nd very few of them can read or write. The
gramophone interests them enormously, and they look inside it to see
who is producing the sound, and will sit round in a circle listening to
it for hours. Picture papers interest them, but usually they prefer
holding the pictures upside down. The better educated men write a good
deal on the free notepaper provided by the Y.M.C.A. Quartettes are sung
by Karen and Chinese Christians. At the far end of the building is a
huge image of the Buddha which was there before we came, and is used by
some of the boys as a sort of chapel for private devotions. The boys
have to take their choice between Christianity and Buddhism, and as we
have three exceptionally good lamps there is much more light at the
Y.M.C.A. end of the hall, and we have the better attendance in numbers
at all events.

Egypt, handicapped at first through lack of money, has also done
magnificently. There is no more important centre of Association activity
in the world than the Esbekia Gardens in Cairo. Ever since the early
days of the war, night after night, thousands of khaki-clad warriors
have congregated in these lovely gardens, which under other auspices
might easily have been one of the danger spots of Cairo, instead of a
kind of modern 'City of Refuge' from the temptations of the city. The
Anzac hostel is another striking feature of the work in Cairo. In June
1917 no fewer than 6893 soldiers slept in it, and that was not by any
means a record month. The money for the purchase of this hostel as the
permanent property of the Y.M.C.A. has been subscribed by members of the
Baltic, but the discovery of the existence of a third mortgage has
delayed the completion of the purchase. At Alexandria, Khartoum, Port
Soudan, on both sides of the canal and far into the Sinai Peninsula, the
Association outposts have been busy. A Red Triangle hut in the desert
was destroyed by a bomb dropped from a hostile aeroplane, but when the
smoke subsided, the centre pole was still standing and the Association
flag flying. The huts at Kantara are amongst the finest in the world,
and neither here nor anywhere else has it been necessary to put up a
notice intimating that the Y.M.C.A. is 'open to all,' Tommy knows it,
and regards the Red Triangle as his own peculiar possession. One cannot
conceive of any place on earth where it is more needed than in one of
these desert camps, where there is nothing to do, nowhere to go, and
nothing to see but e