Meanwhile, there was created a "Baby Saving Show," a set of graphic pictures conveying to the eye methods of sanitation and other too often disregarded essentials of the wise care and feeding of babies; and this travelled, like a theatrical attraction, to different parts of the city. "Little Mothers' Leagues" were organized to teach the little girl of ten or twelve, so often left in charge of a family of children when the mother is at work during the day, and demonstrations were given in various parts of the city.

The Child Federation now undertook one activity after the other. Under its auspices, the first municipal Christmas tree ever erected in Philadelphia was shown in the historic Independence Square, and with two bands of music giving concerts every day from Christmas to New Year's Day, attracted over two hundred thousand persons. A pavilion was erected in City Hall Square, the most central spot in the city, and the "Baby Saving Show" was permanently placed there and visited by over one hundred thousand visitors from every part of the country on their way to and from the Pennsylvania Station at Broad Street.

A searching investigation of the Day Nurseries of Philadelphia—probably one of the most admirable pieces of research work ever made in a city—changed the methods in vogue and became a standard guide for similar institutions throughout the country. So successful were the Little Mothers' Leagues that they were introduced into the public schools of Philadelphia, and are to-day a regular part of the curriculum. The Health Centre, its success being proved, was taken over by the city Board of Health, and three others were established.

To-day The Child Federation is recognized as one of the most practically conducted child welfare agencies in Philadelphia, and its methods have been followed by similar organizations all over the country. It is now rapidly becoming the central medium through which the other agencies in Philadelphia are working, thus avoiding the duplication of infant welfare work in the city. Broadening its scope, it is not unlikely to become one of the greatest indirect influences in the welfare work of Philadelphia and the vicinity, through which other organizations will be able to work.

Bok's interest and knowledge in civic matters had now peculiarly prepared him for a personal adventure into community work. Merion, where he lived, was one of the most beautiful of the many suburbs that surround the Quaker City; but, like hundreds of similar communities, there had been developed in it no civic interest. Some of the most successful business men of Philadelphia lived in Merion; they had beautiful estates, which they maintained without regard to expense, but also without regard to the community as a whole. They were busy men; they came home tired after a day in the city; they considered themselves good citizens if they kept their own places sightly, but the idea of devoting their evenings to the problems of their community had never occurred to them before the evening when two of Bok's neighbors called to ask his help in forming a civic association.

A canvass of the sentiment of the neighborhood revealed the unanimous opinion that the experiment, if attempted, would be a failure,—an attitude not by any means confined to the residents of Merion! Bok decided to test it out; he called together twenty of his neighbors, put the suggestion before them and asked for two thousand dollars as a start, so that a paid secretary might be engaged, since the men themselves were too busy to attend to the details of the work. The amount was immediately subscribed, and in 1913 The Merion Civic Association applied for a charter and began its existence.

The leading men in the community were elected as a Board of Directors, and a salaried secretary was engaged to carry out the directions of the Board. The association adopted the motto: "To be nation right, and State right, we must first be community right." Three objectives were selected with which to attract community interest and membership: safety to life, in the form of proper police protection; safety to property, in the form of adequate hydrant and fire-engine service; and safety to health, in careful supervision of the water and milk used in the community.

"The three S's," as they were called, brought an immediate response. They were practical in their appeal, and members began to come in. The police force was increased from one officer at night and none in the day, to three at night and two during the day, and to this the Association added two special night officers of its own. Private detectives were intermittently brought in to "check up" and see that the service was vigilant. A fire hydrant was placed within seven hundred feet of every house, with the insurance rates reduced from twelve and one-half to thirty per cent; the services of three fire-engine companies was arranged for. Fire-gongs were introduced into the community to guard against danger from interruption of telephone service. The water supply was chemically analyzed each month and the milk supply carefully scrutinized. One hundred and fifty new electric-light posts specially designed, and pronounced by experts as the most beautiful and practical road lamps ever introduced into any community, were erected, making Merion the best-lighted community in its vicinity.

At every corner was erected an artistically designed cast-iron road sign; instead of the unsightly wooden ones, cast-iron automobile warnings were placed at every dangerous spot; community bulletin-boards, preventing the display of notices on trees and poles, were placed at the railroad station; litter-cans were distributed over the entire community; a new railroad station and post-office were secured; the station grounds were laid out as a garden by a landscape architect; new roads of permanent construction, from curb to curb, were laid down; uniform tree-planting along the roads was introduced; bird-houses were made and sold, so as to attract bird-life to the community; toll-gates were abolished along the two main arteries of travel; the removal of all telegraph and telephone poles was begun; an efficient Boy Scout troop was organized, and an American Legion post; the automobile speed limit was reduced from twenty-four to fifteen miles as a protection to children; roads were regularly swept, cleaned, and oiled, and uniform sidewalks advocated and secured.

Within seven years so efficiently had the Association functioned that its work attracted attention far beyond its own confines and that of Philadelphia, and caused Theodore Roosevelt voluntarily to select it as a subject for a special magazine article in which he declared it to "stand as a model in civic matters." To-day it may be conservatively said of The Merion Civic Association that it is pointed out as one of the most successful suburban civic efforts in the country; as Doctor Lyman Abbott said in The Outlook, it has made "Merion a model suburb, which may standardize ideal suburban life, certainly for Philadelphia, possibly for the United States."

When the armistice was signed in November, 1918, the Association immediately canvassed the neighborhood to erect a suitable Tribute House, as a memorial to the eighty-three Merion boys who had gone into the Great War: a public building which would comprise a community centre, with an American Legion Post room, a Boy Scout house, an auditorium, and a meeting-place for the civic activities of Merion. A subscription was raised, and plans were already drawn for the Tribute House, when Mr. Eldridge R. Johnson, president of the Victor Talking Machine Company, one of the strong supporters of The Merion Civic Association, presented his entire estate of twelve acres, the finest in Merion, to the community, and agreed to build a Tribute House at his own expense. The grounds represented a gift of two hundred thousand dollars, and the building a gift of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This building, now about to be erected, will be one of the most beautiful and complete community centres in the United States.

Perhaps no other suburban civic effort proves the efficiency of community co-operation so well as does the seven years' work of The Merion Civic Association. It is a practical demonstration of what a community can do for itself by concerted action. It preached, from the very start, the gospel of united service; it translated into actual practice the doctrine of being one's brother's keeper, and it taught the invaluable habit of collective action. The Association has no legal powers; it rules solely by persuasion; it accomplishes by the power of combination; by a spirit of the community for the community.

When The Merion Civic Association was conceived, the spirit of local pride was seemingly not present in the community. As a matter of fact, it was there as it is in practically every neighborhood; it was simply dormant; it had to be awakened, and its value brought vividly to the community consciousness.



XXXII. A Bewildered Bok

One of the misfortunes of Edward Bok's training, which he realized more clearly as time went on, was that music had little or no place in his life. His mother did not play; and aside from the fact that his father and mother were patrons of the opera during their residence in The Netherlands, the musical atmosphere was lacking in his home. He realized how welcome an outlet music might be in his now busy life. So what he lacked himself and realized as a distinct omission in his own life he decided to make possible for others.

The Ladies' Home Journal began to strike a definite musical note. It first caught the eye and ear of its public by presenting the popular new marches by John Philip Sousa; and when the comic opera of "Robin Hood" became the favorite of the day, it secured all the new compositions by Reginald de Koven. Following these, it introduced its readers to new compositions by Sir Arthur Sullivan, Tosti, Moscowski, Richard Strauss, Paderewski, Josef Hofmann, Edouard Strauss, and Mascagni. Bok induced Josef Hofmann to give a series of piano lessons in his magazine, and Madame Marchesi a series of vocal lessons. The Journal introduced its readers to all the great instrumental and vocal artists of the day through articles; it offered prizes for the best piano and vocal compositions; it had the leading critics of New York, Boston, and Chicago write articles explanatory of orchestral music and how to listen to music.

Bok was early attracted by the abilities of Josef Hofmann. In 1898, he met the pianist, who was then twenty-two years old. Of his musical ability Bok could not judge, but he was much impressed by his unusual mentality, and soon both learned and felt that Hofmann's art was deeply and firmly rooted. Hofmann had a wider knowledge of affairs than other musicians whom Bok had met; he had not narrowed his interests to his own art. He was striving to achieve a position in his art, and, finding that he had literary ability, Bok asked him to write a reminiscent article on his famous master, Rubinstein.

