When, early in 1917, events began so to shape themselves as directly to point to the entrance of the United States into the Great War, Edward Bok set himself to formulate a policy for The Ladies' Home Journal.He knew that he was in an almost insurmountably difficult position.The huge edition necessitated going to press fully six weeks in advance of publication, and the preparation of material fully four weeks previous to that.He could not, therefore, get much closer than ten weeks to the date when his readers received the magazine.And he knew that events, in war time, had a way of moving rapidly.
Late in January he went to Washington, consulted those authorities who could indicate possibilities to him better than any one else, and found, as he had suspected, that the entry of the United States into the war was a practical certainty; it was only a question of time.
Bok went South for a month's holiday to get ready for the fray, and in the saddle and on the golf links he formulated a policy.The newspapers and weeklies would send innumerable correspondents to the front, and obviously, with the necessity for going to press so far in advance, The Journal could not compete with them.They would depict every activity in the field.There was but one logical thing for him to do: ignore the "front" entirely, refuse all the offers of correspondents, men and women, who wanted to go with the armies for his magazine, and cover fully and practically the results of the war as they would affect the women left behind.He went carefully over the ground to see what these would be, along what particular lines women's activities would be most likely to go, and then went home and back to Washington.
It was now March.He conferred with the President, had his fears confirmed, and offered all the resources of his magazine to the government.His diagnosis of the situation was verified in every detail by the authorities whom he consulted.The Ladies' Home Journal could best serve by keeping up the morale at home and by helping to meet the problems that would confront the women; as the President said: "Give help in the second line of defense."A year before, Bok had opened a separate editorial office in Washington and had secured Dudley Harmon, the Washington correspondent for The New York Sun, as his editor-in-charge.The purpose was to bring the women of the country into a clearer understanding of their government and a closer relation with it.This work had been so successful as to necessitate a force of four offices and twenty stenographers.Bok now placed this Washington office on a war-basis, bringing it into close relation with every department of the government that would be connected with the war activities.By this means, he had an editor and an organized force on the spot, devoting full time to the preparation of war material, with Mr.Harmon in daily conference with the department chiefs to secure the newest developments.
Bok learned that the country's first act would be to recruit for the navy, so as to get this branch of the service into a state of preparedness.He therefore secured Franklin D.Roosevelt, assistant secretary of the navy, to write an article explaining to mothers why they should let their boys volunteer for the Navy and what it would mean to them.
He made arrangements at the American Red Cross Headquarters for an official department to begin at once in the magazine, telling women the first steps that would be taken by the Red Cross and how they could help.He secured former President William Howard Taft, as chairman of the Central Committee of the Red Cross, for the editor of this department.
He cabled to Viscount Northcliffe and Ian Hay for articles showing what the English women had done at the outbreak of the war, the mistakes they had made, what errors the American women should avoid, the right lines along which English women had worked and how their American sisters could adapt these methods to transatlantic conditions.
And so it happened that when the first war issue of The Journal appeared on April 20th, only three weeks after the President's declaration, it was the only monthly that recognized the existence of war, and its pages had already begun to indicate practical lines along which women could help.
The President planned to bring the Y.M.C.A.into the service by making it a war-work body, and Bok immediately made arrangements for a page to appear each month under the editorship of John R.Mott, general secretary of the International Y.M.C.A.Committee.
The editor had been told that the question of food would come to be of paramount importance; he knew that Herbert Hoover had been asked to return to America as soon as he could close his work abroad, and he cabled over to his English representative to arrange that the proposed Food Administrator should know, at first hand, of the magazine and its possibilities for the furtherance of the proposed Food Administration work.
The Food Administration was no sooner organized than Bok made arrangements for an authoritative department to be conducted in his magazine, reflecting the plans and desires of the Food Administration, and Herbert Hoover's first public declaration as food administrator to the women of America was published in The Ladies' Home Journal.Bok now placed all the resources of his four-color press-work at Mr.Hoover's disposal; and the Food Administration's domestic experts, in conjunction with the full culinary staff of the magazine, prepared the new war dishes and presented them appetizingly in full colors under the personal endorsement of Mr.Hoover and the Food Administration.From six to sixteen articles per month were now coming from Mr.Hoover's department alone.
The Department of Agriculture was laid under contribution by the magazine for the best ideas for the raising of food from the soil in the creation of war-gardens.
