Norwich bulletin., 1919-05-14

You, gentlemen of this convention.
 arc the representatives of more than
 500000 Catholics of Connecticut. As
 the result of our orders work dur
 ing the war you stand pre-eminently
 best fitted to represent the great Cath
 olic body of our state in the recon
 strCction period upon which we are
 entering. You stand most fully quail 1
 fled to represent the Catholic church
 in spreading her teachings of obedience
 and respect to the government of our
 country. 4
 You know full well of that spirit Of disrespcct and dtsobedience of govern ment that is spreading throughout the world and is now seeking to cross the ocean to fix the plague of it's coming in this fertile field The Knights of! Columbus must be active as theyt never have been before in an effort tol raise three million. We remembered that it had taken the order two years to complete a fund of s500.000 for the Catholic university, and felt that at tempting to raise ten million in the
 brief time we had at hand would be an impossible undertaking. We went out and went to work. Money began to roll in and iii one year we had raised s14o0o. 900 for the service work we were carrying on. Later we start GU out lO get Iuly HlItlloil H!E4e, put l the war department cut us down to- ! s30, ,000,000.
 l What success we met with in rais- I ing such tremendous sums was testi- 1 monial of what the people thought of | our work. All was not smooth sailing, | however. either in the cantonments ! here or overseas. We had to fight on
 many occasions for what We got.
 ! Eventually the war department 1 took away our slogan Everybody Well come. Everything Freei' but it never
 deprived us of that privilege. Overseas,
 when we were obliged to take down
 our Everything Free signs we sub- stituted- others that read Don't Thank Us: Thank the Folks Back Home If success has come to the K. of c. in it's war work, it is because the directors always kept in mind that they were only the trustees of the American peo- pie, not of our order or of Catholics, ,, but of all of the people of the nation. Why have soldier boy pay for some thing his relatives and friends back home already had paid for? Our sue ; cess was based on the slogan Every thing Free We sent nearly 1900 sec- si retaries to France and each and every one of them went not with the idea , that he was to be keeper of the sol : diers but that he was to be serVan,
 of the soldiers.
 When our brave soldiers made theil , smashes through the St. Mihiel sector
 and in the Argonne and at other sec
 tions of the western front. our gray
 haired secretaries kept pace with tht hurried advance, nor were they bur ! dened with bookkeeping outfits. A u Coblenz, before an American soldier had entered our zone of occupation th' :. Knights of Columbus had communi Y ty house opened and ready to receiv' 2 Uncle Sam's boys the minute they ar = rived Our huts were stretched a1on' $ the western front at hundreds o IS points. Our present activities oversea s include furnishing amusement, recrea l. tion and comforts for the boys who re S, main over there We are doing ou l. best to keep the boys from becomin '- lonely. And talk about turning ,ou e doughnuts, why. our staff In Coblen el alone is producing 1S0.ooo day. l. we have gone into the leave area E. and esta blished community houses. W 1t have them at Nice. in Rome and othe le points in Italy, one in Holland an four at Luxembourg. two in Scotland