"The comfortable arm-chair that was offered him he declined almost as if it were an insult.' That is meant for an old man,' he said; and really the remark was justified when one heard the plans of the grey General, for he has plans such as one of the youngest might have. He appears to me like an able business man who constantly thinks how to expand his undertaking and to supply it with all the novelties that a time of progress offers. He has altogether modern views. He does not hold fast with the reluctance of old age to old things, except to the old faith.

"In the Meetings The General seemed to me rather severe; but that disappears when you get at him personally, especially when you have got used to his way of speaking. He almost flings each sentence out. Every phrase, accompanied by some energetic gesture, is like a war cry. 'I will, and I carry out what I will,' seems to breathe in all about him; and who can complain of this will, this iron resoluteness with which he works at the raising up of men. He is in his kingdom an unlimited ruler, but one with a benevolent look who sees for the benefit of the blind. He must be all that for his extraordinary work.

"The General asks us to put questions. I could not manage it. It seemed to me to be so useless in the presence of this important man. So he said, 'We are never satisfied with the progress we make in view of what still remains to be done.' He spoke of the progress made by the Social Work of The Army in Germany, and of his plans.

"I never heard The General speak without his having plans, upon the carrying out of which he was at work with all his might. He puts his whole body and soul into whatever he is engaged in.

"'The Salvation Army is the most interesting thing under the sun,' said The General at the close of this earnest talk, and then added, jokingly, 'next to the Hamburg Press.'

"On the Sunday I saw him again as he spoke to a Meeting of thousands, a curiously mixed public, where there were many of the foremost gentlemen and ladies of society and many very common people. All, however, were equally enthused. I will only mention a couple of sentences out of the speech: 'The Army wants to come into competition with nobody, only to be a friendly helper—nobody's enemy, but the friend of everybody. It will gladly be an inspiration and example. It has become the almsgiver for many Governments. It is not British because it was born in Britain, just as little as Christianity is Jewish because it came into the world in Judea.'"—Else Meerstedt.

Now that we see it all but completed, we think this book singularly wanting in reference to The General's frequent merriness of mood. We have thought it needless to insert any of the amusing anecdotes that could have been so abundantly culled from any of his visits to any country had we not been so anxious to select from the small space at our disposal what was most important.

Nor have we wished to present the reader with the portrait of an infallible genius, or a saint who never said or did anything that he afterwards regretted. A victim almost all his life to extreme indigestion, it is indeed to all who knew him best marvellous that he could endure so much of misery without more frequently expressing in terms of unpleasant frankness his irritation at the faults and mistakes of others. But really after his death as during his life we have been far too busy in trying to help in accomplishing his great lifework to note these details of human frailty.



Chapter XXIV

The End



It seems almost impossible to describe the ending of The General's life, because there was not even the semblance of an end within a week of his death.

The last time I talked with him, just as I was leaving for Canada in January, he for the first time made a remark that indicated a doubt of his continuance in office. He hardly hinted at death; but, referring to the sensations of exhaustion he had felt a few days previously, he said: "I sometimes fancy, you know, that I may be getting to a halt, and then"—with his usual pause when he was going to tease—"we shall have a chance to see what some of you can do!"

We laughed together, and I went off expecting to hear of his fully recovering his activity "after the operation," to which we were always looking forward. Oh, that operation! It was to be the simplest thing in the world, when the eye was just ready for it, as simple and as complete a deliverance from blindness as the other one had seemed, for a few days, to be. But this time he would be fully warned, and most cautious after it, and I really fancied the joy he would have after so long an eclipse.

It seemed to me that he never realised how great his own blindness already was, so strong was his resolution to make the best of it, and so eager his perception, really by other means, of everything he could in any way notice. We had difficulty in remembering that he really could not see when he turned so rapidly towards anybody approaching him or whose voice he recognised!

To Colonel Kitching during this dark period he wrote one day: "Anybody can believe in the sunshine. We, that is you and I and a few more of whom we know, ought to be desperate believers by this time—Saviours of men—against their will, nay, compellers of the Almighty."

And his writing was always so marvellous, both for quantity and quality. His very last letters to several of us consisted of a number of pages all written with perfect clearness and regularity with his own hand. It was, perhaps, the greatest triumph of his own unfailing faith and sunny optimism that he kept even those who were nearest to him full of hope as to his complete recovery of strength till within a few days of his death; and then, gliding down into the valley, surprised all by sinking suddenly into eternal peace without any distinct warning that the end was so near. His youngest daughter, Mrs. Commissioner Booth-Hellberg, was with him during the last days.

But, really, it would be only fair to describe his end as having begun from the day when, during his Sixth Motor Tour, the eye which had been operated upon became blind. Though after having it taken out, he very largely rallied, and passed through grand Campaigns for some years, he was ever looking forward to the operation on the other eye, which was to restore him to partial sight. His cheeriness through those years and his marvellous energy astonished all.

The following notes of his first foreign journey after the loss of sight cannot but be of special interest, showing with what zest and enjoyment he threw himself into all his undertakings for Christ:—

"Saturday, February 12, 1910.—The crossing has been quite rough enough. I slept very little, and it was with real difficulty that I shambled through the long railway depot to my train for Rotterdam. At eight o'clock was woke up from a sound sleep with a startling feeling. It is a pity I could not have slept on. Fixed up at the old hotel six floors up (the Mass Hotel). Very fair accommodation, but a little difficult to get anything to eat, that is, such as meet my queer tastes and habits. Nevertheless, on the principle of 'any port in a storm,' I have had much worse accommodation.

"Sunday, February 13, 1910.—Had a wonderful day. Far ahead of anything experienced before in this place. My opinion about it is jotted down in The War Cry. I had, as I thought, remarkable power on each of the three occasions, and finished off at ten o'clock far less exhausted than I frequently am. Still, I scarcely got into my rooms before the giddiness came on in my head very badly, and continued off and on until ten the next morning. I can't account for it. It may be my stomach, or it may have something to do with the rocking of the steamer on Friday night. It may be what the doctors fear, my overtaxed brain, or it may be something else. Whatever it is, it is very awkward while it lasts. Fifty-seven souls for the day.

"Monday, February 14, 1910.—Left by the 12:37 p.m. train for Groningen. Slept a good bit of the way. Arrived about 5:12 p.m. Reception very remarkable, considering the population is only some 78,000. It was one of the most remarkable greetings I have ever had in any part of the world. There must have been getting on for a couple of thousand people in the station itself, who had each paid five cents for a platform ticket, and outside 5,000 is a low estimate. Everybody very friendly.

"Entertained by the Governor's wife's sister. The Meeting was as wonderful as the reception. Immense hall. Could not be less than 1,500 people packed into it on one floor. I talked for an hour and three-quarters. Colonel Palstra, my translator, did splendidly, the people listening spellbound; not a soul moved until the last minute, when three or four went out for some reason or other. It was a wonderful time. Settled to sleep about 11:30 p.m. not feeling any worse.

"Tuesday, February 15, 1910.—Had a fair night's sleep. The strange feelings in the head continue off and on, and the fact that they don't pass off, in connexion with the entreaties of the Chief, and those about me, made me consent to give up the Officers' Council I was proposing to hold at Amsterdam next week, putting on Lectures on the evenings of the two days which I would otherwise have used for Councils. I am very loath to do this, from feeling that the Officers are the great need. So far I have been delighted with what I have seen of the Officers in the country. We ought to capture Holland.

"The Governor has sent word to say that he is coming to see me this afternoon.

"I have had a long sleep, and I hope I shall be better for it. The Governor has just come in. He appears a very amiable person, very friendly disposed towards The Army. We had a very nice conversation about matters in general, and at parting he expressed his kindest wishes for my future and for the future of The Army.

"I left at a few minutes before seven. It has been snowing and raining, and freezing and thawing the last few hours, consequently the atmosphere is not very agreeable. However, my carriage was well warmed, and we arrived at Assen in half an hour.

"A very nice hall—packed with a very respectful audience. I spoke on the old subject, 'The Lesson of my Life,' and made it 'better as new' as the Jew says about his second-hand garments. I was very pleased with it and the people were too. I am entertained by Baron and Baroness Van der Velts. The lady speaks English very nicely, and they are evidently very pleased to have me with them.

"I was glad to settle to sleep about eleven, and thankful for the mercies of the day."

It was thus that nearly three years passed away. Then came at last the time when the long-hoped-for operation was to take place.

Rookstone, the house in Hadley Wood, a village on the northern outskirts of London, where The General died, stands almost at the foot of the garden of the present General, so that they could be constantly in touch when at home, and the General's grandchildren greatly enjoyed his love for them.

But in the large three-windowed room, where his left eye was operated upon, and where a few months later he died, his Successor, his youngest daughter, Commissioner Howard, and his Private Secretary, Colonel Kitching, had many valued interviews with him during those last months. I had not that opportunity until it was too late to speak to him, for he had said when it was suggested, full as he had been of the hope of prolonged life almost to the end, "Oh, yes, he'll want to come and get something for my life and that will just finish me."

