"The story of that breathlessly summoned council meeting in the Headquarters of the National Council in Russell Square on August 5 is a veritable romance. Telegrams brought holiday-making secretaries hurrying from the seaside, and in a few hours it was decided to pitch canvas tents wherever the new recruits for Kitchener's Army were located, and issue a national appeal for the necessary funds. As everybody now knows, this was done--hundreds of tents for refreshments, reading, writing, and rest sprang up as if by magic all over the land; thousands of pounds of money flowed in from high and low; and the Young Men's Christian Association was swept forward in the tide from being a semi-disparaged adjunct of the Church's care for a certain type of young townsman, to that of a great ally of the nation in its hour of moral, no less than physical, agony. The tale of the swift adaptation of practically the entire premises, resources, and plant of the Association to the military and naval emergency, involving almost superhuman hours of thought and skill, can never adequately be told. The whole country was mapped out, committees formed, hundreds of workers engaged, stationery ordered, stores and motor-transport acquired, the patronage of the King and the approval of the War Office secured, and in a few weeks the machinery for the safeguarding of the leisure hours of the troops who were flocking to the colours was in working order. "Then came the late autumn with its rains and floods, and the necessity for better accommodation than canvas tents. Wooden huts were obviously required. But these would cost money--roughly £300 at least apiece. A great appeal was issued for the necessary funds, and the response was amazing. Several hundreds of thousands of pounds were contributed, many donors presenting a hut and furnishing it, and as winter closed in comfortable and warm and well-equipped huts replaced everywhere the sodden tents. "As the military situation broadened and developed, the Association followed suit, and huts were built and opened in the base towns in France, Egypt, and India, while many young men were sent on board the troop-ships as lay chaplains to take charge of the soldiers on these journeys and to look after them on their landing in foreign and colonial ports.