The women’s contingent of the Y. M. C. A. did effective work both in these leave areas and in the canteens. Their service was not enlisted until a year after our entrance into the conflict, but at the end of hostilities a thousand women were engaged in it, and so insistent was the call for them that they were recruited as rapidly as possible, a thousand more being sent over during the next three months. They were given a week or more of intensive training before sailing to fit them for the duties they would have to undertake. Unique in all army as well as in all educational history was the great educational system which the Y. M. C. A. undertook to establish, under the authority and with the coöperation of the War Department. Beginning in the home camps, it was carried across the sea, developed more and more as time went on, and found its climax in the “Khaki University.” The final and complete plans were ready only in time for use with the Army of Occupation in Germany and in the camps abroad and at home in which the men waited for demobilization, when $2,000,000 worth of text-books had been ordered for the work. Some of the foremost educational experts of the United States, numbering several hundred, were engaged in the organizing and supervision of the system and many hundreds of others, members of the alumni and faculties of American educational institutions who were enrolled among the fighting forces, undertook the work of instruction. The scheme enabled soldiers and sailors to continue their studies without expense, whether they desired elementary, collegiate or professional instruction or agricultural, technical or commercial training. The scheme, which was finally taken over by the Army, is described at more length in the chapter on “The Welfare of the Soldiers.” So successful and important was the work of the Y. M. C. A. with the American forces that both the French and the Italian Governments requested it to establish service centers with their respective armies. This it did, the American workers who initiated and supervised the program of recreation and fostering of morale being assisted, in the respective armies, by French and Italians. [Illustration: A PLEASANT EVENING IN A HOSTESS HOUSE] [Illustration: SALVATION ARMY LASSIES AT THE FRONT]