Of the operaton itself we prefer to let the physician himself speak in the following extract from The Lancet of the 19th October, 1912:

"...He was not in very good health in March, 1910; he had occasional giddy attacks and lapses of memory, and from April till June of the same year he had albuminuria, from which, however, he appeared entirely to recover. The vision of his left eye became gradually worse, but I encouraged him to go on without operation as long as he could. He did so until about the end of 1911, when his sight had become so bad that he could barely find his way about; indeed, he met with one or two minor accidents on account of not being able to see. It then appeared to me he had much to gain and very little to lose by an operation, and further, he was in much better health than he had been for some time. I pointed out to him that there was a risk and that if the operation failed he would be totally blind, but that there were very long odds in his favour, and that I was willing to take the risk if he was. He asked one question: 'If you were in my place would you have it done?' I said certainly I would. That quite decided him and all that remained to be done was to fix a time. General Booth at that date had some work which he wanted to finish, and eventually the date for operation was fixed for May 23rd. On that day I operated. I did a simple extraction under cocaine.

"Nothing could have been more satisfactory, as will be seen from the notes, and the bulletin sent to the papers was, 'The operation was entirely successful; the ultimate result depends on The General's recuperative power.' When I covered the eye and bandaged it I thought that success was certain, and was confirmed in that opinion on the following morning when I lifted up the dressing and found all was well, and that the patient, when he partly opened the eye, could see. On the third day Dr. Milne, who was in attendance, at once saw that mischief had occurred, and the sequence of events I have narrated. How the eye became infected I am unable to say. I used every precaution; as I told the patient afterwards, the only omission I could think of was that I had not boiled or roasted myself.... I looked carefully for these before each operation. I regret two things in the case: (1) that the last operation was not done two or three months before when General Booth was in better health; (2) that it was not postponed for another month, in which case I should not have done it, for looking back on the whole history I feel certain that he was not in his best condition on May 23rd when the operation was performed."

The General's own response when he was gently informed that there was no hope of his seeing objects any more was:—

"Well, the Lord's Will be done. If it is to be so I have but to bow my head and accept it."

He subsequently remarked that as he had served God and the people with his eyes he must now try to serve without them. He continued to dictate letters, and even to write occasionally as he had been accustomed to do, with the help of his secretaries, and a frame that had been prepared for the purpose. But the very struggles against depression and to cheer others, together with the sleeplessness that resulted took from his little remaining strength, and it became evident that he was gradually sinking. Yet he was so remarkably cheerful and at times even confident that all around him were kept hoping up to the very last.

To a group of Commissioners who visited him he said:—

"I am hoping speedily to be able to talk to Officers and help them all over the world. I am still hoping to go to America and Canada as I had bargained for. I am hoping for several things whether they come to pass or not."

But on Tuesday, the 20th August, it became evident that the end was very near. There gathered around his bed Mr. and Mrs. Bramwell Booth, Mrs. Commissioner Booth-Hellberg, Commissioner Howard, who had been summoned by telegram from his furlough, Colonel Kitching, Brigadier Cox, Adjutant Catherine Booth, Sergeant Bernard Booth, Captain Taylor, his last Assistant Secretary, Nurse Ada Timson of the London Hospital, and Captain Amelia Hill, his housekeeper.

The heart showed no sign of failure until within half an hour of his death, and the feet remained warm till within twenty minutes of the event. But the heart and pulse became gradually weaker, the breathing faster and shorter and more irregular, and at thirteen minutes past ten o'clock at night it entirely ceased.

London awoke to find in our Headquarters window the notice, "General Booth has laid down his Sword. God is with us."

The day after his death, at a meeting of all the Commissioners present in London, the envelope containing the General's appointment of his successor was produced by the Army's Solicitors, endorsed in the General's own writing and still sealed. Upon being opened, it was found to be dated the 21st August, 1890, and that it appointed the Chief of the Staff, William Bramwell Booth, to succeed him. The new General, in accepting the appointment, and promising by God's help to fulfil its duties, expressed his great pleasure in discovering that it was dated during the lifetime of his mother, so that he could feel sure that her prayers had been joined with his father's for him at the time.

Immediately there began to pour in upon us from every part of the world expressions of admiration and sympathy which were most valuable in their promise for the Army's increased opportunity and usefulness in the future.

His Majesty, the King, who had manifested deep sympathy with The General in his illness, sent the following generous message, which was one of the first to come to hand:—

"Abbeystead Hall.

"I am grieved to hear the sad news of the death of your Father. The nation has lost a great organiser, and the poor a whole-hearted and sincere friend, who devoted his life to helping them in a practical way.

"Only in the future shall we realise the good wrought by him for his fellow-creatures.

"To-day there is universal mourning for him. I join in it, and assure you and your family of my true sympathy in the heavy loss which has befallen you.

"George R. I."

Queen Alexandra telegraphed:—

"I beg you and your family to accept my deepest and most heartfelt sympathy in the irreparable loss you and the nation have sustained in the death of your great, good, and never-to-be-forgotten Father, a loss which will be felt throughout the whole civilised world. But, thank God, his work will live for ever.

"Alexandra."

President Taft wired:—

"Washington.

"To General Bramwell Booth:

"In the death of your good Father the world loses one of the most effective practical philanthropists. His long life and great talents were dedicated to the noble work of helping the poor and weak, and to giving them another chance to attain success and happiness.

"Accept my deep sympathy.

"Wm. H. Taft."

The King of Denmark wired:—

"Express my sincere sympathy.

"Christian R."

The Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas B. Crosby, wired:—

"The City of London sincerely mourns the passing away of its distinguished citizen, General Booth, whose grand and good work entitles him to imperishable gratitude."

Whilst the Governors and Premiers of most of the Colonies where the Army is at work cabled in similar terms. The Emperor of Germany, as well as the King and Queen, and Queen Alexandra, sent wreaths to be placed on The General's coffin, and the tributes of the press all over the world will be found in the following chapter.

More than 65,000 persons came to Clapton Congress Hall to look upon his face as he lay in his coffin, and more than 35,000 gathered for the great Memorial Service in the Olympia, the largest obtainable building in London, on the evening before the funeral. All the press commented upon the remarkable joyfulness of our funeral services, and the funeral itself the next day was admitted to have been the most impressive sight the great city has seen in modern times.

In addition to officers, many bands from all parts of the country came to join in it.

The coffin had been brought in the night to Headquarters in Queen Victoria Street. The funeral procession was formed on the Embankment, and whilst it marched through the city all traffic was suspended from 11 till 1 o'clock. The millions who witnessed its passage along the five-mile march to Abney Park Cemetery seemed as generally impressed and sympathetic as the multitude gathered there. It was indeed touching to see not only policemen and ambulance workers; but publicans and numbers of the people offering glasses of water to the sisters who had been on their feet for six or seven hours before the service was ended.

The memorial services held all over the world on the following Sunday were attended by quite unparalleled crowds, of whom very many publicly surrendered their lives to God.

The following letters to members of his own family show the spirit of affection and of cheerfulness which to the very last distinguished him.

To his youngest daughter, the widow of Commissioner Booth-Hellberg, who, though she had been fighting in one post or another in this country, India, America, Sweden, Switzerland, or France for over twenty years, he still regarded as his "baby" and special darling, he wrote:—

"Hadley Wood,

"May 3, 1912.

"My very dear Lucy,—

"Your letter is to hand. I am interested in all you say. It was very kind, indeed beautiful, of you to sit by the couch of dear Erickson all those hours. But it will be a recollection of pleasure all through your life, and I have no doubt, after the fading hours of this life have passed out of sight and thought, it will give you satisfaction in the life to come.

"There is a great deal in your suggestion that we should do more in the hospitals. It would be, as you say, beyond question a means of blessing and comfort—indeed, of Salvation to many of the lovely, suffering, dying people whose melancholy lot carries them there. But the old difficulty bars the way—the want of Officers and money for the task. Well, we are doing something in this direction, and we must wait for the power to do more.

"I think much about many of the things you say. Your practical common sense comes out at every turn. Based, as your comments and suggestions usually are, on the religion of love, makes them very precious.

"Go on, my dear girl. God, I feel, is preparing you for something very useful in His Kingdom. I feel quite sure.

"But, oh, do be careful and not overrun your strength.

"Through mercy I am keeping better. I had a very trying day yesterday on the top of my table work, which I find a continuous trial to my nerves, but I came through it—that is, through yesterday's hard pull. It was a visit to my native town. But you will read about it in the Cry.

"I am eating much more, not only in quantity, but am indulging in a little more variety.

"My difficulty at the moment is, that while a good supper helps me to sleep, a scanty supper is agreeable to my brains, and my feelings hinder me from sleeping, as I am so lively after it.

"Later.

"I have just had a nice little sleep. Quite refreshing it has been, and very welcome also.

"I am now in for a cup of tea. What a pleasure it would be if you were here to pour it out and chatter to me while I drink it.

"Well, I had anticipated this delight on my visit to Norway and Sweden in this coming July, but that, I am afraid, will not come—that is, my visit to Denmark; but I shall hold on to it (D.V.) in connexion with my Annual Campaign in Berlin and round about. Then I shall expect quite a long stay in your Territory, similar to my last; or better, I hope.

"I am positively working night and day now, and only hope I shall not break down; but I am careful, after all, and seem to be really substantially improved.

"I cannot finish this letter now, and, although it is not worth posting, I think it will be best to send it off. I may put in a P.S. if there is opportunity.

"Anyway, believe me, as ever and for ever,

"Your affectionate father,

"W. B."

At his last public Meeting to celebrate his 83d birthday, at the Royal Albert Hall, on the 9th day of May, the General had said:—

"And now comrades and friends I must say good-bye. I am going into dry dock for repairs, but The Army will not be allowed to suffer, either financially or spiritually, or in any other way by my absence, and in the long future I think it will be seen—I shall not be here to see, but you will, that The Army will answer every doubt and banish every fear and strangle every slander, and by its marvellous success show to the world that it is the work of God and that The General has been His Servant."

