(1948) General Evangeline Booth of The Salvation Army

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KANSAS CITTf, MO. Y UBLIU
01170 5712
DATE r<>'7.
OCT 25 1949
fr?
APB ^3
JUL 3
JAN 14 '52
GENERAL
EVANGELINE BOOTH
OF THE SALVATION ARMY
GENERAL
Evangeline Booth
BY
WILSON
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
I94 8
COPYRIGHT, 1948, KY
THE SALVATION ARMY
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this book

may be reproduced in any form without
the permission of Charles Scribner's Sons
70 GENERAL EVANGELINE BOOTH
"I did."
"You!" he ejaculated. "A little bit o a thing
like you! Well, all I can say is, you're a chunk of
pluck."
He silent and docile while I took off the
sat
bandage, and he gulped down the bread I had brought
him as if he had not tasted food for days. I talked to
him about drink.
"Drink!" he replied. "It's the only friend I've got.
Wrong to kick a man?
was kicked into the streets
I
when I was seven years old and me father it was that
did it. Me mother would come sneaking after me in the
shed with a crust of bread. Reckon I don't owe no man
nothing."
I asked Bones how he made a living and he an
swered,
"Selling chips," meaning, of course, the fried chips
of potato that accompany fish beloved of the people.
"But if you've no chips ." . .
"Steal," he answered as if it were a matter of

course.
I left him in the cellar for I seemed to have caught
some kind of a fever. They put me to bed and I woke
from a troubled slumber. I was amazed to see Bones
at my bedside.
"How did you get in?" I asked, for there had been,
as I knew, someone watching at the door.
"I knocked him down," he explained.
He held a paper bag that he was carrying. It con
tained grapes and I asked him where he had found the
money to buy them.
"Sold my jacket and waistcoat," he answered, and
he invited me back to the cellar where, he said, he had
something to show me. In due course, I accepted his in
vitation and he drew from the straw and rags that were
his only bed three soiled leaves from the Bible. They
were scarcely legible but I noticed that two were from
Matthew and the third from Isaiah.
"My mother give them to me," he said. "It was all
she had to leave me. She said they were enough to take
me where she was going and she would wait for me
there."
I read the Beatitudes in Matthew Blessed are the
FOREWORD
This book is, know, the most intimate review of the

so far as I
inner life of The Salvation Army that has ever been
permitted
to an outsider.
From God's Soldier, the painstaking biography of William
Booth by St. John Ervine, certain picturesque details of the
early Salvationist movement have been derived. Mr. Ervine's
later criticisms of Evangeline Booth are answered by the facts
as stated in these pages.
To many officers of the Salvation Army I owe a debt of
gratitude for courtesy that has been characteristic of a great
comradeship in Christ.
To my valued friend and neighbor, John S. Dole, Attor
ney at law and his partners, I am
under an obligation, im
possible to exaggerate, for wise, timely and generous counsel.
To W. L. Savage of Scribners, in like manner, and his col
leagues, I am also indebted.
Finally, Evangeline Booth herself. What can be prefaced

here to the record that follows? It is the record that counts,
and in view of what she is and has accomplished, I dare to
believe that her name will never be forgotten.
P. W. W.
MARCH, 1948.
GENERAL
EVANGELINE BOOTH
BACKGROUND
of us urged Evangeline Booth in the heyday of

