the hands of very ungodly people and sank very, 
 very deep in. I was lying on the roadside much the 
 worse for drink. I was down and couldn't get up; 
 comrades and everyone seemed to have left me. I saw 
 one of your cars rush by. When it had passed about 
 a hundred yards, out jumped a Y. M. C. A. man. He 
 came back to me and said, 'Come along, my friend, I 
 will take you to your hut.' I looked at him and said, 
 'I've sunk too low for a man like you to touch me.' 
 He helped me up, took me to my hut and said, 'This 
 is my work in the Y. M. C. A., to help the helpless. 
 Come in and have a cup of tea with me to-morrow.' 
 Shamefaced, I went the next day. He was there to 
 greet me; he talked and prayed with me but I saw no 
 light until one night in the trenches I thought I heard 
 this man praying, and I heard it again and again, and 
 had no rest till I laid my sins at the foot of the Cross. 
 Although I am going home with a leg and an arm off 
 I have a clean heart washed in the Blood of the Lamb. 
 I have visited many huts but that was the only man 
 who spoke to me personally about my sinful condition. 
 
THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 181 
 
 Your leaders can do much if they will. God bless the 
 work and the workers! I will enclose this leader's 
 card so that you can let him know his prayers followed 
 me up to the trenches. God bless him !" 
 
 Cecil Thompson, the leader referred to, never saw 
 this letter. Long before it was written he had "gone 
 west," had passed to his reward, one of the Red Tri- 
 angle martyrs of Salisbury Plain. But he "shall in no 
 wise lose his reward," for it is work like this that pays, 
 and the spirit of Cecil Thompson lives on in the lives 
 of those who have been won, not by his eloquence but 
 by the personal contact of a man who had yielded him- 
 self to become a channel for the Divine blessing. 
 * * # 
 
 The greatest romance of the Red Triangle is the 
 romance of its religious work. War always seems to 
 have one of two effects upon the lives of those who par- 
 ticipate in it — either it hardens a man and makes him 
 callous or else it purifies and ennobles him. The 
 Chaplains, the Churches, the Y. M. C. A., the Church 
 Army, the C. E. T. S., the Salvation Army, and count- 
 less other organisations and individuals are always at 
 work, trying to counteract the power of the down- 
 ward pull. It was our youngest General, the late Brig. 
 Gen. R. B. Bradford, V.C., M.C., who addressed to his 
 men in France, shortly before his death, the following 
 stirring words: "I am going to ask you to put your 
 implicit trust and confidence in me, to look upon me 
 not only as your Brigadier, but as your friend. By the 
 help of God I will try and lead you to the best of my 
 ability and remember your interests are my interests. 
 
182 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 As you all know a few days from now we are going to 
 attack; your powers of endurance are going to be 
 tested. They must not fail you. Above all, pray ; "more 
 things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams 
 of." It is God alone Who can give us the victory, and 
 
 bring us through this battle safely." 
 
 * * * 
 
 It is said that General Smuts' attention was drawn 
 to Herbert Schmalz's picture "The Silent Witness" in 
 the Royal Academy. It showed the interior of a 
 church in Flanders, and many wearied and wounded 
 French soldiers huddled together on the floor. A sol- 
 dier with a wounded arm was awakened by the pain 
 and raising himself on his unwounded arm saw the 
 figure of the Christ, the silent witness of his suffer- 
 ing and agony. Looking long and earnestly at the pic- 
 ture, it is said the famous Boer General quietly re- 
 marked, "Many a man has seen that vision in this war." 
 
 * * * 
 
 When visiting Bailleul in 19 17 the following story 
 was told me by a distinguished Padre serving with the 
 Y. M. C. A. It concerned a Casualty Clearing Sta- 
 tion on the outskirts of the town. A gentleman ranker 
 was brought in terribly wounded. His shoulder had 
 been shattered by shrapnel and gas gangrene had set 
 in. A constant and welcome visitor was the Senior 
 Chaplain. One day he called and said cheerily, "Well, 
 old fellow, how goes it to-day?" "Thanks, Padre," 
 was the reply, "the pain is not quite so bad to-day, but, 
 Padre," he added earnestly, stroking his wounded arm, 
 "I wish you would persuade them to take this away." 
 
THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 183 
 
 "Don't talk like that," said the Chaplain, "you'll want 
 to use that old arm for many a year to come!" "No, 
 Padre," he replied with conviction, "I shall never use 
 it again; I'm going west!" A moment later he was 
 seized with a frightful paroxysm of pain and with a 
 
 torrent of oaths shrieked out, "Why the b h 
 
 can't they take this arm away!" He fell back ex- 
 hausted, but an instant later sat bolt upright and with 
 arms held out looked intently towards the roof of the 
 hut. His face became radiant, and there was no trace 
 of pain. In an ecstatic voice he cried out, "Jesus! 
 Jesus ! Jesus !" and fell back dead. Thank God that's 
 possible, and even in the hour of death, the blasphemer 
 may receive forgiveness and the knowledge of salva- 
 tion, for 
 
 "The ways of men are narrow, 
 But the gates of Heaven are wide." 
 
 * * 5j« 
 
 A lady worker in the Isle of Wight felt unaccount- 
 ably drawn to a young soldier who had vowed he would 
 never enter the Y. M. C. A. again, because he ob- 
 jected to evening prayers. Little by little she won his 
 confidence until the night before he left for France 
 with a draft, he came in to say goodbye, and told 
 her she was the first person to speak to him about 
 sacred things, adding — "I may do some day but at 
 present I cannot see things as you do." He went to 
 France followed by her prayers, and in due course took 
 part in the famous attack on Cambrai. Nothing was 
 heard of him for weeks, and his friends were forced 
 
184 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 to the conclusion that he was numbered amongst the 
 dead. Time passed by, until one morning the lady of 
 the Red Triangle received a letter from him, written 
 from a German Prisoner of War camp. It was a com- 
 monplace letter and told of the great fight, of his 
 capture and internment, and so forth, but the conclud- 
 ing words were the ones she wanted — "You will be 
 
 glad to know I can see things as you do now." 
 
 * * * 
 
 We were speaking at the opening of a hut near 
 Portsmouth. At the close of the ceremony a dear little 
 old widow lady sitting in the front row, told us of her 
 own boy. He was a young officer serving in France 
 and was called out late one night to help repel a sudden 
 attack by the enemy. Shot down by machine gun fire, 
 a brother officer stooped to help him, but he cried, 
 
 "Lead on, lead forward, I go to my God !" 
 
 * * * 
 
 A day later another Y. M. C. A. lady in one of the 
 Hospital huts told us the story of her nephew. He, too, 
 was a young officer and was called out to assist in re- 
 pelling a sudden attack by the Huns. Our men had 
 scarcely reached No Man's Land when the enemy 
 turned on their dreadful gas. One of the first to be 
 overcome by its fumes was the sergeant of his platoon. 
 Regardless of the risk he ran, that young officer stuck 
 to his disabled sergeant until help arrived. Not realis- 
 ing that he had himself become affected by the noxious 
 fumes, he tried to stagger to his feet, but fell back- 
 wards into a shell-hole and in falling broke his neck. 
 The sad news was conveyed to his people in the North 
 
THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 185 
 
 of England, and the night they received it his father 
 and mother sat alone in the quiet of their home. 
 Presently the mother spoke — "I feel," said she, "that 
 the only thing that would console me in my loss would 
 be to know that the man for whom my boy died was a 
 good man." It was only a week later that the sergeant 
 for whom the young officer died, came to that home 
 and when he came he was hopelessly intoxicated. The 
 parents quickly ascertained that it was not the case of 
 a man having been overcome by sudden temptation; 
 they could have forgiven that, but he was an utter 
 waster, about as bad as a man could be. When he had 
 left the house those two sat once again in the silence 
 of their home and it was the mother who spoke, slowly 
 and quietly, "It almost breaks my heart to know my 
 boy gave his precious life for a worthless life like that." 
 And yet, what of the young officer himself? Did he 
 know the type of man it was for whom he was about 
 to make the supreme sacrifice? Of course, he knew; 
 he was in his own platoon, and yet, knowing, he will- 
 ingly gave his life in an attempt to save him. One 
 cannot recall this story without thinking of those 
 wonderful words : "For scarcely for a righteous man 
 will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some 
 would even dare to die, but God commendeth His Love 
 towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ 
 
 died for us." 
 
 * * * 
 
 In a far away corner of the Harfleur Valley the 
 Y. M. C. A. has one of its finest equipments. The 
 leader was a great man in every sense of the word, and 
 