In his last letter to the Chief, he wrote two months later:—

"International Headquarters, London, E.C.

"July 4, 1912.

"My Dear Chief,—

"I am pleased to hear that you are sticking to your intention of going away for a few days, in spite of my continued affliction, for affliction it can truthfully be called.

"I am very poorly, and the trial of it is that I cannot see any positive prospect of a definite, speedy recovery. But it will come; I have never seriously doubted it. God won't let me finish off in this disheartening manner—disheartening, I mean, to my comrades, and to those I have to leave with the responsibility of keeping the Banner flying. God will still do wonders, in spite of men and devils.

"All will be well. Miriam will get well, Mary will get well, and both be brave warriors. Florrie will flourish more than ever, and you will be stronger; and, although it may require more patience and skill, I shall rally!

"I am in real pain and difficulty while I dictate this. These horrid spasms seem to sit on me like a mountain, but I felt I could not let you go without a longer good-bye and a more affectionate kiss than what is so ordinarily. This is a poor thing, but it speaks of the feeling of my heart, and the most fervent prayer of my soul. Love to all,

"Yours, as ever,

"W. B.

"The Chief of the Staff."

To his second daughter, in command of The Army in the United States, his last letter read as follows:—

"July 20, 1912.

"My dear, dear Eva,—

"I had your letter. Bless you a thousand times! You are a lovely correspondent. You don't write your letters with your pen, or with your tongue, you write them with your heart. Hearts are different; some, I suppose, are born sound and musical, others are born uncertain and unmusical, and are at best a mere tinkling cymbal. Yours, I have no doubt, has blessed and cheered and delighted the soul of the mother who bore you from the very first opening of your eyes upon the world, and that dear heart has gone on with that cheering influence from that time to the present, and it will go on cheering everybody around you who have loved you, and it will go on cheering among the rest your loving brother Bramwell and your devoted General right away to the end; nay, will go on endlessly, for there is to be no conclusion to our affection.

"I want it to be so. I want it to be my own experience. Love, to be a blessing, must be ambitious, boundless, and eternal. O Lord, help me! and O Lord, destroy everything in me that interferes with the prosperity, growth, and fruitfulness of this precious, Divine, and everlasting fruit!

"I have been ill—I have been very ill indeed. I have had a return of my indigestion in its most terrible form. This spasmodic feeling of suffocation has so distressed me that at times it has seemed almost impossible for me to exist. Still, I have fought my way through, and the doctors this afternoon have told me, as bluntly and plainly as an opinion could be given to a man, that I must struggle on and not give way, or the consequences will be very serious.

"Then, too, the eye has caused me much pain, but that has very much, if not entirely, passed off, and the oculist tells me that the eye will heal up. But, alas! alas! I am absolutely blind. It is very painful, but I am not the only blind man in the world, and I can easily see how, if I am spared, I shall be able to do a good deal of valuable work.

"So I am going to make another attempt at work. What do you think of that? I have sat down this afternoon, not exactly to the desk, but any way to the duties of the desk, and I am going to strive to stick to them if I possibly can. I have been down to some of my meals; I have had a walk in the garden, and now it is proposed for me to take a drive in a motor, I believe some kind soul is loaning me. Anyhow, I am going to have some machine that will shuffle me along the street, road, and square, and I will see how that acts on my nerves, and then perhaps try something more.

"However, I am going into action once more in the Salvation War, and I believe, feeble as I am, God is going to give me another good turn, and another blessed wave of success.

"You will pray for me. I would like before I die—it has been one of the choicest wishes of my soul—to be able to make The Salvation Army such a power for God and of such benefit to mankind that no wicked people can spoil it.

"Salvation for ever! Salvation—Yellow, Red, and Blue! I am for it, my darling, and so are you.

"I have heard about your Open-Air services with the greatest satisfaction, and praise God with all my heart that in the midst of the difficulties of climate and politics, etc., you have been able to go forward.

"I have the daily papers read to me, and among other things that are very mysterious and puzzling are the particulars that I gather of the dreadful heat that you have had to suffer, both as a people and as individuals.

"You seem to have, indeed, been having lively times with the weather. It must have tried you very much.

"My telling you not to fret about me is the proper thing to do. That is my business in this world very largely, and if I can only comfort your dear heart—well, I shall do good work.

"Good-bye, my darling child. Write to me as often as you can, but not when overburdened. I am with you, and for you, and in you for ever and ever. Love to everybody.

"Your affectionate father and General,

"William Booth."

To an Officer whom he regarded almost as a daughter, and whose hearing had been greatly affected, he wrote:—

My Dear C.,—

"Thanks for your sympathetic letter. It is good of you to think about me now and then. Specially so as you must be much and often exercised about your own affliction.

"Perhaps you will think that it is easier for me to accept mine than it will be for you to accept yours. I have just been thinking that to have any difficulty in the Hearing Organ is not so serious as a difficulty with the Seeing. You can read and write, and with a little contrivance and patience you can hear any communication that may be specially interesting and important. It is true, you are shut out from the pleasure and profit that comes from the general conversation of a company, and from listening to Public Speakers, although a great deal that you miss is no serious loss at all!

"In my case, I can imagine I am worse off. With me, reading is impossible, and writing is so difficult that, although I can scratch a few lines, the work soon becomes so taxing and difficult that I have to relinquish it. So we'll sympathise the one with the other. We will trust in God, take courage, and look forward to brighter days.

"Anyway, God lives, and there are a thousand things we can do for Him, and what we can do we will do, and we will do it with our might."

Every thoughtful reader of this volume will naturally have asked himself many times over, how was it possible for the Leader of a great world-wide Mission to leave his Headquarters, year after year, for weeks and sometimes for months at a time, without involving great risk of disaster to his Army?

The answer, familiar to every one at Headquarters, and, indeed, to many others, lay in the existence, largely out of sight even to the vast majority of the Soldiers of The Army, of a man who, since his very youth, had been The General's unwearyable assistant. It was the present General Bramwell Booth, content to toil mostly at executive or administrative work, whether at Headquarters or elsewhere, unseen and unapplauded, who was ceaselessly watching over every portion of the vast whole, and as ceaselessly preparing for advances, noting defects, stopping mistaken movements, and urging at every turn, upon every one, the importance of prayer and faith, the danger of self-confidence, and, the certainty of God's sufficiency for all who relied wholly upon Him. It was this organiser of victory in the individual and on many fields who made it possible for the Army to march forward whilst its General was receiving from city to city, and from village to village, in motor and other tours, the reward of faithful service to the poorest everywhere, and was also ever advancing on the common foe.

Therefore this book could not be complete without some account of the then Chief of the Staff to explain his construction.

Born in Halifax, in 1856, amidst one of those great Revival Tours in which his parents shared in the tremendous toils that brought, in every place they visited, hundreds of souls into deep conviction of sin and hearty submission to God, the little one must have drunk in, from his very childhood, some of that anxiety for the perishing, and joy in their deliverance, which form the basis of a Salvationist career. Named after one of the greatest Holiness preachers, who accompanied John Wesley in his campaigning, in the express hope to both father and mother, that he should become an apostle of that teaching, the faith of his parents received abundant fulfilment in his after life.

As a boy he shared with them all the vicissitudes of their eight gipsy years, during which they were practically without a home, and the one settled year of (as they thought) half wasted time, amidst the usual formalities, always galling to them both, or ordinary Church life; so that, with his usual acuteness of observation, he must have noted all their horror of routine, and learnt, more than anybody noticed, the reasons why the Churches had become divorced from the crowds and the crowds from the Churches.

In his tenth year, when they settled in London, and began their real life work, he cannot but have partaken fully of the satisfaction this gave to them, whilst they were, as yet, buried amidst the mass of East-End misery. It was shortly before the foundation of the Work that he was converted at one of his mother's own Meetings. The shrinking from publicity, which seems an essential part of every conscientious person, held him long back from resolving to become one of their Officers. But during all the years between his being saved and that great decision, he was constantly helping, first in Children's Meetings, and then in office work, so that at twenty-one he was already a very experienced man, both in the work of saving souls, and in much of the business management for which a great Movement calls.

When I first saw him at seventeen, he was still studying; but he had been, during the previous eighteen months of the General's illness and absence, his mother's mainstay in the managing both the public and the office work of "The Christian Mission," and the Secretary and, largely, manager of a set of soup kitchens, the precursors, in some ways, of our present Social Wing. For all this to be possible to a lad of seventeen, of delicate health, may give some little indication of the faculties with which God had endowed him.

It was not, however, till five years later, when he had fully conquered his own taste for a medical career that he gave himself fully to the War. Alone, or with one of his sisters, he visited the towns where many of our largest Corps were being raised, holding Meetings in theatres and other popular resorts, so that he gained first-hand all the experiences of Officers, both in the pioneering days and in the after years of struggle against all manner of difficulty, when every sort of problem as to individuals, and Corps, had to be dealt with from hour to hour.

This much to explain how it was possible for a man so young to become at twenty-five the worthy and capable Chief of the Staff of an Army already at work in both hemispheres and on both sides of the world. The reader will also be able to understand how the Chief, travelling by night as often as by day, could visit the General in the midst of any of his Campaigns, and in the course of a brief journey from city to city, or between night and morning confer fully with him, and take decisions upon matters that could not await even the delay of a mail.