This was followed by other articles; the publication of his new mazurka; still further articles; and then, in 1907, Bok offered him a regular department in the magazine and a salaried editorship on his staff.

Bok's musical friends and the music critics tried to convince the editor that Hofmann's art lay not so deep as Bok imagined; that he had been a child prodigy, and would end where all child prodigies invariably end—opinions which make curious reading now in view of Hofmann's commanding position in the world of music. But while Bok lacked musical knowledge, his instinct led him to adhere to his belief in Hofmann; and for twelve years, until Bok's retirement as editor, the pianist was a regular contributor to the magazine. His success was, of course, unquestioned. He answered hundreds of questions sent him by his readers, and these answers furnished such valuable advice for piano students that two volumes were made in book form and are to-day used by piano teachers and students as authoritative guides.

Meanwhile, Bok's marriage had brought music directly into his domestic circle. Mrs. Bok loved music, was a pianist herself, and sought to acquaint her husband with what his former training had omitted. Hofmann and Bok had become strong friends outside of the editorial relation, and the pianist frequently visited the Bok home. But it was some time, even with these influences surrounding him, before music began to play any real part in Bok's own life.

He attended the opera occasionally; more or less under protest, because of its length, and because his mind was too practical for the indirect operatic form. He could not remain patient at a recital; the effort to listen to one performer for an hour and a half was too severe a tax upon his restless nature. The Philadelphia Orchestra gave a symphony concert each Saturday evening, and Bok dreaded the coming of that evening in each week for fear of being taken to hear music which he was convinced was "over his head."

Like many men of his practical nature, he had made up his mind on this point without ever having heard such a concert. The word "symphony" was enough; it conveyed to him a form of the highest music quite beyond his comprehension. Then, too, in the back of his mind there was the feeling that, while he was perfectly willing to offer the best that the musical world afforded in his magazine, his readers were primarily women, and the appeal of music, after all, he felt was largely, if not wholly, to the feminine nature. It was very satisfying to him to hear his wife play in the evening; but when it came to public concerts, they were not for his masculine nature. In other words, Bok shared the all too common masculine notion that music is for women and has little place in the lives of men.

One day Josef Hofmann gave Bok an entirely new point of view. The artist was rehearsing in Philadelphia for an appearance with the orchestra, and the pianist was telling Bok and his wife of the desire of Leopold Stokowski, who had recently become conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, to eliminate encores from his symphonic programmes; he wanted to begin the experiment with Hofmann's appearance that week. This was a novel thought to Bok: why eliminate encores from any concert? If he liked the way any performer played, he had always done his share to secure an encore. Why should not the public have an encore if it desired it, and why should a conductor or a performer object? Hofmann explained to him the entity of a symphonic programme; that it was made up with one composition in relation to the others as a sympathetic unit, and that an encore was an intrusion, disturbing the harmony of the whole.

"I wish you would let Stokowski come out and explain to you what he is trying to do," said Hofmann. "He knows what he wants, and he is right in his efforts; but he doesn't know how to educate the public. There is where you could help him."

But Bok had no desire to meet Stokowski. He mentally pictured the conductor: long hair; feet never touching the earth; temperament galore; he knew them! And he had no wish to introduce the type into his home life.

Mrs. Bok, however, ably seconded Josef Hofmann, and endeavored to dissipate Bok's preconceived notion, with the result that Stokowksi came to the Bok home.

Bok was not slow to see that Stokowski was quite the reverse of his mental picture, and became intensely interested in the youthful conductor's practical way of looking at things. It was agreed that the encore "bull" was to be taken by the horns that week; that no matter what the ovation to Hofmann might be, however the public might clamor, no encore was to be forthcoming; and Bok was to give the public an explanation during the following week. The next concert was to present Mischa Elman, and his co-operation was assured so that continuity of effort might be counted upon.

In order to have first-hand information, Bok attended the concert that Saturday evening. The symphony, Dvorak's "New World Symphony," amazed Bok by its beauty; he was more astonished that he could so easily grasp any music in symphonic form. He was equally surprised at the simple beauty of the other numbers on the programme, and wondered not a little at his own perfectly absorbed attention during Hofmann's playing of a rather long concerto.

The pianist's performance was so beautiful that the audience was uproarious in its approval; it had calculated, of course, upon an encore, and recalled the pianist again and again until he had appeared and bowed his thanks several times. But there was no encore; the stage hands appeared and moved the piano to one side, and the audience relapsed into unsatisfied and rather bewildered silence.

Then followed Bok's publicity work in the newspapers, beginning the next day, exonerating Hofmann and explaining the situation. The following week, with Mischa Elman as soloist, the audience once more tried to have its way and its cherished encore, but again none was forthcoming. Once more the newspapers explained; the battle was won, and the no-encore rule has prevailed at the Philadelphia Orchestra concerts from that day to this, with the public entirely resigned to the idea and satisfied with the reason therefor.

But the bewildered Bok could not make out exactly what had happened to his preconceived notion about symphonic music. He attended the following Saturday evening concert; listened to a Brahms symphony that pleased him even more than had "The New World," and when, two weeks later, he heard the Tschaikowski "Pathetique" and later the "Unfinished" symphony, by Schubert, and a Beethoven symphony, attracted by each in turn, he realized that his prejudice against the whole question of symphonic music had been both wrongly conceived and baseless.

He now began to see the possibility of a whole world of beauty which up to that time had been closed to him, and he made up his mind that he would enter it. Somehow or other, he found the appeal of music did not confine itself to women; it seemed to have a message for men. Then, too, instead of dreading the approach of Saturday evenings, he was looking forward to them, and invariably so arranged his engagements that they might not interfere with his attendance at the orchestra concerts.

After a busy week, he discovered that nothing he had ever experienced served to quiet him so much as these end-of-the-week concerts. They were not too long, an hour and a half at the utmost; and, above all, except now and then, when the conductor would take a flight into the world of Bach, he found he followed him with at least a moderate degree of intelligence; certainly with personal pleasure and inner satisfaction.

Bok concluded he would not read the articles he had published on the meaning of the different "sections" of a symphony orchestra, or the books issued on that subject. He would try to solve the mechanism of an orchestra for himself, and ascertain as he went along the relation that each portion bore to the other. When, therefore, in 1913, the president of the Philadelphia Orchestra Association asked him to become a member of its Board of Directors, his acceptance was a natural step in the gradual development of his interest in orchestral music.

The public support given to orchestras now greatly interested Bok. He was surprised to find that every symphony orchestra had a yearly deficit. This he immediately attributed to faulty management; but on investigating the whole question he learned that a symphony orchestra could not possibly operate, at a profit or even on a self-sustaining basis, because of its weekly change of programme, the incessant rehearsals required, and the limited number of times it could actually play within a contracted season. An annual deficit was inevitable.

He found that the Philadelphia Orchestra had a small but faithful group of guarantors who each year made good the deficit in addition to paying for its concert seats. This did not seem to Bok a sound business plan; it made of the orchestra a necessarily exclusive organization, maintained by a few; and it gave out this impression to the general public, which felt that it did not "belong," whereas the true relation of public and orchestra was that of mutual dependence. Other orchestras, he found, as, for example, the Boston Symphony and the New York Philharmonic had their deficits met by one individual patron in each case. This, to Bok's mind, was an even worse system, since it entirely excluded the public, making the orchestra dependent on the continued interest and life of a single man.

In 1916 Bok sought Mr. Alexander Van Rensselaer, the president of the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, and proposed that he, himself, should guarantee the deficit of the orchestra for five years, provided that during that period an endowment fund should be raised, contributed by a large number of subscribers, and sufficient in amount to meet, from its interest, the annual deficit. It was agreed that the donor should remain in strict anonymity, an understanding which has been adhered to until the present writing.

