What America did : $b A record of achievement in the prosecution of the warKelly, Florence Finch
History
What America did : $b A record of achievement in the prosecution of the war
Kelly, Florence Finch
World War, 1914-1918 -- United States
Supplementing the work of the Commissions on Training Camp Activities
for the Army and Navy, the War Camp Community Service operated in the
regions immediately surrounding or near the training camps. It bettered
moral conditions in camp environments, provided sleeping quarters,
baths, canteens, information booths, clubs, reading rooms, arranged
dances and theatrical entertainments, served as a medium through which
the hospitable desires of the community might reach the men, thus
making possible their entertainment in hundreds of thousands of homes.
Its work was established in one hundred and twenty-eight cities, in
every state in the Union, and two million men registered at its clubs.
In the work of the Service in New York City alone one million men in
uniform were provided with beds and baths, it had 9,000 beds available
every night, it served meals to more than 50,000 men, 75,000 soldiers
and sailors attended its dances and almost as many were taken on Sunday
sight-seeing trips through the city, while hundreds of thousands
enjoyed the theatrical entertainments it furnished.
Coöperating with the War Camp Community Service, the National League
for Women’s Service with its 300,000 members ran its own clubs and
canteens, furnished workers for those of other organizations and for
information booths, recruited a Woman’s Motor Corps whose members
were ready for work as motor drivers for any war service organization
served as the distributing agency for florists all over the country who
contributed flowers for the wounded in hospitals, and collected and
sent books, magazines, games, phonographs and records to army and navy
camps at home and overseas.
The Over-There Theater League, under the leadership of men prominent in
the theatrical world, secured actors and actresses, arranged theatrical
tours, staged entertainments and, under the auspices of the Y. M. C.
A., carried their performances from camp to camp. During the “Slacker
Record Week” 15,000 men and women engaged in the campaign to secure
phonographs and records to be sent overseas for the pleasure of the
soldiers. To provide moving pictures for the camps at home and on the
other side a great number of writers, actors and producers worked with
zeal, and the Community Motion Picture Bureau, in charge of the service
under the Y. M. C. A., made careful investigation to find out what
kind of pictures were best liked in the different places. In the camps
and cantonments at home it showed 8,000,000 feet of films per week. It
had 2,000,000 feet of films in service on the transports that carried
the troops to France. Its films were sent out to the ships of the
Atlantic fleet and circulated from one cruiser to another. In France,
and wherever there were American troops, the movie was ready for their
entertainment in camps and hospitals from the port of debarkation to
the rear of the firing line.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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