The Authoritative Life of General William Booth Part 28

Rejoicing as we do in all that, we cannot too strongly guard every one against the impression that The Army has become, either at its centre, or anywhere else, so situated that there is not at any given moment extraordinary strain in some financial direction. It has come to be very generally known that the individual Officer can only keep in existence because he has schooled his desires to be content with what others all around would regard as "an impossible pittance."

We hear one day of a great city where the conditions of life are such that a Rescue Home is evidently urgently needed, and the lady who calls our attention to the matter offers at once to find 500 towards the fitting-up of such a Home. But we know that to keep it up requires gifts amounting to some thousands of pounds each year, which, if not subscribed locally, we shall have to provide from Headquarters.

Now what is to be done? Are we to stand still with what seems to us so valuable an offer, not only of money-helps but of opportunity to help?

Under the circ.u.mstances we know what The General would have done. He would without a moment's hesitation have said: "This ought to be done, and must be done"; and, trusting in G.o.d, he would have made the other step forward, though perfectly conscious that it would probably involve him in new cares and anxieties.

"Four s.h.i.+llings and tenpence. Now, really, can't we manage that twopence to make five s.h.i.+llings?"

Such an appeal, heard at a street-corner, where one of our Open-Air Meetings is being closed, is, I fear, the first and last that many people hear of The Salvation Army. They have not been present at the Meeting. All the beautiful speaking and singing of happy men and women, anxious to do anything they can for the good of others--of this the pa.s.sers-by know nothing. Many of them "would not be seen standing to listen" amidst the crowd, still less when, for want of any considerable crowd, they would be more conspicuous. Hence they have no chance to see or know what really takes place. Had they even seen the whole process of getting that four s.h.i.+llings and tenpence they would have noted that most of the money really came from the Salvationists forming the ring, who threw their pence, or sixpences, gradually, in the hope of inciting others to do likewise.

As it is, I fear, many go their way "disgusted at the whole thing,"

because of the little sc.r.a.p of it they have overheard.

But, pray, what is the essential difference between the call for "twopence to make up a s.h.i.+lling," and the colossal call made in the name of some royal personage for "an additional ten thousand pounds" to make up the 25,000 needed for a new hospital wing? Surely, a hospital, whose value and services commend it to the entire population should need no such spurs as subscription lists published in all the papers, or even the memory of a world benefactor to help it to get the needed funds. But it does, and its energetic promoters, be they royal or not, deserve and get universal praise for "stooping"--if it be stooping--to any device of this kind needed to get the cash. Do they get it? is the only question any sensible person asks.

And n.o.body questions that our "stooping" Officers and "begging Sisters"

get the twopences and s.h.i.+llings and pounds needed to keep The Army going, in spite of all its critics--whether of the blatant street-corner, or of the kid-gloved slanderer type.

If we reflect upon the subject we shall see how sound and valuable are the principles on which all our twopenny appeals are based.

From the very beginning The General always set up the standard of local self-support as one of the essentials of any real work. Whilst labouring almost exclusively amongst the poorest of the poor, he wrote, in 1870:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: Emma Booth-Tucker

Born January 8th. 1860. Died October 28th. 1903.]

"The entire cost of carrying on the Mission at present is about 50 per week. The offerings of the people themselves at the various stations are now about 17 per week; indeed, nearly every Station is paying its own working expenses. Thus the poor people themselves do something. This they ought to do. It would be wrong to deprive them of the privilege of giving their mite, and if they prize the instrumentalities that have been blessed to them, and are rightly instructed, they will cheerfully give, however small their contribution may be."

It has only been by clinging to this plan that the little Society, begun in the East of London, has been able to spread itself throughout the world and yet remain independent, everywhere, of local magnates. And The General had the sorry satisfaction of seeing the structure tested by the most cruel winds of slander and suspicion, with the result that the total of contributions to its funds during the last years has been greater than ever before. Part, indeed, of our greatest difficulty with regard to money now is the large total yearly at our disposal, when all the totals in every country and locality are added together. Any one can understand that this must be so, and that it could not help us to publish the amount all together. If in a hundred places only a thousand pounds were raised, anybody can see that to cry aloud about the hundred thousand in any one of those places could not but make everybody in that place less capable of strenuous struggle such as is needed to get together each thousand.