The offer from the "anonymous donor," presented by the president, was accepted by the Orchestra Association. A subscription to an endowment fund was shortly afterward begun; and the amount had been brought to eight hundred thousand dollars when the Great War interrupted any further additions. In the autumn of 1919, however, a city-wide campaign for an addition of one million dollars to the endowment fund was launched. The amount was not only secured, but over-subscribed. Thus, instead of a guarantee fund, contributed by thirteen hundred subscribers, with the necessity for annual collection, an endowment fund of one million eight hundred thousand dollars, contributed by fourteen thousand subscribers, has been secured; and the Philadelphia Orchestra has been promoted from a privately maintained organization to a public institution in which fourteen thousand residents of Philadelphia feel a proprietary interest. It has become in fact, as well as in name, "our orchestra."



XXXIII. How Millions of People Are Reached

The success of The Ladies' Home Journal went steadily forward. The circulation had passed the previously unheard-of figure for a monthly magazine of a million and a half copies per month; it had now touched a million and three-quarters.

And not only was the figure so high, but the circulation itself was absolutely free from "water." The public could not obtain the magazine through what are known as clubbing-rates, since no subscriber was permitted to include any other magazine with it; years ago it had abandoned the practice of offering premiums or consideration of any kind to induce subscriptions; and the newsdealers were not allowed to return unsold copies of the periodical. Hence every copy was either purchased by the public at the full price at a newsstand, or subscribed for at its stated subscription price. It was, in short, an authoritative circulation. And on every hand the question was being asked: "How is it done? How is such a high circulation obtained?"

Bok's invariable answer was that he gave his readers the very best of the class of reading that he believed would interest them, and that he spared neither effort nor expense to obtain it for them. When Mr. Howells once asked him how he classified his audience, Bok replied: "We appeal to the intelligent American woman rather than to the intellectual type." And he gave her the best he could obtain. As he knew her to be fond of the personal type of literature, he gave her in succession Jane Addams's story of "My Fifteen Years at Hull House," and the remarkable narration of Helen Keller's "Story of My Life"; he invited Henry Van Dyke, who had never been in the Holy Land, to go there, camp out in a tent, and then write a series of sketches, "Out of Doors in the Holy Land"; he induced Lyman Abbott to tell the story of "My Fifty Years as a Minister." He asked Gene Stratton Porter to tell of her bird-experiences in the series: "What I Have Done with Birds"; he persuaded Dean Hodges to turn from his work of training young clergymen at the Episcopal Seminary, at Cambridge, and write one of the most successful series of Bible stories for children ever printed; and then he supplemented this feature for children by publishing Rudyard Kipling's "Just So" stories and his "Puck of Pook's Hill." He induced F. Hopkinson Smith to tell the best stories he had ever heard in his wide travels in "The Man in the Arm Chair"; he got Kate Douglas Wiggin to tell a country church experience of hers in "The Old Peabody Pew"; and Jean Webster her knowledge of almshouse life in "Daddy Long Legs."

The readers of The Ladies' Home Journal realized that it searched the whole field of endeavor in literature and art to secure what would interest them, and they responded with their support.

Another of Bok's methods in editing was to do the common thing in an uncommon way. He had the faculty of putting old wine in new bottles and the public liked it. His ideas were not new; he knew there were no new ideas, but he presented his ideas in such a way that they seemed new. It is a significant fact, too, that a large public will respond more quickly to an idea than it will to a name.

This The Ladies' Home Journal proved again and again. Its most pronounced successes, from the point of view of circulation, were those in which the idea was the sole and central appeal. For instance, when it gave American women an opportunity to look into a hundred homes and see how they were furnished, it added a hundred thousand copies to the circulation. There was nothing new in publishing pictures of rooms and, had it merely done this, it is questionable whether success would have followed the effort. It was the way in which it was done. The note struck entered into the feminine desire, reflected it, piqued curiosity, and won success.

Again, when The Journal decided to show good taste and bad taste in furniture, in comparative pictures, another hundred thousand circulation came to it. There was certainly nothing new in the comparative idea; but applied to a question of taste, which could not be explained so clearly in words, it seemed new.

Had it simply presented masterpieces of art as such, the series might have attracted little attention. But when it announced that these masterpieces had always been kept in private galleries, and seen only by the favored few; that the public had never been allowed to get any closer to them than to read of the fabulous prices paid by their millionaire owners; and that now the magazine would open the doors of those exclusive galleries and let the public in—public curiosity was at once piqued, and over one hundred and fifty thousand persons who had never before bought the magazine were added to the list.

In not one of these instances, nor in the case of other successful series, did the appeal to the public depend upon the names of contributors; there were none: it was the idea which the public liked and to which it responded.

The editorial Edward Bok enjoyed this hugely; the real Edward Bok did not. The one was bottled up in the other. It was a case of absolute self-effacement. The man behind the editor knew that if he followed his own personal tastes and expressed them in his magazine, a limited audience would be his instead of the enormous clientele that he was now reaching. It was the man behind the editor who had sought expression in the idea of Country Life, the magazine which his company sold to Doubleday, Page & Company, and which he would personally have enjoyed editing.

It was in 1913 that the real Edward Bok, bottled up for twenty-five years, again came to the surface. The majority stockholders of The Century Magazine wanted to dispose of their interest in the periodical. Overtures were made to The Curtis Publishing Company, but its hands were full, and the matter was presented for Bok's personal consideration. The idea interested him, as he saw in The Century a chance for his self-expression. He entered into negotiations, looked carefully into the property itself and over the field which such a magazine might fill, decided to buy it, and install an active editor while he, as a close adviser, served as the propelling power.

Bok figured out that there was room for one of the trio of what was, and still is, called the standard-sized magazines, namely Scribner's, Harper's, and The Century. He believed, as he does to-day, that any one of these magazines could be so edited as to preserve all its traditions and yet be so ingrafted with the new progressive, modern spirit as to dominate the field and constitute itself the leader in that particular group. He believed that there was a field which would produce a circulation in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million copies a month for one of those magazines, so that it would be considered not, as now, one of three, but the one.

What Bok saw in the possibilities of the standard illustrated magazine has been excellently carried out by Mr. Ellery Sedgwick in The Atlantic Monthly; every tradition has been respected, and yet the new progressive note introduced has given it a position and a circulation never before attained by a non-illustrated magazine of the highest class.

As Bok studied the field, his confidence in the proposition, as he saw it, grew. For his own amusement, he made up some six issues of The Century as he visualized it, and saw that the articles he had included were all obtainable. He selected a business manager and publisher who would relieve him of the manufacturing problems; but before the contract was actually closed Bok, naturally, wanted to consult Mr. Curtis, who was just returning from abroad, as to this proposed sharing of his editor.

For one man to edit two magazines inevitably meant a distribution of effort, and this Mr. Curtis counselled against. He did not believe that any man could successfully serve two masters; it would also mean a division of public association; it might result in Bok's physical undoing, as already he was overworked. Mr. Curtis's arguments, of course, prevailed; the negotiations were immediately called off, and for the second time—for some wise reason, undoubtedly—the real Edward Bok was subdued. He went back into the bottle!

A cardinal point in Edward Bok's code of editing was not to commit his magazine to unwritten material, or to accept and print articles or stories simply because they were the work of well-known persons. And as his acquaintance with authors multiplied, he found that the greater the man the more willing he was that his work should stand or fall on its merit, and that the editor should retain his prerogative of declination—if he deemed it wise to exercise it.

Rudyard Kipling was, and is, a notable example of this broad and just policy. His work is never imposed upon an editor; it is invariably submitted, in its completed form, for acceptance or declination. "Wait until it's done," said Kipling once to Bok as he outlined a story to him which the editor liked, "and see whether you want it. You can't tell until then." (What a difference from the type of author who insists that an editor must take his or her story before a line is written!)

"I told Watt to send you," he writes to Bok, "the first four of my child stories (you see I hadn't forgotten my promise), and they may serve to amuse you for a while personally, even if you don't use them for publication. Frankly, I don't myself see how they can be used for the L. H. J.; but they're part of a scheme of mine for trying to give children not a notion of history, but a notion of the time sense which is at the bottom of all knowledge of history; and history, rightly understood, means the love of one's fellow-men and the land one lives in."

