With the Belgian consul-general for the United States, Mr.Paul Hagemans, as the president of the Commission, and guided by his intimate knowledge of the Belgian people, Bok selected a committee of the ablest buyers and merchants in the special lines of foods which he would have to handle.The Commission raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, with which it purchased foods and chartered ships.The quantities of food ran into prodigious figures; Bok felt that he was feeding the world; and yet when the holds of the ships began to take in the thousands of crates of canned goods, the bags of peas and beans, and the endless tins of condensed milk, it was amazing how the piled-up boxes melted from the piers and the ship-holds yawned for more.Flour was sent in seemingly endless hundreds of barrels.
Each line of goods was bought by a specialist on the Committee at the lowest quantity prices; and the result was that the succession of ships leaving the port of Philadelphia was a credit to the generosity of the people of the city and the commonwealth.The Commission delegated one of its members to go to Belgium and personally see that the food actually reached the needy Belgian people.
In September, 1917, word was received from John R.Mott that Bok had been appointed State chairman for the Y.M.C.A.War Work Council for Pennsylvania; that a country-wide campaign for twenty-five million dollars would be launched six weeks hence, and that Pennsylvania's quota was three millions of dollars.He was to set up an organization throughout the State, conduct the drive from Philadelphia, speak at various centres in Pennsylvania, and secure the allocated quota.Bok knew little or nothing about the work of the Y.M.C.A.; he accordingly went to New York headquarters and familiarized himself with the work being done and proposed; and then began to set up his State machinery.
The drive came off as scheduled, Pennsylvania doubled its quota, subscribing six instead of three millions of dollars, and of this was collected five million eight hundred and twenty-nine thousand dollars--almost one hundred per cent.
Bok, who was now put on the National War Work Council of the Y.M.C.A.
at New York, was asked to take part in the creation of the machinery necessary for the gigantic piece of work that the organization had been called upon by the President of the United States to do.It was a herculean task; practically impossible with any large degree of efficiency in view of the almost insurmountable obstacles to be contended with.But step by step the imperfect machinery was set up, and it began to function in the home camps.Then the overseas work was introduced by the first troops going to France, and the difficulties increased a hundredfold.
But Bok's knowledge of the workings of the government departments at Washington, the war boards, and the other war-work organizations soon convinced him that the Y.M.C.A.was not the only body, asked to set up an organization almost overnight, that was staggering under its load and falling down as often as it was functioning.
The need for Y.M.C.A.secretaries overseas and in the camps soon became acute, and Bok was appointed chairman of the Philadelphia Recruiting Committee.As in the case of his Belgian relief work, he at once surrounded himself with an able committee: this time composed of business and professional men trained in a knowledge of human nature in the large, and of wide acquaintance in the city.Simultaneously, Bok secured the release of one of the ablest men in the Y.M.C.A.service in New York, Edward S.Wilkinson, who became the permanent secretary of the Philadelphia Committee.Bok organized a separate committee composed of automobile manufacturers to recruit for chauffeurs and mechanicians;another separate committee recruited for physical directors, and later a third committee recruited for women.
The work was difficult because the field of selection was limited.No men between the military ages could be recruited; the War Boards at Washington had drawn heavily upon the best men of the city; the slightest physical defect barred out a man, on account of the exposure and strain of the Y.M.C.A.work; the residue was not large.
It was scarcely to be wondered at that so many incompetent secretaries had been passed and sent over to France.How could it have been otherwise with the restricted selection? But the Philadelphia Committee was determined, nevertheless, that its men should be of the best, and it decided that to get a hundred men of unquestioned ability would be to do a greater job than to send over two hundred men of indifferent quality.
The Committee felt that enough good men were still in Philadelphia and the vicinity, if they could be pried loose from their business and home anchorages, and that it was rather a question of incessant work than an impossible task.
Bok took large advertising spaces in the Philadelphia newspapers, asking for men of exceptional character to go to France in the service of the Y.M.C.A.; and members of the Committee spoke before the different commercial bodies at their noon luncheons.The applicants now began to come, and the Committee began its discriminating selection.Each applicant was carefully questioned by the secretary before he appeared before the Committee, which held sittings twice a week.Hence of over twenty-five hundred applicants, only three hundred appeared before the Committee, of whom two hundred and fifty-eight were passed and sent overseas.