186 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 every night he organised a sing-song for the troops, 
 which invariably went with a swing. He seemed to 
 know by instinct when to strike right in and what to 
 say. A night came, however, when he seemed to have 
 struck a bad patch, for no one would play, sing or recite. 
 The story is told here almost word for word as it was 
 first told me by a leading worker home from France, 
 who drew a graphic word picture of the hut leader 
 pleading from the platform for help which never came. 
 The huge hut was crammed with men, and looking at 
 the crowd standing at the back he noticed a movement 
 amongst them. A trooper detaching himself from the 
 crowd slowly elbowed his way to the front. It was 
 easy to tell by his unsteady steps that he was under the 
 influence of drink. Mounting the platform he turned 
 first to the audience and then to the Y. M. C. A. leader 
 and cried in a voice that everyone could hear — "What's 
 the matter, Boss ? Won't anyone oblige you ? Never 
 mind, Padre, if nobody will help you, I will! What 
 would you like me to do? I can play, or I can sing, 
 or I can recite — or I can pray!" For a moment the 
 Secretary did not know what to reply. He was a man 
 of experience but had never been placed in a predica- 
 ment like that before. To his horror he saw the poor 
 drunken trooper stumble to the edge of the platform 
 and with hands outstretched call for prayer, and 
 there followed one of the strangest prayers ever heard 
 in public as the drunkard cried out, "Everlasting God ! 
 Everlasting God ! Everlasting God — !" He could get 
 no further but broke down and sobbed like a child and 
 in his agony cried out, "I had a good mother once; I've 
 
THE INVERTED TRIANGLE 187 
 
 been a damned fool. May God forgive me!" Could 
 God possibly hear and answer a prayer like that? Of 
 course He could, and He did! Possibly He would 
 rather have even a prayer like that, than the meaning- 
 less prayers with which we sometimes mock Him, and 
 if any man ever gave evidence of his conversion to 
 God it was that trooper. He stayed only four days 
 longer in that reinforcement camp in the Harfleur 
 Valley, but if he could help it, never for a moment 
 would he let our leader out of his sight and in a hun- 
 dred ways he helped him with his work. He would go 
 methodically and frequently round the hut, gather up 
 the dirty mugs, bring them back to the counter and 
 help to wash them. He would go down on his hands 
 and knees under the tables, pick up scraps of paper and 
 cigarette ends and help clean up the floor. Four days 
 later he was sent with a detachment up the line ; three 
 days later still, with his company, he was ordered "over 
 the top," and literally he went into the "Valley of the 
 Shadow of Death," but he did not go alone, for there 
 went with him One the form of Whom was like unto 
 the form of the Son of God!" 
 
 The Y. M. C. A. is a Christian Association, the Red 
 Triangle a Christian emblem, and for that very reason 
 the freedom of the Association is given to every en- 
 listed man. Protestant and Catholic, Anglican, Free 
 Churchman, Jew, Hindoo, Mohammedan — men of any 
 religion, every religion, and no religion at all, are 
 equally welcomed beneath its roof, and no man will 
 ever hear unkind or disrespectful things said from a 
 Y. M. C. A. platform concerning the faith he holds 
 
188 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 dear. At the same time we can never forget that the 
 greatest need of every man amongst the millions we 
 serve in our huts, is that he should have a Friend who 
 will never fail him nor forsake him, who will stand 
 shoulder to shoulder with him in his fierce fight with 
 temptation in camp or city, will be with him in the 
 trenches, in the firing line, as he goes over the parapet, 
 or even into the dread "Valley of the Shadow," and 
 there is only One who can thus meet every need of 
 every man, and that One is the strong Son of God, the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, the best Friend, the truest Comrade 
 we can have. 
 
 We often fall far short of our aim, alas, but the pri- 
 mary aim of the Y. M. C. A. always has been, and is, 
 to lead men to a saving knowledge of that Friend. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE RED TRIANGLE IN THE RECON- 
 STRUCTION 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE RED TRIANGLE IN THE RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 THE question is often asked, "What is going to 
 be done with the Y. M. C. A. huts after the war?" 
 It is never easy to prophesy with any degree of cer- 
 tainty, but there can be little doubt that properly 
 handled these huts will be at least as useful after the 
 war as they are now. Their furniture, which com- 
 prises hundreds of billiard tables, thousands of chairs, 
 tables, stoves, ranges, and so forth, is well fitted for 
 doing good service after the war. One of these huts 
 planted down in the centre of some rural community 
 and staffed by voluntary workers, who have purchased 
 their experience by downright hard service during the 
 war, should be an inestimable boon. It would break 
 the monotony of country life; or, being set down in 
 an industrial district of a big town or city, would help 
 in congenial ways to relieve the tedium of the drab life 
 of the workers. 
 
 The immediate problem is that of the discharged 
 man. Incidentally his presence in our midst is even 
 now helping us to gain that practical acquaintance with 
 his needs that will be invaluable in dealing with the 
 greater problem of demobilisation. Thousands of men 
 are discharged from the Navy and Army every week. 
 Many of these for months, it may be for years to come, 
 
 101 
 
192 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 will not be able to do a good day's work, no matter 
 how willing they may be, and it is up to us to help 
 them. No one who has seen the conditions under 
 which they have been living in Picardy or in Flanders 
 can wonder at this and they will need sympathy and 
 encouragement on the part of their employers. The 
 Y. M. C. A. can supply the human touch that may be 
 of the greatest possible service to the Ministries of 
 Labour, Pensions, and Reconstruction, and although 
 the State itself must take responsibility for the future 
 of those who return broken from the war and for their 
 dependents, there will still be ample room for volun- 
 tary effort without any taint of charity. 
 