James Whitcomb Riley was another who believed that an editor should have the privilege of saying "No" if he so elected. When Riley was writing a series of poems for Bok, the latter, not liking a poem which the Hoosier poet sent him, returned it to him. He wondered how Riley would receive a declination—naturally a rare experience. But his immediate answer settled the question:

"Thanks equally for your treatment of both poems, [he wrote], the one accepted and the other returned. Maintain your own opinions and respect, and my vigorous esteem for you shall remain 'deep-rooted in the fruitful soil.' No occasion for apology whatever. In my opinion, you are wrong; in your opinion, you are right; therefore, you are right,—at least righter than wronger. It is seldom that I drop other work for logic, but when I do, as my grandfather was wont to sturdily remark, 'it is to some purpose, I can promise you.'

"Am goin' to try mighty hard to send you the dialect work you've so long wanted; in few weeks at furthest. 'Patience and shuffle the cards.'

"I am really, just now, stark and bare of one common-sense idea. In the writing line, I was never so involved before and see no end to the ink-(an humorous voluntary provocative, I trust of much merriment)-creasing pressure of it all.

"Even the hope of waking to find myself famous is denied me, since I haven't time in which to fall asleep. Therefore, very drowsily and yawningly indeed, I am your

"James Whitcomb Riley."

Neither did the President of the United States consider himself above a possible declination of his material if it seemed advisable to the editor. In 1916 Woodrow Wilson wrote to Bok:

"Sometime ago you kindly intimated to me that you would like to publish an article from me. At first, it seemed impossible for me to undertake anything of the kind, but I have found a little interval in which I have written something on Mexico which I hope you will think worthy of publication. If not, will you return it to me?"

The President, too, acted as an intermediary in turning authors in Bok's direction, when the way opened. In a letter written not on the official White House letterhead, but on his personal "up-stairs" stationery, as it is called, he asks:

"Will you do me the favor of reading the enclosed to see if it is worthy of your acceptance for the Journal, or whether you think it indicates that the writer, with a few directions and suggestions, might be useful to you?

"It was written by —. She is a woman of great refinement, of a very unusually broad social experience, and of many exceptional gifts, who thoroughly knows what she is writing about, whether she has yet discovered the best way to set it forth or not. She is one of the most gifted and resourceful hostesses I have known, but has now fallen upon hard times.

"Among other things that she really knows, she really does thoroughly know old furniture and all kinds of china worth knowing.

"Pardon me if I have been guilty of an indiscretion in sending this direct to you. I am throwing myself upon your indulgence in my desire to help a splendid woman.

"She has a great collection of recipes which housekeepers would like to have. Does a serial cook-book sound like nonsense?"

A further point in his editing which Bok always kept in view was his rule that the editor must always be given the privilege of revising or editing a manuscript. Bok's invariable rule was, of course, to submit his editing for approval, but here again the bigger the personality back of the material, the more willing the author was to have his manuscript "blue pencilled," if he were convinced that the deletions or condensations improved or at least did not detract from his arguments. It was the small author who ever resented the touch of the editorial pencil upon his precious effusions.

As a matter of fact there are few authors who cannot be edited with advantage, and it would be infinitely better for our reading if this truth was applied to some of the literature of to-day.

Bok had once under his hand a story by Mark Twain, which he believed contained passages that should be deleted. They represented a goodly portion of the manuscript. They were, however, taken out, and the result submitted to the humorist. The answer was curious. Twain evidently saw that Bok was right, for he wrote: "Of course, I want every single line and word of it left out," and then added: "Do me the favor to call the next time you are again in Hartford. I want to say things which—well, I want to argue with you." Bok never knew what those "things" were, for at the next meeting they were not referred to.

It is, perhaps, a curious coincidence that all the Presidents of the United States whose work Bok had occasion to publish were uniformly liberal with regard to having their material edited.

Colonel Roosevelt was always ready to concede improvement: "Fine," he wrote; "the changes are much for the better. I never object to my work being improved, where it needs it, so long as the sense is not altered."

William Howard Taft wrote, after being subjected to editorial revision: "You have done very well by my article. You have made it much more readable by your rearrangement."

Mr. Cleveland was very likely to let his interest in a subject run counter to the space exigencies of journalism; and Bok, in one instance, had to reduce one of his articles considerably. He explained the reason and enclosed the revision.

"I am entirely willing to have the article cut down as you suggest," wrote the former President. "I find sufficient reason for this in the fact that the matter you suggest for elimination has been largely exploited lately. And in looking the matter over carefully, I am inclined to think that the article expurgated as you suggest will gain in unity and directness. At first, I feared it would appear a little 'bobbed' off, but you are a much better judge of that than I. ... I leave it altogether to you."

It was always interesting to Bok, as a study of mental processes, to note how differently he and some author with whom he would talk it over would see the method of treating some theme. He was discussing the growing unrest among American women with Rudyard Kipling at the latter's English home; and expressed the desire that the novelist should treat the subject and its causes.

They talked until the early hours, when it was agreed that each should write out a plan, suggest the best treatment, and come together the next morning. When they did so, Kipling had mapped out the scenario of a novel; Bok had sketched out the headings of a series of analytical articles. Neither one could see the other's viewpoint, Kipling contending for the greater power of fiction and Bok strongly arguing for the value of the direct essay. In this instance, the point was never settled, for the work failed to materialize in any form!

If the readers of The Ladies' Home Journal were quick to support its editor when he presented an idea that appealed to them, they were equally quick to tell him when he gave them something of which they did not approve. An illustration of this occurred during the dance-craze that preceded the Great War. In 1914, America was dance-mad, and the character of the dances rapidly grew more and more offensive. Bok's readers, by the hundreds, urged him to come out against the tendency.

The editor looked around and found that the country's terpsichorean idols were Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Castle; he decided that, with their cooperation, he might, by thus going to the fountainhead, effect an improvement through the introduction, by the Castles, of better and more decorous new dances. Bok could see no reason why the people should not dance, if they wanted to, so long as they kept within the bounds of decency.

He found the Castles willing and eager to co-operate, not only because of the publicity it would mean for them, but because they were themselves not in favor of the new mode. They had little sympathy for the elimination of the graceful dance by the introduction of what they called the "shuffle" or the "bunny-hug," "turkey-trot," and other ungraceful and unworthy dances. It was decided that the Castles should, through Bok's magazine and their own public exhibitions, revive the gavotte, the polka, and finally the waltz. They would evolve these into new forms and Bok would present them pictorially. A series of three double-page presentations was decided upon, allowing for large photographs so that the steps could be easily seen and learned from the printed page.

The magazine containing the first "lesson" was no sooner published than protests began to come in by the hundreds. Bok had not stated his object, and the public misconstrued his effort and purpose into an acknowledgment that he had fallen a victim to the prevailing craze. He explained in letters, but to no purpose. Try as he might, Bok could not rid the pages of the savor of the cabaret. He published the three dances as agreed, but he realized he had made a mistake, and was as much disgusted as were his readers. Nor did he, in the slightest degree, improve the dance situation. The public refused to try the new Castle dances, and kept on turkey-trotting and bunny-hugging.

The Ladies' Home Journal followed the Castle lessons with a series of the most beautiful dances of Madam Pavlowa, the Russian dancer, hoping to remove the unfavorable impression of the former series. But it was only partially successful. Bok had made a mistake in recognizing the craze at all; he should have ignored it, as he had so often in the past ignored other temporary, superficial hysterics of the public. The Journal readers knew the magazine had made a mistake and frankly said so.

Which shows that, even after having been for over twenty-five years in the editorial chair, Edward Bok was by no means infallible in his judgment of what the public wanted or would accept.

No man is, for that matter.



XXXIV. A War Magazine and War Activities

When, early in 1917, events began so to shape themselves as directly to point to the entrance of the United States into the Great War, Edward Bok set himself to formulate a policy for The Ladies' Home Journal. He knew that he was in an almost insurmountably difficult position. The huge edition necessitated going to press fully six weeks in advance of publication, and the preparation of material fully four weeks previous to that. He could not, therefore, get much closer than ten weeks to the date when his readers received the magazine. And he knew that events, in war time, had a way of moving rapidly.

Late in January he went to Washington, consulted those authorities who could indicate possibilities to him better than any one else, and found, as he had suspected, that the entry of the United States into the war was a practical certainty; it was only a question of time.

