ide travels in "The Man in the Arm Chair"; he got Kate Douglas Wiggin
to tell a country church experience of hers in "The Old Peabody Pew";
and Jean Webster her knowledge of almshouse life in "Daddy Long Legs."

The readers of _The Ladies' Home Journal_ realized that it searched the
whole field of endeavor in literature and art to secure what would
interest them, and they responded with their support.

Another of Bok's methods in editing was to do the common thing in an
uncommon way. He had the faculty of putting old wine in new bottles
and the public liked it. His ideas were not new; he knew there were no
new ideas, but he presented his ideas in such a way that they seemed
new. It is a significant fact, too, that a large public will respond
more quickly to an idea than it will to a name.

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 w