The Authoritative Life of General William Booth Part 26

For example:--

i. There has been a great lack of direct aim at the true goal of our Social Work on the part of some Officers who have been engaged in its direction.

Some of our comrades have been content with a "soup-and-blanket"

regime. That is to say, they have too often been satisfied with the alleviation of the miseries of the hour, and have stopped short of the removal of the evils that have caused the poverty, vice, and agony from which the sufferings sprang.

Consequently, the work, being superficial, has in some cases only had superficial and temporary results.

You get out of a thing as much as you put in--and no more, and that, not only in quant.i.ty, but in quality. If you go in for root-and-branch efforts, you will get root-and-branch results.

ii. Another cause of our shortcomings has been the lamentable fact that some of our Officers have been deficient in personal religion.

Our Social Work is essentially a religious business. It can neither be contemplated, commenced, nor carried on, with any great success, without a heart full of pity, and love, and endued with the power of the Holy Ghost.

iii. Another of our difficulties has been the scarcity of suitable people for carrying the work on. This was also to be expected.

If we had been content with hirelings, and had sought them out from among the philanthropies and Churches, we should have found plenty in number, but it is equally certain we should have had considerably more doleful failures than those we have experienced.

We are not only making but are now training the Social Officers, and we shall doubtless improve in this respect, whilst the work they turn out will be bound to improve proportionately.

iv. Then again a further reason for our shortcomings has been our shortness of money.

This need unfortunately is not pa.s.sing away, as you will all well know. But I suppose some of you have come from distant lands with bags of francs and dollars to present The General with an ample supply of this requirement. He thanks you beforehand.

(b) Nevertheless, and notwithstanding all our shortcomings, the position now occupied by our Social Operations, and the influence exercised by them on the great and small of the earth, is in evidence in every Continent and on every hand.

There is no doubt that the world, as a whole, feels much of the admiration and grat.i.tude which the Press lavished upon me on my recent Birthday--admiration which was a.s.suredly intended not only for myself, but for The Army as a whole, and not only for The Army as a whole, but for its Social Workers in particular.

1. And now, in conclusion, let me summarise a few of the advantages which have flowed out of the Social Work, and which will continue to flow out of it as long as time rolls on.

(a) The first benefit I will mention is the Salvation of thousands of souls.

(b) The world has been further benefited by the knowledge of Salvation spread throughout every part of the habitable globe.

(c) The world has been further benefited by the Conviction that has been brought to governmental, philanthropic, and religious agencies, as to the duty they owe to the cla.s.ses we seek to benefit.

(d) The world has been further benefited by the sympathy created in the hearts of royal personages, scientists, literary people, and the Press generally; indeed, in every cla.s.s and grade of mankind.

(e) The world has been further benefited by the removal of misery on such an extensive scale as had never even been dreamed of as possible.

Think of the mult.i.tudes who, by our operations, are daily saved from starvation, vice, crime, disease, death, and a hundred other nameless woes.

In some of the princ.i.p.al cities in Italy, Holland, Germany, and elsewhere, visited during my recent Continental Campaign, I have been looked upon with unspeakable satisfaction and enthusiasm as The General of the Poor, and The Salvation Army has been regarded as their friend.

(f) The world has been further benefited by the help which our Social Operations have afforded to the Field and other Departments of The Army all over the world.

(g) The world has been further benefited by the confidence the Social Work has created in the hearts and minds of our own people--both Officers and Soldiers--as to the truth and righteousness of the principles and practices of The Salvation Army.

(h) The world has been further benefited by the answer which the Social Work const.i.tutes to the infidel's sneers at Christianity and the a.s.sertion of its effeteness.

Truly, our future chroniclers will have to record the fact that our Social Operations added a celestial l.u.s.tre and imparted a Divine dignity to the struggles of the early years of The Salvation Army's history.

To our own eyes in The Army, however, that which has been done in connexion with the Inst.i.tutions is only a very insignificant part of the whole effect produced. Until the present movement all over the world in favour of the betterment of the social condition of the ma.s.ses of the people has had time to accomplish definite results, our Inst.i.tutions may yet have a good work to do.

