The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-03-05

veying such travellers, and generally take care of them. Another thing we are doing and, I think, valuable one, is looking aftetr the soldier on leave fro1:1 the front who is passing through Lon don. Every night 1900 men released tenn oorarily from the trenches arrive Y London, and upon them all the evil pow CTS of the city are centered. We are en- deavoring to protect them, and, incl dentally, to provide sleeping accommoda- tions and comfort for them whenever they turn up. With this object, we are opening up large huts near every railway station, which will be open day an6 night and which will be genuinely at tractive pla ces, with food at rock bottom prices and good sleeping accommodation ditto.
 We are utilizing all sorts of places for these, among others the famous
 Little theatre, originally started by Miss Gertrude Kingston, the actress, and from which so many high browed' play houses in the United States have beer copied. Through the generosity of MT Drummond, the banker, the theatre is al our disposal for a year. It is, of course close to Charing Cross station. Nea, Victoria station, at which the bulk of the , men from the continent arrive, in addi- tion to the new Bryant and May hut we have taken big brewery in Horse ferry Road, and are now equipping it as a center. At the big hut near Kings Cross, which Princess Louise opened the other day, we are now sleeping about 45O men a night, and, throughout Lon don, we shall soon be in a position tc accommodate between 3O00 and 4000 It's a most necessary work, too. About mid night, few nights ago. one of oui workers saw newly returned soldier talking with woman. an obvious bad character. Our man had no authority to do so but he 'bluffed' it and told the woman to begone, which she did. The soldier. it proved, had sS25 on him. IT.
 the morning, had our man not interferred he would have had nothing.
 Another thing that we are now going
 in for on big scale.' Yapp continued
 is the feeding of munition workers. Al
 Woolwich and all the other big munitior centers where thousands of skilled and
 unskilled workers, many of them volun-
 teers are now employed, the 'canteen
 arrangements proved hopelessly made
 quate. and the government invited us
 not long ago, to take hold and organize
 them. We've now got over 1000 people
 most of them women, employed, and are
 feeding thousands daily We started
 work in a Baptist school at Woolwich
 where we soon were serving 500 lunches
 a day, and now have OverflOwed into the
 big drill hall there, where we are feed
 Ing hundreds more. In all the munition
 centers the problem is the same, how
 to feed and where to house the volun-
 teer workers, the bulk of them hay:
 come from other districts. I can't men,
 ton numbers but may tell you that on
 an average where 16,000 persons were em.
 ployed while ago. G0.000 are working
 now"
 Truly the war activities of the Y. M
 c. A. are nearly endless. and defy enu-
 meration in one newspaper article. In
 its gyinnasums, men who have been re-
 jected for the army on account of phy-
 stcal shortcomings like too narrowness
 of chest are given. free, physical train
 Ing calculated to bring them mp to stand ard. The Y. M. c. A. provides the men
 with pocket Testaments and with col
 lections of marching songs most of them
 American ditties), and charges nothing
 for these It provides cinemas at the front" too. and 1t recently has inaugu- rated quite wonderful system by which any soldier at the front who would like a snap-shot" of any friend at home
 can, by notifying the Y. NJ. c. A. peo-
 ple, have it taken and sent out to him. In the associations huts, besides all
 kinds of games, (except gambling ones),
 there are educational classes and lee.
 lures for such of the men as care tc