When the war broke out, Callan and Carter approached the Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief to ask if they could serve the Indian Army as it was to start as an expeditionary force to France.  Since the Mutiny of 1857, with its religious superstition and prejudice about the greased cartridges, etc., no Christian work had been permitted in the Indian Army.  Finally, however, permission was given to the Association to begin work with the troops before embarkation.  Upon arrival in Bombay, our secretaries called upon the Commanding Officer, who had wired to the General at Headquarters to know what he could do to hold his discontented troops together in the flooded and crowded quarters about the docks.  The general had just wired, “Consult the Y M C A and ask them to send for their army department.”  He had known of Callan’s work at Bangalore, Dacca, and other centers, and believed it would supply just the missing link with the dissatisfied men.  When our secretaries called, the Colonel had just received the telegram and was prepared to give them a chance to see what they could do for the troops.

Within twenty-four hours a work was organized which kept the sepoys occupied for all their leisure time.  Football and hockey and outdoor athletics, excursions down the harbor, sea bathing, lectures, and entertainments were soon in full swing.  This was the first work of the kind ever done for the Indian Army.  So instantly and obviously invaluable did it become that the Commanding Officer insisted that the secretaries should accompany the troops on the long and much dreaded trip to France, which was a bold and untried venture for Indian soldiers.

It was a historic event when that great fleet of some seventy-five ships, the largest assembled since the Spanish Armada, freighted with about 25,000 troops bound for France, East Africa, and Persia, weighed anchor, and sailed out of Bombay harbor with the first twelve Y M C A secretaries on board.  Arrived in France, permission was finally obtained from the Commander-in-Chief to land and begin work on French soil.

Here the moral problem made the work of the Association a crying necessity.  Soon there were some 25,000 Indian troops concentrated around Marseilles.  These men could neither safely be let out of bounds nor kept contented within bounds.  A cordon of troops around the camp could not keep vice out.  The Y M C A was needed as a counter attraction.  Upon an outbreak of drinking and immorality on the part of a group of Sikh soldiers, the whole garrison was called out to witness these men stripped and flogged in exemplary punishment.  The Sikhs felt this to be such a public disgrace that they asked for the use of the Y M C A hut in which to hold a council meeting.  They finally decided to ask one of the secretaries to address the whole body of Sikhs on the subject of intemperance and impurity, for the Association was already tacitly recognized by all as the dominant moral force in the camp.