AUTHOR'S PREFACE
The Community Center movement in America has been slowly but steadily gaining momentum for a number of years, but it took a state of war to turn into a single channel the full power of every organized effort in that direction. Very early in the war there came a realization that the 50,000,000 civilian population could render more effective service through group organization. This became apparent to me through the thousands of letters I received, as Washington Editor of Pictorial Review, and in response to a wide demand for information on community organization I wrote for the magazine a series of articles on this subject. I searched the country for concrete examples of successful community organization, as few experiments had been made on a large scale and facts of practical value were difficult to secure. While these articles were running in the magazine a great driving force was injected into the community work; the Government, through the Council of National Defense, the United States Bureau of Education, and the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense, inaugurated a nation-wide campaign in the interest of community organization.
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