A GREAT NATIONAL INSTITUTION

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 15, 12 October 1917, Page 3

A GREAT NATIONAL INSTITUTION

* _ LORD CUEZON'S TRIBUTE. "Before the war," said Lord Cursson recently, speaking at the opening of a Y.M.C.A. station hut at Derby, "the Y.M.C.A. was known as one of the most efficient charitable, philanthropic, and Christian institutions that existed in this country. It appealed to the enthusiasm of a devoted body of adherents, and it did good work in many spheres of public life, but with the war it has become transformed. The Y.M.C.A. has developed into a great national institution, It has become one of the most powerful assets in this country in prosecuting certain indispensable sides of the war. You can follow its work both at -Home and abroad. At Home we hear of it in the munition areas, on the railway stations, in the camps—wherever ai body of persons working in connection with the war are gathered together. Abroad, you have only to cross the Channel to any theatre of war to find at military bases or behind the line 3 at the front institutions, tents, huts, reading rooms, and playrooms of the Y.M.C.A. Nor must we imagine for one moment that they hide, themselves in. the rear. Right ii.p to the ! fighting line, in almost immediate proximity to the trenches, you will .find tho Y.M.C.A. You will find them if you go to France and Handera, where cur men are fighting so valiantly at the present time; you will find them at Salonika, where they receive our men as they come iback from the malarial swamps; you will find them doing their work in Mesopotamia, and I don't doubt but at this moment that our Y.M.C.A. Ie instituted at Bagdad. Wo are executing military manoeuvres in Palestine, whore at this moment our men (iro knocking at the gates of Ga?A. Who knows before long they may get there, and if they do you may lie quite certain that the walk of the great city will not be long opened to them before we shall hear ot the Y.M.C.A. in Jerusalem. I may say the same thing of every other theatre of war. Suffice it to say that the Y.3.1.C.A have fashioned a girdle of mercy and loving kindness round the world m this war. It will be a record fliat will stand to their credit as long as tho memory of this war exists. It is not merely .he philanthropic work that is performed by the Y.M.C.A. that must appeal to us. I think we may siiy that their operations cover the spiritual side of the warfare in which we are engaged. Some of you mav be surprised to hear me use the word spiritual in connection with anything so dreadful as war. War is at any time a coarse and brutal thing, whether it springs, .is too often m the pael, from the passions', of peoples or the ambitions of kings, and assuredly no war in history-has been in « way more coarse and more brutal than this. Yet at tne same time' may we not say that whilst from Hie point of view T am sneaking of,', it is the most immoral .war thatJias been fonelir, from another it is the most moral. Wo are fighting for the noblest highest, purest of causes That is what makes this war the most moral of all tots. That is what has bronght m the United States of America.'