Here on the site of Napoleon’s ancient battlefield is the largest concentration camp in Egypt.  The white tents of the Australasians shelter a population as numerous as many a city, with three Association buildings for the men.  From out the great pyramid there is a constant stream of soldiers passing to and fro.  And there under the shadow of the Sphinx are two more Y M C A huts.  Jessop, the former secretary at Washington, has been in charge here, with a large staff of secretaries from Australia and New Zealand.  General Sir Archibald Murray, in command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Forces, says:  “First of all, the men must have mess huts; then we want the Y M C A.”

Cairo is the throbbing center of Egypt’s life, where vice does not lurk in secret, but flaunts itself in open effrontery.  Our secretaries have been at work there in the long lines of men that stand outside the places of vice, handing them Testaments and urging them to come away.  The Y M C A has taken over a large amusement center in the Ezbekieh Gardens in the very heart of Cairo; and in spite of the public saloon nearby, with its attraction of music and wine, from two hundred to two thousand men are constantly thronging the Association rooms.  The attractive equipment of a garden, an open-air theater, a skating rink, baths, supper counters, and a meeting place, but most of all the personal touch of the two earnest secretaries, make the whole work effective.  The Association has also rented the spacious Bourse, where it houses several hundred men who are in the city on short leave, while its lobby is used for concerts and entertainments.  During the last action five of the Y M C A huts on the Canal Zone were under fire.  But there is no day passes but that the men under canvas in this hot land of Egypt are under fire from temptations more deadly than Turkish bullets.

Leaving Egypt, we passed over the hot and stifling Red Sea, across the Indian Ocean, toward the sunny plains of India.  Away from the snowy ridge of the Himalayas, down across the bare plains of the north and the rice fields and cocoa-nut palms of the tropic south, India lies like a vast continent, embracing one-fifth of the human race.  It was held before the war by some 75,000 British and twice as many Indian troops.  The numbers are completely altered now.  Almost the whole regular force, both Indian and British, are away fighting in Mesopotamia, East Africa, France, and Egypt, while a new territorial force of Kitchener’s army of London clerks and English civilians has taken its place.

One hundred and fifty secretaries in India were ready upon the outbreak of the war.  All across India the Y M C A has opened huts, buildings, or tents for the territorial and other forces.[1] A writer in the Journal of the Royal Sussex Regiment, at Bangalore, said:  “Somehow the very letters, Y M C A have gathered to themselves an implication of comfort, pleasure, and welcome; we instinctively feel among friends.”