Bok went South for a month's holiday to get ready for the fray, and in the saddle and on the golf links he formulated a policy. The newspapers and weeklies would send innumerable correspondents to the front, and obviously, with the necessity for going to press so far in advance, The Journal could not compete with them. They would depict every activity in the field. There was but one logical thing for him to do: ignore the "front" entirely, refuse all the offers of correspondents, men and women, who wanted to go with the armies for his magazine, and cover fully and practically the results of the war as they would affect the women left behind. He went carefully over the ground to see what these would be, along what particular lines women's activities would be most likely to go, and then went home and back to Washington.

It was now March. He conferred with the President, had his fears confirmed, and offered all the resources of his magazine to the government. His diagnosis of the situation was verified in every detail by the authorities whom he consulted. The Ladies' Home Journal could best serve by keeping up the morale at home and by helping to meet the problems that would confront the women; as the President said: "Give help in the second line of defense."

A year before, Bok had opened a separate editorial office in Washington and had secured Dudley Harmon, the Washington correspondent for The New York Sun, as his editor-in-charge. The purpose was to bring the women of the country into a clearer understanding of their government and a closer relation with it. This work had been so successful as to necessitate a force of four offices and twenty stenographers. Bok now placed this Washington office on a war-basis, bringing it into close relation with every department of the government that would be connected with the war activities. By this means, he had an editor and an organized force on the spot, devoting full time to the preparation of war material, with Mr. Harmon in daily conference with the department chiefs to secure the newest developments.

Bok learned that the country's first act would be to recruit for the navy, so as to get this branch of the service into a state of preparedness. He therefore secured Franklin D. Roosevelt, assistant secretary of the navy, to write an article explaining to mothers why they should let their boys volunteer for the Navy and what it would mean to them.

He made arrangements at the American Red Cross Headquarters for an official department to begin at once in the magazine, telling women the first steps that would be taken by the Red Cross and how they could help. He secured former President William Howard Taft, as chairman of the Central Committee of the Red Cross, for the editor of this department.

He cabled to Viscount Northcliffe and Ian Hay for articles showing what the English women had done at the outbreak of the war, the mistakes they had made, what errors the American women should avoid, the right lines along which English women had worked and how their American sisters could adapt these methods to transatlantic conditions.

And so it happened that when the first war issue of The Journal appeared on April 20th, only three weeks after the President's declaration, it was the only monthly that recognized the existence of war, and its pages had already begun to indicate practical lines along which women could help.

The President planned to bring the Y. M. C. A. into the service by making it a war-work body, and Bok immediately made arrangements for a page to appear each month under the editorship of John R. Mott, general secretary of the International Y. M. C. A. Committee.

The editor had been told that the question of food would come to be of paramount importance; he knew that Herbert Hoover had been asked to return to America as soon as he could close his work abroad, and he cabled over to his English representative to arrange that the proposed Food Administrator should know, at first hand, of the magazine and its possibilities for the furtherance of the proposed Food Administration work.

The Food Administration was no sooner organized than Bok made arrangements for an authoritative department to be conducted in his magazine, reflecting the plans and desires of the Food Administration, and Herbert Hoover's first public declaration as food administrator to the women of America was published in The Ladies' Home Journal. Bok now placed all the resources of his four-color press-work at Mr. Hoover's disposal; and the Food Administration's domestic experts, in conjunction with the full culinary staff of the magazine, prepared the new war dishes and presented them appetizingly in full colors under the personal endorsement of Mr. Hoover and the Food Administration. From six to sixteen articles per month were now coming from Mr. Hoover's department alone.

The Department of Agriculture was laid under contribution by the magazine for the best ideas for the raising of food from the soil in the creation of war-gardens.

Doctor Anna Howard Shaw had been appointed chairman of the National Committee of the Women's Council of National Defence, and Bok arranged at once with her that she should edit a department page in his magazine, setting forth the plans of the committee and how the women of America could co-operate therewith.

The magazine had thus practically become the semiofficial mouthpiece of all the various government war bureaus and war-work bodies. James A. Flaherty, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, explained the proposed work of that body; Commander Evangeline Booth presented the plans of the Salvation Army, and Mrs. Robert E. Speer, president of the National Board of the Young Women's Christian Association, reflected the activities of her organization; while the President's daughter, Miss Margaret Wilson, discussed her work for the opening of all schoolhouses as community war-centres.

The magazine reflected in full-color pictures the life and activities of the boys in the American camps, and William C. Gorgas, surgeon-general of the United States, was the spokesman in the magazine for the health of the boys.

Secretary of the Treasury McAdoo interpreted the first Liberty Loan "drive" to the women; the President of the United States, in a special message to women, wrote in behalf of the subsequent Loan; Bernard Baruch, as chairman of the War Industries Board, made clear the need for war-time thrift; the recalled ambassador to Germany, James W. Gerard, told of the ingenious plans resorted to by German women which American women could profitably copy; and Elizabeth, Queen of the Belgians, explained the plight of the babies and children of Belgium, and made a plea to the women of the magazine to help. So straight to the point did the Queen write, and so well did she present her case that within six months there had been sent to her, through The Ladies' Home Journal, two hundred and forty-eight thousand cans of condensed milk, seventy-two thousand cans of pork and beans, five thousand cans of infants' prepared food, eighty thousand cans of beef soup, and nearly four thousand bushels of wheat, purchased with the money donated by the magazine readers.

On the coming of the coal question, the magazine immediately reflected the findings and recommendations of the Fuel Administration, and Doctor H. A. Garfield, as fuel administrator, placed the material of his Bureau at the disposal of the magazine's Washington editor.

The Committee on Public Information now sought the magazine for the issuance of a series of official announcements explanatory of matters to women.

When the "meatless" and the "wheatless" days were inaugurated, the women of America found that the magazine had anticipated their coming; and the issue appearing on the first of these days, as publicly announced by the Food Administration, presented pages of substitutes in full colors.

Of course, miscellaneous articles on the war there were, without number. Before the war was ended, the magazine did send a representative to the front in Catherine Van Dyke, who did most effective work for the magazine in articles of a general nature. The full-page battle pictures, painted from data furnished by those who took actual part, were universally commended and exhausted even the largest editions that could be printed. A source of continual astonishment was the number of copies of the magazine found among the boys in France; it became the third in the official War Department list of the most desired American periodicals, evidently representing a tie between the boys and their home folks. But all these "war" features, while appreciated and desirable, were, after all, but a side-issue to the more practical economic work of the magazine. It was in this service that the magazine excelled, it was for this reason that the women at home so eagerly bought it, and that it was impossible to supply each month the editions called for by the extraordinary demand.

Considering the difficulties to be surmounted, due to the advance preparation of material, and considering that, at the best, most of its advance information, even by the highest authorities, could only be in the nature of surmise, the comprehensive manner in which The Ladies' Home Journal covered every activity of women during the Great War, will always remain one of the magazine's most noteworthy achievements. This can be said without reserve here, since the credit is due to no single person; it was the combined, careful work of its entire staff, weighing every step before it was taken, looking as clearly into the future as circumstances made possible, and always seeking the most authoritative sources of information.

Bok merely directed. Each month, before his magazine went to press, he sought counsel and vision from at least one of three of the highest sources; and upon this guidance, as authoritative as anything could be in times of war when no human vision can actually foretell what the next day will bring forth, he acted. The result, as one now looks back upon it, was truly amazing; an uncanny timeliness would often color material on publication day. Of course, much of this was due to the close government co-operation, so generously and painstakingly given.

With the establishment of the various war boards in Washington, Bok received overtures to associate himself exclusively with them and move to the capital. He sought the best advice and with his own instincts pointing in the same way, he decided that he could give his fullest service by retaining his editorial position and adding to that such activities as his leisure allowed. He undertook several private commissions for the United States Government, and then he was elected vice-president of the Philadelphia Belgian Relief Commission.

With the Belgian consul-general for the United States, Mr. Paul Hagemans, as the president of the Commission, and guided by his intimate knowledge of the Belgian people, Bok selected a committee of the ablest buyers and merchants in the special lines of foods which he would have to handle. The Commission raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, with which it purchased foods and chartered ships. The quantities of food ran into prodigious figures; Bok felt that he was feeding the world; and yet when the holds of the ships began to take in the thousands of crates of canned goods, the bags of peas and beans, and the endless tins of condensed milk, it was amazing how the piled-up boxes melted from the piers and the ship-holds yawned for more. Flour was sent in seemingly endless hundreds of barrels.

