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.
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