100 years ago in The Record

Sunday, Nov. 24, 1918

Churches in Troy turn their pulpits over for part of the day to speakers hoping to raise money for the city’s War Chest drive, which still has a goal to meet despite the end of the world war.

While an armistice ended the war on November 11 many American troops are expected to remain in Europe for months more at least. The War Chest supports organizations like the YMCA and Knights of Columbus that provide recreation and moral support for the troops.

Speaking for the War Chest at Second Baptist Church this morning is Lieutenant Charles B. Muir of the Canadian Black Watch regiment. A veteran of the Battle of the Somme and other bloody engagements, Muir “is a forceful speaker [who] held the attention of his audience throughout his entire talk,” according to a Record reporter.

Muir tells the congregation that “he himself used to be one of the men who, when they saw a minister coming, would dodge around a corner until he was past. But the life ‘out there’ brings everyone closer to the real things of life, and he personally had brought back from the trenches a great respect for the wearers of the cloth.”

Major Cecil Arthur Allen makes his final speech of his stay in Troy at Second Pres- byterian Church tonight. He had given War Chest talks nightly at Proctor’s Theater, but will be returning to New York City tomorrow.

“While his speech was not particularly on behalf of the War Chest, Major Allen appreciates so fully the good work done by the organizations the War Chest represents that he could not conclude his speech without some mention of it,” our church reporter writes.

The good work could be as simple as telling jokes. Allen describes a regiment coming back from the trenches exhausted and dispirited and staying that way until “the

‘ Y’ man or the ‘K of C’ man or the man belonging to a similar service who was nearest them would get in his good work.

“He would drop around where the boys were and tell a couple of jokes. The first joke, perhaps, would fall flat. The boys would look at him with unseeing eyes, as if the greatest joke in the world were nothing to them.

“Then one of them would laugh and eventually perhaps one would tell a joke himself. Then the worker knew that the worst was over.”

Once the worker got the men singing together, “he knew the smiles would be coming out, they would soon be joking among themselves and everything would be all right again.”