ABSTRACT
At the Metro Centre YMCA in downtown Toronto, there is an old sign near the front entrance – distressed wood, antique font. “Every member of the YMCA is your friend. Speak to him. You need no introduction,” it reads. This sentiment, so strong in the early YMCA movement, came under increasing strain during the First World War, as relations broke down between the leadership of YMCAs in Allied countries and in the Central Powers. While the international YMCA secretariat in Geneva remained neutral and facilitated YMCA services that crossed international frontiers, national YMCAs became ever more involved in their own war efforts and built up the national bureaucracies needed for this purpose. Even among the YMCAs of the Allied countries, associations began to take on increasingly national characteristics and took on ever more independent work throughout the war.