The comfort to The General, as he often testified, of the continual faithful service of this slave of a son was one of the most invaluable forces of his life. Whilst, on the one side we may see in such self-renouncing abandonment a certificate to and evidence of the nature of The General's own life, we must read in it, at the same time, some part of the explanation of his boundless activities and influence.

For the Chief of those days, The General of these, to have gone to and come away from his father's daily scenes of triumph without getting the slightest appetite himself for public displays, or yielding in the slightest to the craving after human support or encouragement, to turn him aside from the humdrum of duty, is one proof of those gracious evidences of God's saving and keeping power with which the history of The Salvation Army abounds.



Chapter XXV

Tributes



The great tribute The General received by the vast assemblies in every country at his Funeral and Memorial services, said far more than any words could have expressed of the extent to which he had become recognised everywhere as a true friend of all who were in need, and of the degree to which he had succeeded in prompting all his Officers and people to act up to that ideal.

The following, a small selection of the most prominent testimonies borne to his life by the Press of various countries, will give some idea of what was thought and felt by his contemporaries about him and his work:—



The Christian World, August 22, 1912

"No name is graven more deeply in the history of his time than that of William Booth, Founder and General of The Salvation Army, who passed to his rest on Tuesday night. At sixteen, the Nottingham builder's son underwent an 'old-fashioned conversion,' and, as he told a representative of The Christian World, 'within six hours he was going in and out of the cottages in the back streets, preaching the Gospel that had saved himself.' From that day he toiled terribly, and never more terribly than since his sixtieth year, after which the Social Scheme was launched, and The General undertook those evangelistic tours in which he traversed England again and again in every direction, and covered a great part of the Western world. How he kept up is a miracle, for he was a frail-looking figure, and he ate next to nothing—a slice or two of toast or bread and butter or rice pudding and a roasted apple, were his meals for many years past. It was his great heart, his invincible faith, his indomitable courage that kept him going.

"Plutarch would have put William Booth and John Wesley together in his 'Parallel Lives.' Each man 'thought in continents.' 'The world is my parish,' said Wesley, and Methodism to-day covers the world. So General Booth believed in world conquest for Christ, because he believed in Christ's all-conquering power, and he had the courage of his conviction. He learnt much from Wesley, for he began as a Methodist. He knew what can be done by thorough organisation, and what financial resources there are in the multiplication of small but cheerful givers. Like Wesley, too, he combined the genius for great conceptions with the genius for practical detail, without which great conceptions soon vanish into thin air. He was more masterful than Wesley. When he broke away from the Methodist New Connexion, and founded the Christian Mission of which The Salvation Army was the evolution, he found that committees wasted their time in talk and were distracted in opinion. He read lives of Napoleon, Wellington, and other great commanders, and came to the conclusion that a committee is an excellent thing to receive and carry out instructions from a masterful man who knows what he wants, but otherwise they are worthless. He persuaded those of his colleagues who had unbounded belief in him, and whose sole concern was the progress of the Mission, to accept the military organisation with himself as Commander-in-Chief, and with his driving power and the inspiration of his heroic example, those Officers went to every part of Great Britain and to something like fifty different countries and 'did exploits.' That system may work with a selfless Christian hero who is a born Caesar or Napoleon. The Salvation Army's severe testing time has now come, when it will be seen whether, after all, the more cautious Wellingtonian methods of Wesley laid firmer foundations.

"The secret of General Booth's personal force and commanding power was an open one. To him there were no realities so demonstrable as the realities of the spiritual world—most of all, the reality of Christ's real personal presence and saving power to-day. He found that unquestioning faith in Christ's saving power worked everywhere and under all conditions. We differed from him on theological details, but we gladly recognise that scores of thousands of 'moral miracles,' in the shape of lives remade that were apparently shattered beyond repair and trodden in the mud of dissipation and bold habitual sinning, verified the faith. The burglar who had been forty years in prison and penal servitude, the most shameless of Magdalens, the drinker and gambler brought down to the Embankment at midnight, greedy for a meal of soup and bread, the man or woman determined to end a state of despair and disgust with the world by suicide, these, under the influence of The Salvation Army, became 'new creations.' But the same conviction, and the evidences of its miraculous Operation, captured a large number of men and women of the cultured and refined classes, who were either the victims of moral weakness, or who felt the challenge to service and sacrifice for the sake of others. Kings, Queens, and Royal Princes and Princesses were glad to see General Booth, and gave their encouragement to his work, and it was fitting that, when King Edward died, a Salvation Army band should comfort the widowed lady by playing in the courtyard of Buckingham Palace her husband's favourite hymns.

"The Social Work was an inevitable outcome of the evangelistic work. It had its dangers, and The Salvation Army has not escaped all of them without scathe. But it was found that the difficulty with thousands of the Converts was that of giving them a chance to redeem their past, and to nurse them physically and morally till they were able to stand alone, in a position to take their places again in the ranks of decent and self-respecting citizenship. Then there was the 'Submerged Tenth'—the human wreckage tossed hither and thither by the swirling currents of the social sea. To safeguard the one class, and to save the other from themselves and their circumstances, the Social scheme was launched, and those who estimate its success by moral valuation rather than in terms of finance, will say that it has justified itself, though it never accomplished what The General fondly hoped.

"Now that his worn-out body lies awaiting burial, The General's personal worth and the worth of his work are frankly confessed even by those who were once his bitterest critics. The Times had a leader in which it said that he rose from obscurity to be known as the head of a vast organisation 'well known over all the world, and yielding to him an obedience scarcely less complete than that which the Catholic Church yields to the Roman Pontiff.' We wish The Times had followed The Standard in dropping the invidious quotation marks from the title, General. William Booth was a great leader of men in a world campaign of individual and social Salvation. Why reserve the title only for men skilled in the art of wholesale human slaughter?"



The Times, August 8, 1912

"The death of General Booth, which we announce with great regret this morning, closes a strange career, one of the most remarkable that our age has seen, and will set the world meditating on that fervent, forceful character, and that keen, though, as some would say, narrow intelligence. Born of unrecorded parentage, educated anyhow, he had raised himself from a position of friendless obscurity to be the head of a vast Organisation not confined to this country or to the British race, but well known over half the world, and yielding to him an obedience scarcely less complete than that which the Catholic Church yields to the Roman Pontiff. The full memoir which we publish to-day shows how this Salvation Army grew up—the creation of one man, or rather of a pair of human beings, for the late Mrs. Booth was scarcely less important to its early development than was her husband. Both of them belonged to the Wesleyan body, of which William Booth at the time of his marriage was a minister, though a very independent and insubordinate one; and deep ingrained in both was the belief which is a more essential part of the Wesleyan than of any other creed, the belief in conversion as an instantaneous change affecting the whole life. Booth himself had been converted at fifteen, and at sixty he wrote of 'the hour, the place of this glorious transaction' as an undying memory. Out of this idea of conversion, as not only the most powerful motive force in life, but as a force which was, so to speak, waiting to be applied to all, arose the whole Salvation Army Movement. It was not, of course, in any sense a new idea. Christians had been familiar with it in all ages, and both the New Testament and the history of the early saints supply instances in support of it. But Booth was probably more affected by more recent evidence. Imperfect as had been his training for the ministry, he doubtless learnt pretty thoroughly the history of Wesley and Whitefield, and of the astonishing early years of the Methodist movement. In his own youth, too, Revivalism was an active force, and he himself had been strongly moved by an American missionary. His originality lay in carrying down the doctrine not only to the highways and hedges, but to the slums, the homes of the very poor, the haunts of criminals and riff-raff; in getting hold of these people; in using the worst of them—'converted,' as he honestly believed—as a triumphant advertisement; and then in organising his followers into a vast Army, with himself as absolute Chief. On the methods adopted nothing need be added to what is said in the memoir; they are familiar to all, though not so familiar as they were some twenty years ago.

"The root-idea of William Booth's religion, the object of his missionary work, was 'the saving of souls.' Translated into other language, this means the establishment of a conviction in the minds of men, women, and children that they were reconciled to God, saved, and preserved to all eternity from the penalties of sin. We do not propose to enter on the delicate ground of theological discussion, or to argue for or against the truth or value of such a conviction. The interesting point, in relation to General Booth's ideas and personality, is to note how this belief is worked into the system of The Army in the official programme, fantastically called the Articles of War, which has to be signed by every Candidate for enrolment. This curious document, which will greatly interest future social historians, consists of three parts—a creed, as definite as any taught by the Churches; a promise to abstain from drink, bad language, dishonesty, etc.; and a solemn promise to obey the lawful orders of the Officers, and never on any consideration to oppose the interests of The Salvation Army. The last part, the promissory part, is made much stricter in the case of Candidates for the position of Officer; these solemnly promise not only to obey The General, but to report any case they may observe in others of 'neglect or variation from his orders and directions.' Membership of the Organisation thus depends on absolute obedience, and on a profession of faith in Salvation in the definite sense formulated in the Articles of War. The two are inseparably conjoined. When we reflect upon what human nature is, in the class from which so many of the members of The Army have been drawn, when we think how difficult it is to reconcile the hand-to-mouth existence of the casual labourer with any high standard of conduct, let alone of religion, General Booth's success, partial though it has been, is an astonishing fact. It implies a prodigious strength of character, and a genius for seeing what would appeal to large numbers of humble folk.