Therefore, whilst publis.h.i.+ng every year the properly audited balance-sheet referring to amounts received and spent in London, and similar balance-sheets, similarly audited, in each other capital, we have always refrained, and always shall refrain, from any such ma.s.sing of totals, or glorying in any of them, as could help our enemies to check the flow of liberality anywhere.

When, in 1895, there seemed to be a general cry for some special investigation into the use made of the Fund raised as a result of The General's "Darkest England" Appeal, we were able to get a Commission of some of the most eminent men in the country, whose Report effectively disposed of any doubts at the time.

The Commission had for Chairman Earl Onslow, and its members were the Right Hon. Sir Henry James (afterwards Lord James), Messrs. Sydney Buxton, Walter Long, and Mr. Edwin Waterhouse, President of the Inst.i.tute of Chartered Accountants, the Right Hon. Hobhouse, M.P., acted as Secretary.

The Report of no Commission could, however, still any hostile tongue.

The cry for "investigation" has always been simply the cry of enmity or envy, which no amount of investigation could ever satisfy. The General perfectly understood this at the time, and wrote to a friend of the discerning order:--

"How I feel generally with respect to the future is expressed in one word, or rather two, 'Go forward.' The Red Sea has to be crossed and the people rescued from h.e.l.l here and h.e.l.l hereafter.

We must stick to our post.

"I am quite aware that I may now, probably shall be, more misunderstood than ever. But G.o.d and time will fight for me. I must wait, and my comrades must wait with me.

"I need not say that the subject has had, and still has, our fullest consideration; but I cannot say more until I see clearly what position the country will take up towards me during the next few days."

Need I say that this Report never checked for one day the ferocity of the attacks upon the General or his Army. Had public opinion been deluded by the babblings of our critics in any country we should not only have lost all support, but been consigned to jails as swindlers and robbers. But the fact that we get ever-increasing sums, and are ever more and more aided by grants from Governments and Corporations, or by permissions for street-collecting, is the clearest demonstration that we are notoriously upright in all our dealings.

So many insinuations have been persistently thrown out, year after year, with regard to the integrity of The General's dealings with finance, that I have taken care not merely to consult with comrades, but to give opportunity to some who were said to "have left in disgust" with regard to these matters, to correct my own impression if they could.

Having been so little at Headquarters myself since I left for Germany, in 1890, I knew that my own personal knowledge might be disputed, and my accuracy questioned; therefore, I have been extra careful to ascertain, beyond all possibility of dispute, the correctness of the view I now give.

One who for many years had the direction of financial affairs at the International Headquarters, and who retired through failing health rather than become a burden upon the Army's ever-strained exchequer, wrote me on November 28, 1910:--

"The General has always taken the keenest interest in all questions bearing upon The Army's financial affairs, and has ever been alive to the necessity for their being so administered as to ensure the contributing public's having the utmost possible value for the money contributed, at the same time rendering a careful account from year to year of his stewards.h.i.+p.

"Carefully prepared budgets of income and expenditure are submitted to him year by year in connexion with all the central funds, reports are called for from time to time as to the extent to which such estimates have been realised.

"He was always keen and far-sighted in his consideration of the proposals put before him, and quick to find a flaw or weakness, or to point out any responsibilities which had not been sufficiently taken into account.

"Until recent years, when his world-wide journeyings made it necessary to pa.s.s the responsibility on to the Chief of the Staff, he largely initiated his own schemes for raising money, and wrote his own princ.i.p.al appeals.

"Those who refer to The General as 'a puppet in the hands of others,' or as anything but an unselfish, disinterested servant of humanity, only show their ignorance of their subject."

One of the schemes by which our finances have been greatly helped everywhere, and which is now imitated by many Churches and Societies all over the world--the Self-Denial Week, established in 1886--was The General's own invention. It was at a time when, as he writes:--

"In some Corps half, and in some more than half, of our Soldiers have been for months without any income at all, or at most with just a s.h.i.+lling or two. In addition, many of our regular contributors, as owners of land or of manufacturing houses, have suffered from the depression, and have not been able to a.s.sist us further.

"The rapid extension of The Army has necessitated an increased expenditure. Our friends will see that our position is really a serious one.

"What is to be done? Reduction, which means retreat, is impossible.

To stand still is equally so.