But the great work The General did in this connexion was the restoration to men's minds of the Saviour's own view, that we owed to every man every care that a truly brotherly heart must needs bestow. That principle, as The General pointed out, had always been acted upon, as best it could be, from the beginning, and is daily acted upon to-day, wherever The Army exists.

Chapter XXI

Motoring Triumphs

During one of his Motor Tours The General remarked:--

"It was here (Banbury) that the idea of a Motor Campaign was conceived. Seven or eight years ago (1900) I held an afternoon Meeting in this place. On that occasion a crowd of my own people and friends came to the station to give me a send-off. Such was the affection shown, and so manifest was the pleasure derived from my visit, that I said to myself:--

"'Why should I not impart this satisfaction to those comrades and friends throughout the country who have never had the satisfaction of seeing my face, or hearing my voice?'

"And then the idea occurred to my mind that the automobile would not only be the readiest means of transit, but the only plan by which I could reach the small towns and outlying hamlets. Moreover, it would perhaps prove the only method by which we could get through the crowds who would be likely to a.s.semble on such a Campaign."

By most men, in their prime, it would be thought an ample filling up of any week to address three large Meetings on the Sunday, and one each week night; but The General, at seventy-four, saw that, travelling by motor, and visiting in the daytime such smaller towns and villages as had never seen him before, or not for many years, he could not only reckon upon three large indoor Meetings every day, but speak, perhaps, to millions of people he had never before addressed. And so in six Motor Tours he pa.s.sed from end to end and from side to side of Great Britain, gathering crowds from day to day for six weeks at a time.

We have met with people frivolous enough to write of all that as if The General's Motor Tours were luxuries! In one glorious sense they were really so, for, to him, there could never be a greater luxury than to proclaim the Gospel to a crowd. But, as a matter of fact, he found it less expensive to travel in this way than to go as he ordinarily did for a long journey to and from London by train to reach each town separately.

And the economy of Army forces, by means of Motor Tours, has been marvellous, every little Corps and village Outpost on the route on week-days being given an opportunity to gather crowds they never ordinarily reached together, and to unite their own efforts for once with those of their General in trying to lift up Christ more than ever before.

And The General was so alive to the value of inflaming the love of any handful of villagers or children, but especially of his Soldiers and Officers to the Master, that it was to him a continual delight to move about amongst his Soldiery in every land.

The General could rarely venture to plan very far ahead, because his public appearances had all to be made to fit in with other and often even more important engagements, of which only his Staff knew anything.

It is, indeed, marvellous how few engagements he made ever had to be broken, and how successful almost every Campaign of his has been, seeing at how short notice most of them were undertaken. In one of his diaries I found a bitter complaint of the waste of time involved in having to wait for three hours between the steamboat and train. "Why," he asks, "could they not have arranged a Meeting for me?"

One who has travelled 8,000 miles with him on four Motor Tours says, though everybody, everywhere, pressmen included, were of necessity impressed with his sincerity and transparency, they could see that he had all the time only one object in view, the glory of G.o.d and the Salvation of souls.

And it is the extent to which he led all ranks into the same spirit which made it easy for arrangements to be made and carried out in so few hours for the very largest demonstrations, as to which it was never possible to hold any approach to a rehearsal, those joining in them living usually so widely apart from each other.

An occasional private letter gives, perhaps, the best possible explanation of his own heart in this perpetual motion towards the Cross.

Who that saw him in some grand demonstration could imagine that he had been feeling just before it as this letter reveals:--

"My feelings alternate; but my faith is steadfast. Morning, noon, and night I tell G.o.d He is my only help. He will not fail me.

To-night's Meeting will be, as you say, a great strain; but the memories of G.o.d's goodness encourage me to go forward in spite of unutterable sadness and gloom."

And who that heard him on one of those Congresses, in which a great company of his Officers and Soldiers felt themselves to be feasting on heavenly manna for days together, could imagine his writing the week after:--

"If ever I felt my full agreement with my Lord's definition of service as expressed in the parable, I do to-day. After all, I am a poor, unprofitable servant, and I have lost no little sleep since Friday night in criticising regretfully and condemning my share of the wonderful Congress that has certainly taken a large part of the world by storm. Nevertheless, I thank G.o.d from the bottom of my heart for the part I have been allowed to have in the matter."

Amongst the incidents of all touring, but especially of motoring, are storms such as the one The General thus triumphed over:--