Each line of goods was bought by a specialist on the Committee at the lowest quantity prices; and the result was that the succession of ships leaving the port of Philadelphia was a credit to the generosity of the people of the city and the commonwealth. The Commission delegated one of its members to go to Belgium and personally see that the food actually reached the needy Belgian people.

In September, 1917, word was received from John R. Mott that Bok had been appointed State chairman for the Y. M. C. A. War Work Council for Pennsylvania; that a country-wide campaign for twenty-five million dollars would be launched six weeks hence, and that Pennsylvania's quota was three millions of dollars. He was to set up an organization throughout the State, conduct the drive from Philadelphia, speak at various centres in Pennsylvania, and secure the allocated quota. Bok knew little or nothing about the work of the Y. M. C. A.; he accordingly went to New York headquarters and familiarized himself with the work being done and proposed; and then began to set up his State machinery. The drive came off as scheduled, Pennsylvania doubled its quota, subscribing six instead of three millions of dollars, and of this was collected five million eight hundred and twenty-nine thousand dollars—almost one hundred per cent.

Bok, who was now put on the National War Work Council of the Y. M. C. A. at New York, was asked to take part in the creation of the machinery necessary for the gigantic piece of work that the organization had been called upon by the President of the United States to do. It was a herculean task; practically impossible with any large degree of efficiency in view of the almost insurmountable obstacles to be contended with. But step by step the imperfect machinery was set up, and it began to function in the home camps. Then the overseas work was introduced by the first troops going to France, and the difficulties increased a hundredfold.

But Bok's knowledge of the workings of the government departments at Washington, the war boards, and the other war-work organizations soon convinced him that the Y. M. C. A. was not the only body, asked to set up an organization almost overnight, that was staggering under its load and falling down as often as it was functioning.

The need for Y. M. C. A. secretaries overseas and in the camps soon became acute, and Bok was appointed chairman of the Philadelphia Recruiting Committee. As in the case of his Belgian relief work, he at once surrounded himself with an able committee: this time composed of business and professional men trained in a knowledge of human nature in the large, and of wide acquaintance in the city. Simultaneously, Bok secured the release of one of the ablest men in the Y. M. C. A. service in New York, Edward S. Wilkinson, who became the permanent secretary of the Philadelphia Committee. Bok organized a separate committee composed of automobile manufacturers to recruit for chauffeurs and mechanicians; another separate committee recruited for physical directors, and later a third committee recruited for women.

The work was difficult because the field of selection was limited. No men between the military ages could be recruited; the War Boards at Washington had drawn heavily upon the best men of the city; the slightest physical defect barred out a man, on account of the exposure and strain of the Y. M. C. A. work; the residue was not large.

It was scarcely to be wondered at that so many incompetent secretaries had been passed and sent over to France. How could it have been otherwise with the restricted selection? But the Philadelphia Committee was determined, nevertheless, that its men should be of the best, and it decided that to get a hundred men of unquestioned ability would be to do a greater job than to send over two hundred men of indifferent quality. The Committee felt that enough good men were still in Philadelphia and the vicinity, if they could be pried loose from their business and home anchorages, and that it was rather a question of incessant work than an impossible task.

Bok took large advertising spaces in the Philadelphia newspapers, asking for men of exceptional character to go to France in the service of the Y. M. C. A.; and members of the Committee spoke before the different commercial bodies at their noon luncheons. The applicants now began to come, and the Committee began its discriminating selection. Each applicant was carefully questioned by the secretary before he appeared before the Committee, which held sittings twice a week. Hence of over twenty-five hundred applicants, only three hundred appeared before the Committee, of whom two hundred and fifty-eight were passed and sent overseas.

The Committee's work was exceptionally successful; it soon proved of so excellent a quality as to elicit a cabled request from Paris headquarters to send more men of the Philadelphia type. The secret of this lay in the sterling personnel of the Committee itself, and its interpretation of the standards required; and so well did it work that when Bok left for the front to be absent from Philadelphia for ten weeks, his Committee, with Thomas W. Hulme, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, acting as Chairman, did some of its best work.

The after-results, according to the report of the New York headquarters, showed that no Y. M. C. A. recruiting committee had equalled the work of the Philadelphia committee in that its men, in point of service, had proved one hundred per cent secretaries. With two exceptions, the entire two hundred and fifty-eight men passed, brought back one hundred per cent records, some of them having been placed in the most important posts abroad and having given the most difficult service. The work of the other Philadelphia committees, particularly that of the Women's Committee, was equally good.

To do away with the multiplicity of "drives," rapidly becoming a drain upon the efforts of the men engaged in them, a War Chest Committee was now formed in Philadelphia and vicinity to collect money for all the war-work agencies. Bok was made a member of the Executive Committee, and chairman of the Publicity Committee. In May, 1918, a campaign for twenty millions of dollars was started; the amount was subscribed, and although much of it had to be collected after the armistice, since the subscriptions were in twelve monthly payments, a total of fifteen and a half million dollars was paid in and turned over to the different agencies.

Bok, who had been appointed one of the Boy Scout commissioners in his home district of Merion, saw the possibilities of the Boy Scouts in the Liberty Loan and other campaigns. Working in co-operation with the other commissioners, and the scoutmaster of the Merion Troop, Bok supported the boys in their work in each campaign as it came along. Although there were in the troop only nine boys, in ages ranging from twelve to fourteen years—Bok's younger son was one of them—so effectively did these youngsters work under the inspiration of the scoutmaster, Thomas Dun Belfield, that they soon attracted general attention and acquired distinction as one of the most efficient troops in the vicinity of Philadelphia. They won nearly all the prizes offered in their vicinity, and elicited the special approval of the Secretary of the Treasury.

Although only "gleaners" in most of the campaigns—that is, working only in the last three days after the regular committees had scoured the neighborhood—these Merion Boy Scouts sold over one million four hundred thousand dollars in Liberty Bonds, and raised enough money in the Y. M. C. A. campaign to erect one of the largest huts in France for the army boys, and a Y. M. C. A. gymnasium at the League Island Navy Yard accommodating two thousand sailor-boys.

In the summer of 1918, the eight leading war-work agencies, excepting the Red Cross, were merged, for the purpose of one drive for funds, into the United War Work Campaign, and Bok was made chairman for Pennsylvania. In November a country-wide campaign was launched, the quota for Pennsylvania being twenty millions of dollars—the largest amount ever asked of the commonwealth. Bok organized a committee of the representative men of Pennsylvania, and proceeded to set up the machinery to secure the huge sum. He had no sooner done this, however, than he had to sail for France, returning only a month before the beginning of the campaign.

But the efficient committee had done its work; upon his return Bok found the organization complete. On the first day of the campaign, the false rumor that an armistice had been signed made the raising of the large amount seem almost hopeless; furthermore, owing to the influenza raging throughout the commonwealth, no public meetings had been permitted or held. Still, despite all these obstacles, not only was the twenty millions subscribed but oversubscribed to the extent of nearly a million dollars; and in face of the fact that every penny of this large total had to be collected after the signing of the armistice, twenty millions of dollars was paid in and turned over to the war agencies.

It is indeed a question whether any single war act on the part of the people of Pennsylvania redounds so highly to their credit as this marvellous evidence of patriotic generosity. It was one form of patriotism to subscribe so huge a sum while the war was on and the guns were firing; it was quite another and a higher patriotism to subscribe and pay such a sum after the war was over!

Bok's position as State chairman of the United War Work Campaign made it necessary for him to follow authoritatively and closely the work of each of the eight different organizations represented in the fund. Because he felt he had to know what the Knights of Columbus, the Salvation Army, the Y. W. C. A., and the others were doing with the money he had been instrumental in collecting, and for which he felt, as chairman, responsible to the people of Pennsylvania, he learned to know their work just as thoroughly as he knew what the Y. M. C. A. was doing.

He had now seen and come into personal knowledge of the work of the Y. M. C. A. from his Philadelphia point of vantage, with his official connection with it at New York headquarters; he had seen the work as it was done in the London and Paris headquarters; and he had seen the actual work in the American camps, the English rest-camps, back of the French lines, in the trenches, and as near the firing-line as he had been permitted to go.

