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.
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