A thousand Hi-Y boys (junior members of the Y. M. C. A.) gathered round a platform in the Court of Peace at the New York World’s Fair. In their centre, a torch in his hand and a pile of wood at his feet, stood Tracy Strong, general secretary of the World’s Alliance of the Y. M. C. A. Cried he: “I now light this International Fire of Friendship.” Mr. Strong touched his torch to the wood. As the fire sprang up, Y. M. C. A. boys from Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, South America threw faggots on the Fire of Friendship.
Throughout the world, on the same night this week, Y. M. C. A.s sponsored similar fire rituals. Broadcast to them all, from the World’s Fair, went a speech on “Youth in Tomorrow’s World,” by Attorney General Frank Murphy, a devout Roman Catholic who is no more averse to helping the Y. M. C. A. than to endorsing the Oxford Group (see p. 54). All this smoke, fire and warm sentiment celebrated the Y. M. C. A.’s 95th anniversary.
When the Y. M. C. A. was a pious dream in the mind of a British draper’s clerk, George Williams, it came near being a less easily pronounceable set of initials—the Y. M. R. A. (Young Men’s Religious Association). Williams, a plugger who became a partner in the firm, married his partner’s daughter and eventually was knighted by Queen Victoria, finally settled on the name “Christian” instead of “Religious,” stipulated that only evangelical Christians could join his association.
The Y. M. C. A. took root in the U. S. and Canada long before Founder Williams died. Its American backers, beginning 50 years ago, did far more than those of any other nation to extend its work throughout the world. They also shifted its emphasis. Today, with some 1,900,000 members in 10,000 local associations in 60 lands, the “Y” is no longer exclusively evangelical or Christian; Jews may belong.* Most people now think of the Y. M. C. A. not as a religious organization but as a chain of semi-public young men’s clubs, with gymnasiums and clean beds.
To a great extent the Y. M. C. A. still suffers, in the popular mind, from the reputation it acquired during the World War, when soldiers welcomed the use of its huts but resented the attentions of its gladhanding, often sanctimonious secretaries. Latterly the Y. M. C. A. in the U. S., with its $212,000,000 in property and endowment and its $48,000,000 income, has been accused—because its high command eschews politico-economic controversy—of being socially laggard, of being a closed corporation in which working secretaries tend to become older and older. Nevertheless, if the Y. M. C. A. has diluted its Christian message in nominally Christian nations, it has become a powerful force for Christian leadership elsewhere in the world. Its international organization, built over many years by a great international Christian, Dr. John Raleigh Mott, is now activated by 900-odd native-born “Y” secretaries, whose influence is great in such lands as China.
* The Young Men’s Hebrew Association, patterned after the Y. M. C. A., is not connected with it.
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