He had, in short, seen the Y. M. C. A. function from every angle, but he had also seen the work of the other organizations in England and France, back of the lines and in the trenches. He found them all faulty—necessarily so. Each had endeavored to create an organization within an incredibly short space of time and in the face of adverse circumstances. Bok saw at once that the charge that the Y. M. C. A. was "falling down" in its work was as false as that the Salvation Army was doing "a marvellous work" and that the K. of C. was "efficient where others were incompetent," and that the Y. W. C. A. was "nowhere to be seen."

The Salvation Army was unquestionably doing an excellent piece of work within a most limited area; it could not be on a wider scale, when one considered the limited personnel it had at its command. The work of the K. of C. was not a particle more or less efficient than the work of the other organizations. What it did, it strove to do well, but so did the others. The Y. W. C. A. made little claim about its work in France, since the United States Government would not, until nearly at the close of the war, allow women to be sent over in the uniforms of any of the war-work organizations. But no one can gainsay for a single moment the efficient service rendered by the Y. W. C. A. in its hostess-house work in the American camps; that work alone would have entitled it to the support of the American people. That of the Y. M. C. A. was on so large a scale that naturally its inefficiency was often in proportion to its magnitude.

Bok was in France when the storm of criticism against the Y. M. C. A. broke out, and, as State chairman for Pennsylvania, it was his duty to meet the outcry when it came over to the United States. That the work of the Y. M. C. A. was faulty no one can deny. Bok saw the "holes" long before they were called to the attention of the public, but he also saw the almost impossible task, in face of prevailing difficulties, of caulking them up. No one who was not in France can form any conception of the practically insurmountable obstacles against which all the war-work organizations worked; and the larger the work the greater were the obstacles, naturally. That the Y. M. C. A. and the other similar agencies made mistakes is not the wonder so much as that they did not make more. The real marvel is that they did so much efficient work. For after we get a little farther away from the details and see the work of these agencies in its broader aspects, when we forget the lapses—which, after all, though irritating and regrettable, were not major—the record as a whole will stand as a most signal piece of volunteer service.

What was actually accomplished was nothing short of marvellous; and it is this fact that must be borne in mind; not the omissions, but the commissions. And when the American public gets that point of view—as it will, and, for that matter, is already beginning to do—the work of the American Y. M. C. A. will no longer suffer for its omissions, but will amaze and gladden by its accomplishments. As an American officer of high rank said to Bok at Chaumont headquarters: "The mind cannot take in what the war would have been without the 'Y.'" And that, in time, will be the universal American opinion, extended, in proportion to their work, to all the war-work agencies and the men and women who endured, suffered, and were killed in their service.



XXXV. At the Battle-Fronts in the Great War

It was in the summer of 1918 that Edward Bok received from the British Government, through its department of public information, of which Lord Beaverbrook was the minister, an invitation to join a party of thirteen American editors to visit Great Britain and France. The British Government, not versed in publicity methods, was anxious that selected parties of American publicists should see, personally, what Great Britain had done, and was doing in the war; and it had decided to ask a few individuals to pay personal visits to its munition factories, its great aerodromes, its Great Fleet, which then lay in the Firth of Forth, and to the battle-fields. It was understood that no specific obligation rested upon any member of the party to write of what he saw: he was asked simply to observe and then, with discretion, use his observations for his own guidance and information in future writing. In fact, each member was explicitly told that much of what he would see could not be revealed either personally or in print.

The party embarked in August amid all the attendant secrecy of war conditions. The steamer was known only by a number, although later it turned out to be the White Star liner, Adriatic. Preceded by a powerful United States cruiser, flanked by destroyers, guided overhead by observation balloons, the Adriatic was found to be the first ship in a convoy of sixteen other ships with thirty thousand United States troops on board.

It was a veritable Armada that steamed out of lower New York harbor on that early August morning, headed straight into the rising sun. But it was a voyage of unpleasant war reminders, with life-savers carried every moment of the day, with every light out at night, with every window and door as if hermetically sealed so that the stuffy cabins deprived of sleep those accustomed to fresh air, with over sixty army men and civilians on watch at night, with life-drills each day, with lessons as to behavior in life-boats; and with a fleet of eighteen British destroyers meeting the convoy upon its approach to the Irish Coast after a thirteen days' voyage of constant anxiety. No one could say he travelled across the Atlantic Ocean in war days for pleasure, and no one did.

Once ashore, the party began a series of inspections of munition plants, ship-yards, aeroplane factories and of meetings with the different members of the English War Cabinet. Luncheons and dinners were the order of each day until broken by a journey to Edinburgh to see the amazing Great Fleet, with the addition of six of the foremost fighting machines of the United States Navy, all straining like dogs at leash, awaiting an expected dash from the bottled-up German fleet. It was a formidable sight, perhaps never equalled: those lines of huge, menacing, and yet protecting fighting machines stretching down the river for miles, all conveying the single thought of the power and extent of the British Navy and its formidable character as a fighting unit.

It was upon his return to London that Bok learned, through the confidence of a member of the British "inner circle," the amazing news that the war was practically over: that Bulgaria had capitulated and was suing for peace; that two of the Central Power provinces had indicated their strong desire that the war should end; and that the first peace intimations had gone to the President of the United States. All diplomatic eyes were turned toward Washington. Yet not a hint of the impending events had reached the public. The Germans were being beaten back, that was known; it was evident that the morale of the German army was broken; that Foch had turned the tide toward victory; but even the best-informed military authorities outside of the inner diplomatic circles, predicted that the war would last until the spring of 1919, when a final "drive" would end it. Yet, at that very moment, the end of the war was in sight!

Next Bok went to France to visit the battle-fields. It was arranged that the party should first, under guidance of British officers, visit back of the British lines; and then, successively, be turned over to the American and French Governments, and visit the operations back of their armies.

It is an amusing fact that although each detail of officers delegated to escort the party "to the front" received the most explicit instructions from their superior officers to take the party only to the quiet sectors where there was no fighting going on, each detail from the three governments successively brought the party directly under shell-fire, and each on the first day of the "inspection." It was unconsciously done: the officers were as much amazed to find themselves under fire as were the members of the party, except that the latter did not feel the responsibility to an equal degree. The officers, in each case, were plainly worried: the editors were intensely interested.

They were depressing trips through miles and miles of devastated villages and small cities. From two to three days each were spent in front-line posts on the Amiens-Bethune, Albert-Peronne, Bapaume-Soissons, St. Mihiel, and back of the Argonne sectors. Often, the party was the first civilian group to enter a town evacuated only a week before, and all the horrible evidence of bloody warfare was fresh and plain. Bodies of German soldiers lay in the trenches where they had fallen; wired bombs were on every hand, so that no object could be touched that lay on the battle-fields; the streets of some of the towns were still mined, so that no automobiles could enter; the towns were deserted, the streets desolate. It was an appalling panorama of the most frightful results of war.

The picturesqueness and romance of the war of picture books were missing. To stand beside an English battery of thirty guns laying a barrage as they fired their shells to a point ten miles distant, made one feel as if one were an actual part of real warfare, and yet far removed from it, until the battery was located from the enemy's "sausage observation"; then the shells from the enemy fired a return salvo, and the better part of valor was discretion a few miles farther back.

The amazing part of the "show," however, was the American doughboy. Never was there a more cheerful, laughing, good-natured set of boys in the world; never a more homesick, lonely, and complaining set. But good nature predominated, and the smile was always uppermost, even when the moment looked the blackest, the privations were worst, and the longing for home the deepest.

Bok had been talking to a boy who lived near his own home, who was on his way to the front and "over the top" in the Argonne mess. Three days afterward, at a hospital base where a hospital train was just discharging its load of wounded, Bok walked among the boys as they lay on their stretchers on the railroad platform waiting for bearers to carry them into the huts. As he approached one stretcher, a cheery voice called, "Hello, Mr. Bok. Here I am again."

It was the boy he had left just seventy-two hours before hearty and well.

"Well, my boy, you weren't in it long, were you?"

"No, sir," answered the boy; "Fritzie sure got me first thing. Hadn't gone a hundred yards over the top. Got a cigarette?" (the invariable question).