"Will that success continue now that General Booth is dead? Everywhere we hear that The Army is not bringing in Recruits as fast as of old. Its novelty has worn off; its uniforms are no longer impressive; its street services, though they provoke no opposition, do not seem to attract the wastrel and the 'rough' as they did at first. We can readily believe that the work goes on more or less as before; but the gatherings, we suspect, are mostly composed of those who have long frequented them and of a certain number of new members drawn rather from existing sects than from persons till now untouched by religion. Then, with regard to the other side of The Army's work, the Social Schemes outlined in In Darkest England have met with only moderate success, as all cool observers foretold in 1890. They have, at least, provided no panacea for poverty. Probably Mr. Booth felt this during the last years of his life; but he has been spared the sight of the still further decline of his projects, which to most of us seems inevitable. Of course, some persons are more confident: they argue that Napoleon's system did not disappear after Waterloo, nor Wesley's system with the death of its founder, and that the Roman Catholic Church is as strong as ever, though Pope after Pope disappears. That is true, but for the very reason that these systems were elaborate organisations, based on the facts of life. The Code Napoleon and the Methodist Connexion were much too well adapted to human needs to disappear with their authors. On the other hand, movements and systems which depend wholly upon one man do not often prove to be more than ephemeral. But none would deny that there is much to be learnt from The Salvation Army and from the earnest, strenuous, and resourceful personality of the man who made it. Let us hope that, if The Army as an Organisation should ultimately fade away, the great lesson of its even temporary success will not be forgotten: the lesson that any force which is to move mankind must regard man's nature as spiritual as well as material, and that the weak and humble, the poor and the 'submerged,' share in that double nature as much as those who spend their lives in the sunshine of worldly prosperity."



The Daily Chronicle, August 21, 1912

"To-day we have the mournful duty of chronicling the passing of William Booth, the Head of that vast Organisation, the Salvation Army. The world has lost its greatest missionary evangelist, one of the supermen of the age. Almost every land on the face of the globe knows this pioneer and his Army, The Army which has waged such long, determined, and successful battle against the world's ramparts of sin and woe. Not one country, but fifty, will feel to-day a severe personal loss. From Lapland to Honolulu heads will be bowed in sorrow at the news that that striking figure who has been responsible for so much of the religious progress of the world of to-day is no more.

"The stupendous crusade which he initiated had the very humblest beginnings. It opened in the slummy purlieus of Nottingham, that city which gave to the world two of the greatest religious leaders of modern times—General Booth and Dr. Paton. It has passed through periods of open enmity, opposition, criticism, but its Leader and his band of devoted helpers have never lost sight of their high aim. They were engaged in 'war on the hosts that keep the underworld submerged,' and they have now long been justified by their unparalleled achievements. The time of scorn and indifference passed, and General Booth lived to receive honour at the hands of kings and princes, and to have their support for his work.

"It is not given to every man who sets out with a great purpose to accomplish his aims. But of General Booth it may be said that he did more. His Movement reached dimensions of which he probably never dreamed in its early days, yet the extraordinary results made him ever hungrier for conquest. In a way the latter years of his life were perhaps the most notable of his whole career. He displayed a vitality and enthusiasm which seemed to increase with the weight of time. At a time when most men seek a greater measure of repose, General Booth worked on with all the freshness of early years. And it can be said that he has died in harness. He did not lift his finger from the pulse of the far-reaching Organisation which he brought into being until death called.

"The story of the growth of The Salvation Army is the most remarkable in the history of the work of the spiritual, social, and material regeneration of the submerged. From the by-ways of all the world human derelicts, which other agencies passed by, have been rescued. No one was too degraded, too repulsive to be neglected. The work is too great to be estimated in a way which can show its extent. It has been achieved mainly by two great factors. The first is perfect organisation. Lord Wolseley once described General Booth as the greatest organiser in the world. The second feature was the wonderful personality of The Army's chief. He impressed it not only upon his colleagues but upon those whom he wished to rescue, and on the public at large. He radiated human sympathy and enthusiasm. His loss will be a heavy one for the world; it will be a severe blow for The Army. But we cannot think that his good work has not been built upon sound foundations, and that the war he directed so ably and so long will be relaxed. Nationally The Army has done magnificent work in fifty countries, and it has, therefore, tended to promote a greater spirit of brotherhood among the nations. To-day the whole world will unite to pay its tribute to a splendid life of devotion to a great cause. To that world he leaves a splendid example, and it will be the highest tribute that can be paid to his memory to keep green that lofty example which he set before all peoples."



The Daily Telegraph, August 21, 1912

"It is with no ordinary or conventional regret that we record this morning the death of General Booth. The news will be received by hundreds of thousands of Salvationists with profound and reverential grief, and by many who are not Salvationists, and who never could be, with respectful and sympathetic sorrow. For, whatever we may think of William Booth and of the wonderful Organisation which he so triumphantly established, it is certain that he belonged to the company of saints, and that during the eighty-three years of a strenuous life, he devoted himself, so far as in him lay, to the solemn duty of saving men's souls and extending the Divine Kingdom on earth. That success attended his efforts is, from this point of view, not of so much consequence as that the success was deserved by the patient, devout, and self-sacrificing zeal of the Founder of The Salvation Army. Long ago William Booth prevailed against the easy scepticism of those who found fault with his aims, and the sincere dislike of humble and reverent men, who doubted whether the cause of religion could be advanced by such riotous methods. Not only was The General of The Salvation Army a saint and a mystic, who lived in this world and yet was not of this world, but he also was possessed of much practical ability and common sense, without which the great work of his life could never have been accomplished. We need only refer to that remarkable book which he published in 1890, In Darkest England, and the Way Out, in which will be found proposals to remedy the crying evils of pauperism and vice by such eminently wise expedients as Farm Colonies, Oversea Colonies, and Rescue Homes for Fallen Women; to say nothing of picturesque but also practical devices, such as the Prison-Gate Brigade, the Poor Man's Bank, the Poor Man's Lawyer, and Whitechapel-by-the-Sea. How is it possible to ridicule the objects or character of a man who has proved himself so earnest a worker for God? As a matter of fact, William Booth was nothing less than a genius, and towards the end of the nineteenth century the world at large gave very generous recognition, not only to the spirit and temper, but to the results of an extraordinarily effective, and, indeed, epoch-making Movement. At the instance of King Edward VII The General was officially invited to be present at the Coronation ceremony in 1902. Nothing could have marked more significantly than this single fact the completeness of the change of public feeling; and when, in 1905, William Booth went on a progress through England, he was welcomed in state by the Mayors and Corporations of many towns.

"Is it better to live in this world with no religion at all or with a narrow and violent form of religious belief? People will judge the deceased teacher and chief, in respect of his theological and propagandist work, in accordance with the views which they hold upon this alternative. As regards his social labours, his passionate efforts to help the 'submerged tenth,' his widespread helpfulness of the poor, his shelters and refuges, the feeling must and will be almost universal that he was an energetic and warm-hearted benefactor of his kind, who wrought much good to his times, and helped others to do it, and who had what Sir John Seeley called the 'enthusiasm of humanity' in very honourable, if noisy and demonstrative, form. But, since The General mingled all this with a cult—a distinct theological teaching, a theory of the Divine government and destiny of mankind which was in external form, as Huxley styled it, 'Corybantic'—the question does and must arise whether religion of the Salvationist school does good or harm to the human natures which it addresses. It is not necessary to dwell upon the dislike—we might, indeed, say the repulsion—felt by serious and elevated minds at the paraphernalia, the pious turmoil, the uproar and 'banalite' of much that has developed under the Banners of The Salvation Army. Prayers uttered like volley-firing, hymns roared to the roll of drums and the screaming of fifes, have been features of this remarkable revival which outraged many of the orthodox, and made even the judicious and indulgent ask whether any good could come out of such a Nazareth. Nobody gave utterance to this feeling with greater moderation or kindliness than Cardinal Manning, when, while confessing that the need of spiritual awakening among the English poor was only too well proved by the success of General Booth—that the moral and religious state of East London could alone have rendered possible The Salvation Army—his Eminence added these grave sentences: 'Low words generate low thoughts; words without reverence destroy the veneration of the human mind. When a man ceases to venerate he ceases to worship. Extravagance, exaggeration, and coarseness are dangers incident to all popular teachers, and these things pass easily into a strain which shocks the moral sense and deadens the instinct of piety. Familiarity with God in men of chastened mind produces a more profound veneration; in unchastened minds it runs easily into an irreverence which borders upon impiety. Even the Seraphim cover their faces in the Divine Presence.'