 A number of experiments are being tried, all de- 
 signed to point the way to future efforts if such ex- 
 periments prove successful. The Red Triangle farm 
 Colony at Kinson, in Dorset, has been fitted up as a 
 sanatorium for the benefit of men discharged from 
 the Navy and Army who need sanatorium treatment 
 because they are suffering from, or threatened with, 
 consumption, and whilst the men are undergoing treat- 
 ment they are trained in poultry-farming, horticulture, 
 and other outdoor pursuits on plans cordially approved 
 by the authorities. 
 
 A Red Triangle poultry farm in Surrey is also run 
 entirely for the benefit of discharged men, and a some- 
 what larger venture is under way in Suffolk with a 
 two-hundred-acre farm and extensive fruit gardens. 
 At Portsmouth and other centres hostel accommoda- 
 tion is provided for men who on leaving the Navy or 
 
THE RECONSTRUCTION 193 
 
 Army go through a course of training for civil life. 
 Experimental workshops in London are proving a 
 great success, discharged soldiers being trained in car- 
 pentry, joinery, picture-framing, and the repairing of 
 pianos. 
 
 A series of exhibitions dealing with the work of ex- 
 soldiers has been successfully inaugurated, and Red 
 Triangle employment bureaus have already secured 
 situations for more than 20,000 discharged men. 
 
 The biggest opportunity for the Red Triangle will 
 come with the declaration of peace. "After the war" 
 for tens of thousands of men has commenced already, 
 and not only during the war but in the reconstruction 
 we shall need the help of every worker who is prepared 
 heart and soul to work out the full programme of the 
 Red Triangle for Britain's sake and for the sake of the 
 Kingdom of God. 
 
 We would go further than that and say that the new 
 situation brought about by the drawing together of 
 Britain and America through the war opens up great 
 possibilities for the future. Britain and America 
 working separately can do much in the days of the re- 
 construction, but working together they can do in- 
 finitely more. 
 
 A League of Nations is much to be desired, but it is 
 doubtful if such a League can be successful in the long 
 run unless within it there is another league — a league 
 of the forces working for righteousness. Through the 
 magnitude and efficiency of its war work, the Associa- 
 tion has earned the confidence and respect of the man- 
 hood of the two great Anglo-Saxon countries ; of the 
 
194 THE ROMANCE OF THE RED TRIANGLE 
 
 churches and, it is not too much to say, of the two peo- 
 ples. The machinery is ready to hand, and even if it 
 were not a case of urgency, it would take a long time to 
 bring into existence any other agency to do this work, 
 and indeed it is doubtful if any other agency could 
 work on such broad lines or command such universal 
 support as the Y. M. C. A. In the reconstruction the 
 Association should act as a clearing house for the 
 churches, and if only we can see things in their right 
 perspective, can sink our differences and work together 
 for the common good, it will mean much for the future 
 of civilisation. This is the decisive hour, especially 
 for the countries that have worked and fought with us 
 during the war. Let this chance slip and it may never 
 come again. 
 
 The Red Triangle must cater for the discharged man 
 as efficiently as it has done for men in uniform, and it 
 must maintain its reputation as the soldier's friend. 
 He must be encouraged to come to it when he is in per- 
 plexity or difficulty of any kind. It must act as a com- 
 munication trench between the men and the churches, 
 and it may even be a means of uniting capital and 
 labour in altruistic service. It may take an important 
 part in helping the countries that have been devastated 
 by the war — in fact there is no end to the possibilities 
 of the future. 
 
 And lest we forget the great deliverance God has 
 wrought and the great lessons that have come to us 
 through the horror, the suffering and the desolation of 
 the war, we should like to see in Jerusalem, in Paris, 
 Brussels, Antwerp, Belgrade, Bagdad, in Russia, 
 
THE RECONSTRUCTION m 
 
 Roumania, Italy, India and other cities and countries 
 that have suffered with us in the war, well equipped 
 Y. M. C. A. buildings erected to the glory of God and 
 to the memory of the glorious men of the allied nations, 
 who have made the supreme sacrifice in the sacred 
 cause of liberty. Can one doubt for a moment that a 
 project of this kind would receive the requisite support 
 if laid before the people of Britain and America, and 
 the great Dominions that have done so much for Eng- 
 land's sake? 
 
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