Gentleman from China

The Y. M. C. A. got a new chief this week--a man hardened by 26 years' uphill work in China, proud of his part during the 1922-27 persecution that "took Christianity off the shelf and made it a living issue along the Yangtze," and now determined that the Y will not rest on its oars or live off its fat. His name is Eugene Epperson Barnett. He is General Secretary of the Y. M. C. A.'s National Council and International Committee.

In the U. S. the Y is bigger than many a big business, with property and endowments of $256,000,000, an annual budget of $49,000,000, a membership of 2,000,000.

So diversified are its activities that many an outsider forgets it is a religious organization, thinks of it as a chain of semi-public young men's clubs, with swimming pools, gymnasiums and clean beds. But Florida-born Eugene Barnett knows it where it is poorer and tougher, for this is his first job in 30 years outside the Y's foreign service. From 1910 to 1936 he was on duty in China. From 1937 to 1940 he was globe-trotting as head of the Y's World Service Program in 28 countries.

Secretary Barnett's experience with totalitarianism makes him think its attacks on religion and democracy may in the long run be a good thing. "It will force a re-examination of Christian principles," says he, "that will make men truer Christians." As part of its immediate program he wants the Y to play the same big role in the training camps that it has played in social work for soldiers since the Civil War. As part of its long-range program he wants to make the "C" in Y. M. C. A. stand for more positive Christianity--as powerful a force for Christian leadership in the U. S. as it has been in China, where six members of one Chiang Kai-shek cabinet were former Y secretaries.

"Chinese Christians," thinks Mr. Barnett, "can teach Americans a lot." A symbol of their spirit is the paperweight on his Manhattan desk -- a fragment of the bomb with which a Japanese plane com pletely destroyed the big Y auditorium at Chungking two days before he got there last June. Though Chungking's Y has now been bombed five times, the work goes on regardless. Says its dogged Chinese general secretary: "They may destroy all our buildings, but they can't destroy the Y."

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