Bok handed a cigarette to the boy, who then said: "Mind sticking it in my mouth?" Bok did so and then offered him a light; the boy continued, all with his wonderful smile: "If you don't mind, would you just light it? You see, Fritzie kept both of my hooks as souvenirs."

With both arms amputated, the boy could still jest and smile!

It was the same boy who on his hospital cot the next day said: "Don't you think you could do something for the chap next to me, there on my left? He's really suffering: cried like hell all last night. It would be a Godsend if you could get Doc to do something."

A promise was given that the surgeon should be seen at once, but the boy was asked: "How about you?"

"Oh," came the cheerful answer, "I'm all right. I haven't anything to hurt. My wounded members are gone—just plain gone. But that chap has got something—he got the real thing!"

What was the real thing according to such a boy's idea?

There were beautiful stories that one heard "over there." One of the most beautiful acts of consideration was told, later, of a lovable boy whose throat had been practically shot away. During his convalescence he had learned the art of making beaded bags. It kept him from talking, the main prescription. But one day he sold the bag which he had first made to a visitor, and with his face radiant with glee he sought the nurse-mother to tell her all about his good fortune. Of course, nothing but a series of the most horrible guttural sounds came from the boy: not a word could be understood. It was his first venture into the world with the loss of his member, and the nurse-mother could not find it in her heart to tell the boy that not a word which he spoke was understandable. With eyes full of tears she placed both of her hands on the boy's shoulders and said to him: "I am so sorry, my boy. I cannot understand a word you say to me. You evidently do not know that I am totally deaf. Won't you write what you want to tell me?"

A look of deepest compassion swept the face of the boy. To think that one could be so afflicted, and yet so beautifully tender and always so radiantly cheerful, he wrote her.

Pathos and humor followed rapidly one upon the other "at the front" in those gruesome days, and Bok was to have his spirits lightened somewhat by an incident of the next day. He found himself in one of the numerous little towns where our doughboys were billeted, some in the homes of the peasants, others in stables, barns, outhouses, lean-tos, and what not. These were the troops on their way to the front where the fighting in the Argonne Forest was at that time going on. As Bok was walking with an American officer, the latter pointed to a doughboy crossing the road, followed by as disreputable a specimen of a pig as he had ever seen. Catching Bok's smile, the officer said: "That's Pinney and his porker. Where you see the one you see the other."

Bok caught up with the boy, and said: "Found a friend, I see, Buddy?"

"I sure have," grinned the doughboy, "and it sticks closer than a poor relation, too."

"Where did you pick it up?"

"Oh, in there," said the soldier, pointing to a dilapidated barn.

"Why in there?"

"My home," grinned the boy.

"Let me see," said Bok, and the doughboy took him in with the pig following close behind. "Billeted here—been here six days. The pig was here when we came, and the first night I lay down and slept, it came up to me and stuck its snout in my face and woke me up. Kind enough, all right, but not very comfortable: it stinks so."

"Yes; it certainly does. What did you do?"

"Oh, I got some grub I had and gave it to eat: thought it might be hungry, you know. I guess that sort of settled it, for the next night it came again and stuck its snout right in my mug. I turned around, but it just climbed over me and there it was."

"Well, what did you do then? Chase it out?"

"Chase it out?" said the doughboy, looking into Bok's face with the most unaffected astonishment. "Why, mister, that's a mother-pig, that is. She's going to have young ones in a few days. How could I chase her out?"

"You're quite right, Buddy," said Bok. "You couldn't do that."

"Oh, no," said the boy. "The worst of it is, what am I going to do with her when we move up within a day or two? I can't take her along to the front, and I hate to leave her here. Some one might treat her rough."

"Captain," said Bok, hailing the officer, "you can attend to that, can't you, when the time comes?"

"I sure can, and I sure will," answered the Captain. And with a quick salute, Pinney and his porker went off across the road!

Bok was standing talking to the commandant of one of the great French army supply depots one morning. He was a man of forty; a colonel in the regular French army. An erect, sturdy-looking man with white hair and mustache, and who wore the single star of a subaltern on his sleeve, came up, saluted, delivered a message, and then asked:

"Are there any more orders, sir?"

"No," was the reply.

He brought his heels together with a click, saluted again, and went away.

The commandant turned to Bok with a peculiar smile on his face and asked:

"Do you know who that man is?"

"No," was the reply.

"That is my father," was the answer.

The father was then exactly seventy-two years old. He was a retired business man when the war broke out. After two years of the heroic struggle he decided that he couldn't keep out of it. He was too old to fight, but after long insistence he secured a commission. By one of the many curious coincidences of the war he was assigned to serve under his own son.

When under the most trying conditions, the Americans never lost their sense of fun. On the staff of a prison hospital in Germany, where a number of captured American soldiers were being treated, a German sergeant became quite friendly with the prisoners under his care. One day he told them that he had been ordered to active service on the front. He felt convinced that he would be captured by the English, and asked the Americans if they would not give him some sort of testimonial which he could show if he were taken prisoner, so that he would not be ill-treated.

The Americans were much amused at this idea, and concocted a note of introduction, written in English. The German sergeant knew no English and could not understand his testimonial, but he tucked it in his pocket, well satisfied.

In due time, he was sent to the front and was captured by "the ladies from hell," as the Germans called the Scotch kilties. He at once presented his introduction, and his captors laughed heartily when they read:

"This is L—. He is not a bad sort of chap. Don't shoot him; torture him slowly to death."

One evening as Bok was strolling out after dinner a Red Cross nurse came to him, explained that she had two severely wounded boys in what remained of an old hut: that they were both from Pennsylvania, and had expressed a great desire to see him as a resident of their State.

"Neither can possibly survive the night," said the nurse.

"They know that?" asked Bok.

"Oh, yes, but like all our boys they are lying there joking with each other."

Bok was taken into what remained of a room in a badly shelled farmhouse, and there, on two roughly constructed cots, lay the two boys. Their faces had been bandaged so that nothing was visible except the eyes of each boy. A candle in a bottle standing on a box gave out the only light. But the eyes of the boys were smiling as Bok came in and sat down on the box on which the nurse had been sitting. He talked with the boys, got as much of their stories from them as he could, and told them such home news as he thought might interest them.

After half an hour he arose to leave, when the nurse said: "There is no one here, Mr. Bok, to say the last words to these boys. Will you do it?" Bok stood transfixed. In sending men over in the service of the Y. M. C. A. he had several times told them to be ready for any act that they might be asked to render, even the most sacred one. And here he stood himself before that duty. He felt as if he stood stripped before his Maker. Through the glassless window the sky lit up constantly with the flashes of the guns, and then followed the booming of a shell as it landed.

"Yes, won't you, sir?" asked the boy on the right cot as he held out his hand. Bok took it, and then the hand of the other boy reached out.

What to say, he did not know. Then, to his surprise, he heard himself repeating extract after extract from a book by Lyman Abbott called The Other Room, a message to the bereaved declaring the non-existence of death, but that we merely move from this earth to another: from one room to another, as it were. Bok had not read the book for years, but here was the subconscious self supplying the material for him in his moment of greatest need. Then he remembered that just before leaving home he had heard sung at matins, after the prayer for the President, a beautiful song called "Passing Souls." He had asked the rector for a copy of it; and, wondering why, he had put it in his wallet that he carried with him. He took it out now and holding the hand of the boy at his right, he read to them:

For the passing souls we pray, Saviour, meet them on their way; Let their trust lay hold on Thee Ere they touch eternity.

Holy counsels long forgot Breathe again 'mid shell and shot; Through the mist of life's last pain None shall look to Thee in vain.

To the hearts that know Thee, Lord, Thou wilt speak through flood or sword; Just beyond the cannon's roar, Thou art on the farther shore.

For the passing souls we pray, Saviour, meet them on the way; Thou wilt hear our yearning call, Who hast loved and died for all.

Absolute stillness reigned in the room save for the half-suppressed sob from the nurse and the distant booming of the cannon. As Bok finished, he heard the boy at his right say slowly: "Saviour-meet-me-on-my-way": with a little emphasis on the word "my." The hand in his relaxed slowly, and then fell on the cot; and he saw that the soul of another brave American boy had "gone West."