"Yet against what new movement of spiritual awakening in the people—against what form of religious revival might not the same argument of offended culture and decorous holiness be employed? And where would the lower masses of men be to-day if Religion had not stooped out of her celestial heights—from the first chapters of Christendom until the last—to the intellectual and moral levels of the poor and lowly? In the sheet, knit at four corners, and lowered out of Heaven, there was nothing common or unclean. If, as is practically certain, General Booth, by the vast association which he founded and organised, touched with the sense of higher and immortal things countless humble and unenlightened souls; if, in his way, and in their way, he brought home to them the love and power of Heaven, and the duty and destiny of men, then it is not for refined persons who keep aloof from such vulgar tasks to mock at the life and deeds of this remarkable man. The particulars which we give elsewhere of his career show how, like Wesley, Whitefield, and Spurgeon, in this country, and like Savonarola, Peter the Hermit, and the Safi mystics abroad, William Booth, the builder's son of Nottingham, was obviously set apart, and summoned by time, temperament, and circumstances for the labours of his life. Like Luther, his answer to all objections—worldly or unworldly—would always have been, 'I can no other'. Meeting in Miss Catherine Mumford the wife who exactly suited him, and reinforced by many children, all brought up in the temper and vocation of their parents, The General made his family a sort of Headquarters' Staff of The Salvation Army, and celebrated his household marriages or bewept his domestic bereavements with all the eclat and effect of oecumenical events. We saw him buy up and turn into stations for his troops such places as the 'Eagle Tavern' and 'Grecian Theatre,' overcome popular rioting at Bath, Guilford, Eastbourne, and elsewhere; fill the United Kingdom with his War Cry and his fighting centres, and invade all Europe, and even the Far East. At home he plunged, insatiable of moral and social conquests, into his crusade for 'Darkest England,' being powerful enough to raise in less than a month as much as all England and the Colonies contributed for the Gordon College at Khartoum in response to another victorious general. For General Booth certainly ended by being victorious. If the evangelical creed he inculcated was rude, crude, and unideal, it was serious, sincere, and stimulating. He waged war against the Devil, as that mysterious personage was understood by him, with the most whole-hearted and relentless zeal. He enjoined, let it be remembered, an absolute temperance, soberness, and chastity upon the Officers and rank and file of his motley host; and, ugly as some may think the uniforms of Salvationists, the police and magistrates know that they cover for the most part honest hearts. Could The General have affected all this—or a tenth part of it—if he had not lent himself to the eternal necessities and weaknesses of the uneducated, and given them his drill, his banners, his drums, his prayer-volleys, his poke-bonnets, and his military tunics? We doubt it, and in contemplating, therefore, the enormous good this dead man did, and sought to do, and the neglected fields of humanity which he tilled for the Common Master, we judge him to be one of the chief and most serviceable figures of the Victorian age; and well deserving from his own followers the ecstasy of grief and veneration which is being manifested, and from contemporary notice the tribute of a hearty recognition of pious and noble objects zealously pursued, and love of God and of humanity made the passion and the purpose of a whole unflinching life."



Daily Chronicle, August 22, 1912

By Harold Begbie

"Scarcely could you find a country in the whole world where men and women are not now grieving for the death of General Booth. Among peoples of whom we have never heard, and in languages of which we do not know even the alphabet, this universal grief ascends to Heaven—perhaps the most universal grief ever known in the history of mankind.

"One realises something of the old man's achievement by reflecting on this universal grief. It will not do to dismiss him lightly. More, it will not do to express a casual admiration of his character, an indulgent approbation of his work. The man was unique. In some ways he was the superman of his period. Never before has a man in his own lifetime won so wide a measure of deep and passionate human affection.

"It will not do to say that by adopting vulgar methods and appealing to vulgar people, General Booth established his universal kingdom of emotional religion. Let the person inclined to think in this way dress himself in fantastic garments, take a drum, and march through the streets shouting 'Hallelujah.' There is no shorter cut to humility. Many have tried to do what William Booth did. Many men as earnestly and as tenderly have sought to waken drugged humanity and render the Kingdom of Heaven a reality. Many men have broken their hearts in the effort to save the Christian religion from the paralysis of formalism and the sleeping sickness of philosophy. It is not an easy thing to revivify a religion, nor a small thing to rescue many thousands of the human race from sin and misery.

"Let us be generous and acknowledge, now that it is too late to cheer his heart, that General Booth accomplished a work quite wonderful and quite splendid, a work unique in the records of the human race. Let us be frank and say that we ourselves could have done nothing like it. Let us forget our intellectual superiority, and, instead of criticising, endeavour to see as it stands before us, and as it really is, the immense marvel of his achievement. Our canons of taste, our notions of propriety, will change and cease to be. The saved souls of humanity will persist for ever.

"I remember very well my first impression of General Booth. I was young; I knew little of the sorrow of existence; I was perfectly satisfied with the traditions I had inherited from my ancestors; I was disposed to regard originality as affectation, and great earnestness as a sign of fanaticism. In this mood I sat and talked with General Booth, measured him, judged him, and had the audacity to express in print my opinion about him—my opinion of this huge giant, this Moses of modern times. He offended me. The tone of his voice grated on my ears. His manner to a servant who waited upon him seemed harsh and irritable. I found it impossible to believe that his acquaintance with spirituality was either intimate or real. Saints ought to be gentlemen. He seemed to me a vulgar old man, a clumsy old humourist, an intolerant, fanatical, one idea'd Hebraist.

"Later in my life I met him on several occasions, and at each meeting with him I saw something fresh to admire, something new to love. I think that he himself altered as life advanced; but the main change, of course, was in myself—I was able to see him with truer vision, because I was less sure of my own value to the cosmos, and more interested to discover the value of other men. And I was learning to know the sorrows of the world.

"There is one very common illusion concerning General Booth. The vulgar sneers are forgotten; the scandalous slander that he was a self-seeking charlatan is now ashamed to utter itself except in vile quarters; but men still say—so anxious are they to escape from the miracle, so determined to account for every great thing by little reasons—that his success as revivalist lay only in his powers as an organiser. Now, nothing is further from the truth. General Booth was not a great organiser, not even a great showman. He would have ruined any business entrusted to his management. He would long ago have ruined the organisation of The Salvation Army if his life had been spent on that side of its operations. Far from being the hard, shrewd, calculating, and statesmanlike genius of The Army's machinery, General Booth has always been its heart and soul, its dreamer and its inspiration. The brains of The Army are to be looked for elsewhere. Bramwell Booth is the man of affairs. Bramwell Booth is the master-mind directing all those world-wide activities. And but for Bramwell Booth The Salvation Army as it now exists, a vast catholic Organisation, would be unknown to mankind.

"General Booth's secret, so far as one may speak about it at all, lay in his perfectly beautiful and most passionate sympathy with suffering and pain. I have met only one other man in my life who so powerfully realised the sorrows of other people. Because General Booth realised these sorrows so very truly and so very actually, he was able to communicate his burning desire for radical reformation to other people. The contagiousness of his enthusiasm was the obvious cause of his extraordinary success, but the hidden cause of this enthusiasm was the living, breathing, heart-beating reality of his sympathy with sorrow. When he spoke to one of the sufferings endured by the children of a drunkard, for instance, it was manifest that he himself felt the very tortures and agonies of those unhappy children—really felt them, really endured them. His face showed it. There was no break in the voice, no pious exclamation, no gesture in the least theatrical or sentimental. One saw in the man's face that he was enduring pain, that the thought was so real to him that he himself actually suffered, and suffered acutely. If we had imagination enough to feel as he felt the dreadful fears and awful deprivation of little children in the godless slums of great cities, we, too, should rush out from our comfortable ease to raise Salvation Armies. It would be torture to sit still. It would be impossible to do nothing.

"This wonderful old man suffered all his life as few have ever suffered. And his suffering arose from the tremendous power of his imagination. At a Meeting he would tell amusing stories, and in the company of several people he would talk with a gaiety that deceived; but with one or two, deeply interested to know why he was a Salvationist, and what he really thought about life, he would open his heart, and show one at least something of its agony. He was afflicted by the sins of the whole world. They hurt him, tore him, wounded him, and broke his heart. He did not merely know that people suffer from starvation; that children run to hide under a bed at the first sound of a drunken parent's step on the stair; that thousands of women are friendless and defaced on the streets; that thousands of boys go to their bodily and spiritual ruin only for want of a little natural parental care; that men and women are locked up like wild beasts in prison who would be good parents and law-abiding citizens were love allowed to enter and plead with them—he did not merely know these things, but he visualised and felt in his own person the actual tortures of all these perishing creatures. He wept for them. He prayed for them. Sometimes he would not sleep for thinking of them.

"I have seen him with suffering face and extended arms walk up and down his room, crying out from the depths of his heart: 'Oh, those poor people, those poor people!—the sad, wretched women, the little, trembling frightened children meant to be so happy!—all cursed with sin, cursed and crushed and tortured by sin!' And he would then open his arms as if to embrace the whole world, and exclaim, 'Why won't they let us save them?'—meaning, 'Why won't society and the State let The Salvation Army save them?'

"His attitude towards suffering and sorrow was, nevertheless, harder in many ways than that of certain humanitarians. He believed in a Devil, he believed in Hell, and he believed in the saying that there are those who would not be persuaded though one rose from the dead. And so he held it the wisdom of statesmanship that when all men have been given a fair opportunity for repentance, and after love has done everything in its power to save and convert the lawless and bad, those who will not accept Salvation should be punished with all the force of a civilisation that must needs defend itself. The word punishment was very often on his lips. I think that he believed in the value of punishment almost as profoundly as he believed in the value of love. He believed that love could save the very worst man and the very worst woman in the world who wanted to be saved; and he also believed that nothing was so just and wise as rigorous punishment for the unrighteous who would not be saved. I think that he would have set up in England, if he had enjoyed the power which we give to politicians, two classes of prison—the reforming prison, controlled only by compassionate Christians who believe in love; and the punishing prison, which isolates the evil and iniquitous from contact with innocence and struggling virtue. In that direction this most merciful man was merciless.

"Why he became a Salvationist is very clear. He knew that the centre of life is the heart. He saw that all efforts of statesmanship to alter the conditions of existence must be fruitless, or, at any rate, that the harvest must be in the far distant future of humanity, while the heart of man remains unchanged. He suspected the mere respectability which satisfies so many reformers. Even virtue seemed to him second-rate and perilous. He was not satisfied with abstention from sin, or with the change from slum to model lodging-house. He held that no man is safe, no man is at the top of his being, no man is fully conscious of life's tremendous greatness until the heart is definitely and rejoicingly given to God. He was like St. Augustine, like Coleridge, and all the supreme saints of the world in this insistence upon the necessity for a cleansed heart and a will devoted to the glory of God; he was different from them all in believing that this message must be shouted, dinned, trumpeted, and drummed into the ears of the world before mankind can awaken to its truth.