"We propose that a week be set apart in which every Soldier and friend should deny himself of some article of food or clothing, or some indulgence which can be done without, and that the price gained by this self-denial shall be sent to help us in this emergency.

"Deny yourself of something which brings you pleasure or gratification, and so not only have the blessing of helping us, but the profit which this self-denial will bring to your own soul."

This effort, which in the year of its inauguration only produced 4,280, has in twenty-six years grown till it totalled in Great Britain in 1911, 67,161, and has so taken hold of the people's minds and hearts everywhere as to produce even in poor little Belgium last year 7,500 f.

Perhaps it need hardly be explained that the system of special effort and special begging near the entrance to railway stations, and in all the most prominent places of the cities, which has grown out of this week, with the approval of Governments and Press everywhere, has done more than any one could have dreamt of to increase interest in the needs of others, and holiness and self-denial in attending to them.

And it is, after all, upon that development of practical love for everybody that The Army's finance depends.

Merely to have interested so many rich people in The Army might have been a great credit to The General's influence, but to have raised up everywhere forces of voluntary mendicants who, at any rate, for weeks at a time are not ashamed to be seen begging in the streets for the good of people they have never seen, is an achievement simply boundless in its beneficent value to all mankind, and limitless in the guarantee it provides for the permanent maintenance and extension of our work.

Do let me beg you to realise a little of the intense interest taken in our finances locally by all our Soldiers. Did you ever get to know one of our Corps Treasurers? If not, believe me, that your education is incomplete. Whether he or she be schoolmistress in the mining village of Undergroundby, shopkeeper in Birmingham, or cas.h.i.+er of a London or Parisian bank, you will find an experienced Salvation Army Treasurer generally one of the most fully-developed intelligences living. He or she could easily surpa.s.s Judas Iscariot himself, either for ability at bargaining, or for what we call "Salvation cheek." He considers the Duke who owns most of his county, or the Mayor of the city, is "duty bound"

to help The Army whenever its Officer thinks a fitting moment has come to him to ask them to do so--and the Treasurer never thinks that they already have helped us enough.

Every farthing his Corps has received or paid, for years past, has pa.s.sed through his careful fingers. In any city Corps I would accept his judgment about a "doubtful" coin before that of almost any one. And no human being could surpa.s.s him in eagerness or care to get the very uttermost possible value for every penny spent. Hours after great Meetings are over you may find him with other officers busy still parcelling coppers, or in some other way "serving tables." His own business or family would very often suffer for his late hours of toil in the cause, if G.o.d allowed that sort of thing. But G.o.d has seen to it that many such a Treasurer has climbed out of the very gutter into a well-to-do employer's position, _because_ he sought first His Kingdom and His righteousness.

These Treasurers, if anybody took the trouble to interview them, would make it impossible for any decent person to believe the lies that have been told about our "not publis.h.i.+ng accounts," our "extravagance," etc.

They know how carefully even the smallest Corps book or collecting-card is examined, and with what precise and skilful method every account is kept.

Like almost all our Local Officers, they are particularly cheery, friendly men and women. I fear we have but few women Treasurers, as finance, like so many other things, is supposed to be "beyond women's powers," and the sisters really do not, as a rule, like arithmetic. But man or woman, you have only to watch one of them a few moments, when anybody is trying to arrange a joint excursion with various Corps, to see that, with all their kindliness, the interests committed to their charge always command their first sympathy. Treasurer Pitman, of Leatherby, "never could see," and never will, why either Birmingham I or Leamington, or any other Corps, should be more favoured, or more burdened, than his own. Even should his words at times seem rough, or few, he will charm you, almost without exception, if you get out of his wife or the Captain, or somebody, all he does and suffers for Christ's sake. n.o.body will ever know how often it was the Treasurer who gave half the "twopence to make up a s.h.i.+lling" in the street-corner collection that, perhaps, made the impression that The Army was "not self-supporting!"

But, in spite of all his jollity, the Treasurer is often a sorely-tried and burdened man. For, Oh, it is a struggle to get the pence together, week after week, especially where the Corps has a "Hall of its own," for ground rent and interest on which it must pay 5 to 10 a week!

The Treasurer's great opportunity comes when he has the joy of harbouring in his own home, for a night or two, the Chief of the Staff, or some other "Special from London." Then he may get a chance to "put a word in" for his Corps.