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Certain situations in the lives of peoples draw all their various members and forces together into a single head of purpose. The obvious example is war when the strength or life of a nation is menaced by a foreign, but human power. In times of peace such as we happily enjoy at present, there are, more rarely, reasons and occasions calling forth a united effort on the part of all citizens and institutions. Such a reason is furnished by a general enemy of mankind -- the virus of infantile paralysis -- such an occasion by the President's Birthday Ball.

It is difficult to comprehend the magnitude of the nation's gesture. In communities, great and small, in every corner of the country where citizens are celebrating and contributing to the fund against poliomyelitis, the drama of the national effort is obscured by the detail of the local situation. In cities, towns and hamlets throughout the United States where men and women of every trade and profession have been bending their efforts for weeks toward the success of their own community parties, it is difficult to see the woods for the trees; it is hard to envisage the national picture composed of their work duplicated and multiplied a thousand times to make a panorama of an embattled people.

Infrequently do we see a cause to which so many diverse elements in American life subscribe. There is no class, no group of citizenry which does not contribute, there is no agency which does not lend a strong hand to the work. National leaders in politics, finance, labor, art, science and the church, the press, radio, the stage and the motion pictures, men and their organizations in every branch of endeavor give freely of their time and talents.

Among the national leaders who were prompt to accept membership on the national committee were: Ambassador Joseph V. Davies, Charles G. Dawes, Edsel B. Ford, Walter S. Gifford, William Green, Patrick Cardinal Hayes, William Randolph , Hearst, Bishop William T. Manning and General John J. Pershing.

Labor under the leadership of William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor, was especially successful in putting the support of local organizations in all trades behind the movement. Serving with Mr. Green on the national committee was John L. Lewis, head of the Committee for Industrial Organization.

Governors of forty-eight states and the territories of Hawaii and Alaska without exception accepted appointments as honorary chairmen. Senators and Congressmen threw their influence into the campaign, many sending their endorsements to national headquarters.

The press with its customary generosity in the case of an endeavor so important to the national life, devoted columns of space to the organization work. Radio co-operated to the fullest extent. Networks and independent stations gave up their time and commercial broadcasters released their star performers to be used by national and local committees. The theatre and motion pictures contributed celebrities to enhance the interest in celebrations in larger centers.

A striking fact about the volunteer army of workers was that no citizen was too great or too small to march in its ranks. Men of business whose. hours were counted in thousands of dollars devoted days to the work of organization. Debutantes who were supposed to be interested exclusively in the latest dance steps and fripperies from Paris, became suddenly serious of mind and threw their social activities out of the window to give their time and effort to the work. Hard-pressed country doctors sat up late at night to make reports, enthusiastic community nurses, workers in factories, farmers in remote districts spent themselves in arousing the interest of their neighbors and in helping the national committee by sending in accounts of their progress.

The drawing up of all these individual and institutional forces to a single head was naturally not accomplished without careful planning and intense activity. Weeks before the President's birthday the national committee set up a skeleton staff of organizers at national headquarters. They threw out a net of information and inquiry over the whole country, stimulating local activity and drawing in reports which enabled them to begin to make component parts of the vast voluntary machine co-ordinate. The activities of this organization continued at mounting speed throughout the campaign. Co-, incidentally the committees' publicity organization was enabled to keep constantly before the minds of the citizens the prospect of the nation-wide parties and the pressing reason for their support. This was only possible through the warmest co-operation on the part of all agencies of public information -- the press, the radio and the motion pictures.

Naturally it was upon the work of the volunteers that success ultimately depended. There was no way of discovering unless a census of the United States had been taken, how many citizens gave of their time and energy. But the knowledge that there were throughout the country many thousand general chairmen, each of whom was assisted by from half a dozen to five hundred workers. gives us some concept of-'the-size of the organization corps.