"He made a tremendous demand. Towards the end of his life he sometimes wondered, very sadly and pitifully, whether he had not asked too much of his followers. I think, to mention only one particular, that he was wavering as to his ban upon tobacco. He was so certain of the happiness and joy which come from Salvation, that he had no patience with the trivial weaknesses of human flesh, which do not really matter. Let us remember that he had seen thousands of men and women all over the world literally transformed by his method from the most miserable animals into radiant and intelligent creatures conscious of immortality and filled with the spirit of unselfish devotion to humanity. Is it to be wondered at that The General of this enormous Army should scarcely doubt the wisdom of his first terms of service?

"But towards the end he suffered greatly in his own personal life, and suffering loosens the rigidity of the mind. Those of his own household broke away from him, the dearest of his children died, trusted Officers forsook him, some of those whose sins he had forgiven again and again deserted his Flag, and whispered scandal and tittle-tattle into the ears of degraded journalism. He was attacked, vilified, and denounced by the vilest of men in the vilest of manners. Sometimes, sitting alone by himself, blind and powerless, very battleworn and sad, this old man at the end of his life must have suffered in the solitude of his soul a grief almost intolerable. But he became more human and more lovable in these last years of distress.

"We are apt to think that very remarkable men who have risen through opposition and difficulty to places of preeminence, must sometimes look back upon the past and indulge themselves in feelings of self-congratulation. It is not often true. A well-known millionaire told me that the happiest moment in his life was that when he ran as a little boy bareheaded through the rain into his mother's cottage carrying to her in a tight-clenched fist his first week's wage—a sixpenny bit. Mr. Lloyd George told me that he never looks back, never allows himself to dream of his romantic life. 'I haven't time,' he said; 'the present is too obsessing, the fight is too hard and insistent.' Mr. Chamberlain in the early days of Tariff Reform, told me much the same thing. Perhaps we may say that men of action never look back. And so it was with General Booth. He might well have rested during these last few years in a large and grateful peace, counting his victories, measuring his achievement, and comparing the pulpit in Nottingham or the first wind-battered tent in East London with this innumerable Army of Salvation which all over the world has saved thousands of human beings from destruction. Sometimes smaller men are able to save a family from disgrace, or to rescue a friend from some hideous calamity, or to make a crippled child happy for a week or two, and the feelings created by these actions are full of happiness and delight. But this old, rough-tongued, weather-beaten, and heart-tortured prophet, who had saved not tens but thousands, who could see with his own eyes in almost every country of the world thousands of little girls rescued from defamation, thousands of women rescued from the sink of horrid vice, thousands of men new-born from lives of unimaginable crime and iniquity, thousands of homes once dreary with squalor and savagery now happy and full of purest joy; nay, who could see, as I have seen in India, whole tribes of criminal races, numbering millions, and once the despair of the Indian Government, living happy, contented, and industrial lives under the Flag of The Salvation Army—he who could see all this, and who could justly say, 'But for me these things had never been,' was not happy and was not satisfied. He ached and groaned to save all such as are sorrowful.

"In the last letter he ever wrote to me, a letter that broke off pitifully, because of his blindness, from the big, bold, challenging handwriting, and became a dictated typewritten letter, occurred the words, 'I am distressed.' He was chiefly distressed by the over-devotion most of us pay to politics and philosophy, by the struggle for wages, by the clash between master and man, by the frivolity of the rich, the stupor of the poor, by the blindness of the whole world to the necessity for the cleansed heart. He did not want to establish a Salvation Army, but to save the whole world. He did not want to be acclaimed by many nations, but to see suffering and poverty and squalor clean banished from the earth. And he believed that with the power of the State at his back, and with the wealth now squandered in a hundred abortive directions in his hands, he could have given us a glad and unashamed England even in a few years. He knew this and believed it with all his heart. And he held that his dictatorship would have hurt no just man. He suffered because poverty continues and thousands are still unhappy. For such men this world can never suffice. They create eternity.

"Others may criticise him. And no man ever lived, I suppose, easier for every little creature crawling about the earth in self-satisfied futility to criticise and ridicule. For myself, I can do nothing but admire, revere, honour, and love this extraordinary old realist, who saved so many thousands of human beings from utmost misery; who aroused all the Churches of the Christian religion throughout the world; who communicated indirectly to politics a spirit of reality which every year grows more potent for social good; who was so tender and affectionate and cordial, and who felt for suffering and sorrow and unhappiness wherever he found it with a heart entirely selfless and absolutely pure.

"Even if The Salvation Army disappeared from every land where it is now at work—and, though it will not disappear, I anticipate during the next ten years many changes in its organisation—to the end of time the spirit of William Booth will be part of our religious progress. We cannot unthink ourselves out of his realism, out of his boundless pity, out of his consuming earnestness. He has taught us all to know that the very bad man can be changed into the very good man, and he has brought us back, albeit by a violent method, to the first simple and absolute principles of the only faith which purifies and exalts humanity.

"When the dust has blown away, we shall see him as perhaps the greatest of our time."



The Post of Berlin

"What he aimed at, for the solution of the Social question and the uplifting of the lowest classes of people by their own works, assures for him the respect of the entire civilised world."



Berlin Local Gazette

"In the person of General Booth was embodied one part of the Social question, and, if any man succeeded in bringing any part of it even nearer to a solution one must say it was William Booth.

"His plainness as a man, his genial gift as an organiser, his burning zeal, his self-sacrificing devotion to his aim, prepared and levelled the road for him, and no man, friend or foe, will withhold from him their tribute of high respect as he lies on his bed of death."



The Morning Post of Berlin

"General Booth, the ancient blind man, always kept his glad heart. He was able to point his opponents, who brought up their theoretical maxims against him (and who latterly became ever fewer) to his practical work."



The Berlin Evening Paper

"There has hardly ever been a General who in an almost unbroken career of victory subdued so many men and conquered so many countries as William Booth. His person gained the high respect of his contemporaries through his long, priestly life, and he will ever remain an example of how much, even in a time of confusion and division, one man can do who knows what he wants, and keeps a clear conscience."



Berlin Midday Paper

"In General Booth we have, undoubtedly, lost one of the most successful organisers of the day."



Berlin Day Paper (Tageblatt)

"Whoever has seen and heard Booth in a huge Meeting in Circus Busch will never forget him—the snow-white, flowing beard and the great, upright figure in the blue uniform, with the red-figured jersey, the furrowed face of typical English character, and the finely mobile orator's mouth, with the searching eyes under the noble forehead, and the prominent nose that gave him almost the aspect of an eagle."



German Watchman

"With that constant will power which sprang from deep and upright conviction, and with a faculty for organisation which won hearty recognition from all who knew him, he was able to do such great things."



National Gazette, Berlin

"His unselfishness and his zealous devotion to his creation (The Army) was beyond all question."



Berlin Exchange Courier

"Whoever saw and heard him knows that he remained, after all, the simple, unassuming, humble man. The secret of this personality was the embodiment of an unshakable religious devotion. It rang out in his burning, earnest words, it breathed in the deep heartfelt prayers in his Meetings, it expressed itself in wondrous deeds of love, which ignored difficulties and shrank from no sacrifice. This made of him the organising genius who led the world-wide Salvation Army, with all its higher and lower departments, with strength and security. William Booth was as its Founder and General perhaps the most popular man of our day."



Neckar-Journal of Heilsbron

"And so General Booth, who has now died at eighty-three, risen to be one of the greatest benefactors of the murdering industry period. His name is graven in brass in the social history of the nineteenth century.

"He was a man through whose soul the great breath of brotherly love and devotion moved, and, therefore, his example will never be forgotten."



The Baden Press of Carlsruhe

"The Salvation Army is to-day the mightiest free Organisation of Social help in the world, and the man who made it was once a street missionary, despised, and without influence, whom part of the despairing mass of the East of London threw stones at, whilst another part, with alcohol-fevered eyes, hung on his lips. 'If ye have faith like a grain of mustard seed!'"



The General Gazette of Erfurt

"In General Booth, one has closed his eyes who was able to make a visible reality of the faith that can remove mountains. The Bonaparte of free Social help has died."



The Cologne Times

"One of the greatest benefactors of mankind has passed away, and as success is the greatest joy, also one of the happiest of men. The Salvation Army is a good, Christian undertaking, and William Booth was one of the noblest Christians whose name history can record."



Hanover Courier

"Booth was the born orator of the people. He possessed above all the rare gift of keeping always to the level of his hearers, and so to speak about the highest themes that the wayfaring man understood him."



Hamburg Strangers Paper

"To the last he was the living, energising centre of The Army, and to the last breath in the truest sense its General."



Munchen Latest News

"With the decease of General Booth, mankind has to mourn the loss of a willing, self-sacrificing benefactor, a noble philanthropist of the most distinguished purpose."



The Kingdom's Messenger of Berlin

"What he accomplished in the fighting of drunkenness or other evils is too well known to need description. Taken all in all, whatever any one may have to say about any details of The Army's methods, one must agree with The Daily Chronicle that the loss of General Booth is a heavy blow, and the whole world will unite with us in applauding such a life of devotion to a great end."



The Cross Gazette of Berlin

"It was seen that he was not merely a preacher of repentance, but a real shepherd of his sheep, who had an open heart, and a good understanding for all in need."



German News of Berlin

"He was no quack, no charlatan, and Carlyle, had he known him, would have certainly put him into his list of heroes as priest and prophet. It is great, what The Army has done in fighting manifold human miseries, such as drunkenness. We have often known learned men and politicians who went over the sea scoffers at it come back its admirers."



Markish People's Paper of Barmen

"Our opposition on principle does not prevent our acknowledging that The Army has done much good to the poorest of the poor."



German Daily Paper of Berlin

"With the greatest pity he combined the most iron discipline, and sacrificed to the happiness of all every personal enjoyment."



Germania of Berlin

"But the light that always led him out of the deepest darkness to the day was his sympathy for his brethren, whose misery in the East End of London so deeply laid hold of him."



Daily Look-round of Berlin

"Perhaps the most remarkable fact about him was that with all his gigantic plans he never lost himself in phantasy, but always knew how to keep himself down to the practical."



Strassburg Post

"Hard upon himself, he exercised the same severity upon others, from the highest of his Officers to the least in his Army."



Schwalish Mercury of Stuttgart

"He made his Army out of the soil of London's misery-quarter, and its present is the work of his unwearyable devotion, the energy sustained by the fire of his zeal for his idea."



Muhlhaus Daily

"His personality grew out of the old Puritan spirit."



Elbing Latest News

"He is the model of a successful business man. But he is a business man who never works for himself, only for others. So wrote one of the man whom death has now taken from what was the creation of his life. In him has passed away one of the characteristic figures of the century's tendency. His many-sidedness, it is not too much to say, had no equal. Bringer of Salvation—social politician—wholesale business man—are only three comparisons which cannot by far exhaust the description of the phenomenon Booth. If ever the word can rightly be used of any one, then of William Booth it can be said he was a benefactor of mankind."



Altona News

"Modern time has few men to show whose spirit had any such world-embracing might, and who, out of so unlikely a beginning, knew how to raise up so gigantic a work as compels us to be filled, if not with love to him, at least with the greatest respect for his honourable intentions."



Vogtland Gazette Plauen

"These were the innermost feelings of his whole life which drove him to his marvellous life's work—religious zeal and sympathy."



Frankfurt Gazette

"William Booth had a mighty will, and he strove on for tens of years from promise to fulfilment."



Augsburg Evening Gazette

"His brilliant talent for organisation, and his ability always to strike the right note, which would take with the masses, were the most outstanding specialities of the deceased."



Rhein-Westphalian Gazette

"Here is a work done by an extraordinarily organising genius so great and such a model, socially speaking, as to fill even the opponents of the old philanthropist with respect."



Journal Des Debats, Paris

"Never, perhaps, has a man been the creator of such Social Work as this one who has died after having passed fifty years running all over the world in search of the miserable ones; who had no hope."



Gaulois, Paris

"His life may be thus summarised. He brought back to God and to morality many souls who had gone to materialism and vice. He founded pretty well everywhere 750 Refuges for the unfortunate; he found work for those who had none; he despised human respect in order to do good."



The Little Republican, Paris

"It is a very exalted moral figure which has disappeared from this world, as well as even more than a person singularly famous. If he became a preacher, he was certainly born an apostle. He had the genius of conversion, and wanted no other career here below. There is not a city of the Anglo-Saxon world where his Army has not snatched, by hundreds, men from drunkenness and women from prostitution."



The Republic, Paris

"An indefatigable organiser, ceaselessly working for the success of his effort, he created besides numerous groups of Salvationists, night Refuges, popular Restaurants, Workplaces, journals, and reviews."

The Intransigent, Paris

"In General Booth passes away a truly world-personage, whose influence extended to the two hemispheres, and, perhaps, as much amongst the savage as the civilised.

"He discovered, his real path, and founded The Salvation Army, which has recruited millions of faithful ones in the most diverse nations—even in our sceptical France."



The Voltaire, Paris

"We have not to judge his religious efforts, nor even his methods, which often seemed to us from some aspects so very absurd.

"But one must recognise that The Army created Hospitals, Retreats, Refuges without number in all countries of the world, including France, and that the devotion of its Soldiers has been unbounded. From the social point of view General Booth was certainly a benefactor."



Gil Blas, Paris

"Struck by the misery which some quarters of London displayed to him, he conceived the idea of evangelising these masses, and to bring them along with the Christian light, physical comfort, and moral union.

"An intelligent work, humane in its principles, beautiful in its aspirations, it merits that we salute with respect the remains of him who undertook it with all his disinterestedness and all his heart."



General Business Paper of Amsterdam

"The world has to mourn the death of one of the noblest men who ever lived, of a man who undiscouraged by scorn, contempt, and continual mockery, kept on working according to his convictions, conscious that he had a great vocation to fulfil, seeking the welfare of his fellows of no matter what race or class they might belong to.

"With his departure will be mourned a man who accomplished great things, and of whom his most ardent opponents have to admit that he by his example and by his incomparable power to work, and his mighty talent for organisation, has been able to be a blessing to many.

"William Booth has gone to his eternal rest. He has not lived and worked in vain. His name does not belong only to his Fatherland, but to the whole world, for he was a benefactor to every land, to all humanity. If any name shall continue to live, it is his."



The People, Amsterdam

"A man has died whose figure, owing to his career, his self-chosen sphere of labour, his manifested power and talent, and through his success, too, has become a world-figure, who may be variously judged, but awakened sympathy everywhere, and scarcely anywhere enmity.

"Booth was the man for the outcasts of society, for the poorest and most miserable, for those who had no strength left, and were entirely unarmed in the fight for existence."



The Fatherland, Amsterdam

"Yes, truly he was a great idealist. That was why he could not be content to remain an ordinary minister. His ideal went beyond the circle of his communion. He wanted to overcome the world by love and Divine worship, and work for all mankind. And we see the results everywhere just as in this country, so at the other side of the world."



The Amsterdammer

"The saving of souls was the great, all-consuming passion of the Founder of The Salvation Army. To satisfy this heart-moving desire he began his wide-stretched Organisation, and, notwithstanding the great Social Work, which represented a great amount of practical social betterment, he continued in every direction in The Army only to honour the opportunity it gave him to win souls for God and The Army."



The Evening Courier, of Milan

"When he stepped to the front of the platform, he seemed transfigured. His rapid and incisive words poured from his mouth with unrestrained eloquence.

"'All the foundation of all we say,' he cried, 'are the eternal truths of the Gospel, indestructible as the pillars of the throne of God.'

"The Apostle spoke out. In that body, worn with age, was born again something of that unconquerable faith which had made Booth as a lad cry out seventy years before, in a prophetic transport, 'The trumpet has sounded the signal for the fight. Your General assures you of success and a glorious reward. Your crown is ready. Why do you wait and hesitate so? Forward, forward, forward!'

"Booth was not one to be intimidated. He tolerated insults with Olympic patience. He just wiped off the dirt his persecutors threw at him, and smilingly invited them to follow him. Thus, about seventy years of age, he began the beneficent career which accomplished a truly marvellous work of philanthropy and love, and which gained for him not only the esteem and veneration of the poor of East London, and of the choicest citizens, but the personal friendship of his Sovereign."



The Age, of Milan

"The death of Booth causes consternation through all England, because through the vast Organisation, The Salvation Army, he was so well known for his works of humanity and beneficence.

"Indeed, he was one of the most celebrated men in the world. The great humane work he founded during the seventy years of his apostolate is destined to remain as one of the highest expressions of modern philanthropy and charity. The Army is an immense federation of hearts and consciences which was created, guided, and led to triumph by Mr. Booth."



The Press, of Turin

"The Founder and General of The Salvation Army, dead at eighty-three years of age, after seventy years of unwearyable apostolate, was one of the purest and most popular heroes of modern Christianity. He was not content to preach the Gospel only from the parchment—a mystic and a poet, yet a practical man of forethought, he was able, out of nothing, to create a Society of militant propagandists for the social redemption of the lost crowds, and to fight against idleness, alcoholism, and evil habits."



The Halfpenny Paper

"The message that General Booth is dead will cause sorrow not only in his country or in Europe, but all over the world. Now, at his death, the whole world knows his name, and thousands follow in his footsteps."



Social Demokrat

"No free religious movement has ever become so great or laid so strong a hold upon all classes of society.

"General Booth will be named in history as one of the strongest and most remarkable personages that ever lived. He was a product of society, such as it was, and the Movement he raised was born of that state of things, firstly as a reconciler, and then as a protest.

"To accomplish such a work as has been done cannot be without result on the future shaping of society."



The Morning

"To-day The Salvation Army stands as one of the mightiest and most remarkable religious organisations that the world has ever seen."



Jonkoping Post

"One of our times, and perhaps all times, greatest and most remarkable personages, The Salvation Army's Founder and General, William Booth, died in London yesterday evening. Behind him lies a path such as few have ever travelled. Before him lies the rest with his Lord, in whose service he laboured almost all his long life."



Swedish Morning Standard

"The world has lost one of its noblest and most remarkable men. A great benefactor of mankind has been called home. Our times' greatest spiritual General has died at his honourable post. Peace to his brave and worthy memory."



Norkoping News

"Few of the most noted men of the day did anything like as much work as The General. He was the leading spirit in all this world-Organisation's least details. He spent most of his time travelling all round the world."