MANY her glorious retirement to write her life and during
years of uncertainty she toyed with the idea. For she has
wielded a nimble and versatile pen and has a nice sense of
language.
Somehow or other this sensitive critic of herself never got
around to it and in the end, when oblivion was the alternative,
she turned stubborn. "I have never written about myself," she
protested, "I won't write about myself, and that decides it."
She packed up her papers, scores of thousands of them,
and handed the bundles over to me, and a nice tinje I have
had going through these accumulations. For Evangeline Booth,
herself no mean letter writer, was pursued by what nowadays
we callfan mail, full of appreciation and even flattery, and
during breathless years as administrator of a great organization
spreading over the whole wide world she had to deal with per
sons and properties, often involved in problems of the utmost
delicacy and importance. I who have known her well sometimes
feel as if I do not know her at all. Every day I have lighted
upon some detail illustrating a side of her character of which I
was unaware. Writing her biography has not been easy but
assuredly it has been worth while. For Evangeline Booth, with
her moods, her toils, her faith, her gifts, has been, all in all,
one of history's women.
What was who spent her girlhood
this celebrity in herself,
fn the depths of London's slums, who became in her day the
greatest woman orator of her period, whose name filled the
1
largest auditoriums,whose voice was heard to the remotest seat
in the highest gallery, who was honoured by statesmen and
monarchs, who toured land and sea like a queen? We shall
meet her in these not only in her uniform but as she
pages,
was in herself, theembodiment of a radiant sincerity subject
to a strong and disciplined will whose life with its endowments,
its sagacities and its limitations was lived as an open book,
to God and serv
nothing within her held back from obedience
ice to man, one who amid the shams and stupidities around
her stood, by and large, for the essentials that really matter.
has been something of
Delving through the documents
an education. For this study brings one into contact with what
has always been a remarkable phenomenon. In the annals of
faith there does not seem to be anything comparable with the
Salvation Army, and here we have unveiled its inward aspects.
We see achievement the hard way a moving drama in which
domesticities
soaring spirituality is intermingled with exacting
and quite human impulses. The Army is interesting and in
structivesome may say, fascinating not because it is free from
fault and working in a stratosphere above criticism, but be
cause, through complications scarcely believable in retrospect,
it has held to its aim. This one thing it has done it has
toward the mark for the of the high calling of

pressed prize
God in Christ Jesus. In mundane language it has spent its
whole energies on an audacious endeavour to lead people of
every race, class and creed into what they were
meant to be.
The varied uniforms of the Salvation Army are familiar in
many lands. Whatthey mean is generally respected but not
always understood save by the few. In the career of Evangeline
Booth, in her character, the inner life of the Army is reflected.
The year 1865 when she was born was the year of the Army's
birth, her cradle was the cradle of the world-wide movement.
She grew up with the Army, she went forth with the Army,
and even in the closing years of her long life her days were
filled to overflowing with the affairs of the Army urgent re

quests for orfe more speech to one more crowd that taxed her
remaining energies to the utmost, all the multitudinous detail
that pursues to the end one who belongs to the public.
Amid the masses of documents, especially covering the
later years, it was not always possible to find what I was look-
BACKGROUND 3
ing for those incidents that are the very breath of biography.
For Evangeline was inclined to agree with her father when
he said, "I do things. I'm too busy to write about them."
She held that dates in a book, and places and footnotes and
references can be greatly overdone. "The public/* she would
say, "just goes to sleep." And at no time has Evangeline Booth
had any use for a sleeping public. One day I found her reading
a painstaking but factual life of Dickens whom, as a Londoner,
she greatly admired. She was disappointed. "You look at the
clock in one room of the house/' she complained, "and it
tells you the time when it happened, and then you look at the
calendar in another room and that gives you the day of the
week. What difference does it make?*'
In such accuracies of time and place there is a fundamen
tal inaccuracy. For the vital in life is timeless, and we need
not worry ourselves greatly because the Germans in their
blitzkrieg destroyed the Army's Headquarters in Queen Vic
toria Street, including Evangeline Booth's original commission
as a captain signed by her father. We shall get along with the
archives that remain.
This book is written for the public and, owing to dis
tractions, new forms of entertainment, a welter of material
novelties and perils, the public has been plunged into forget-
fulness of much that used to be familiar. One is asked by
colleagues whether a text like "and a little child shall lead
them" is in the Bible and, if so, where. Ringing up a great
and courteous library one finds that The War Cry is not rec
ognized without consultation of files as the official and widely
distributed organ of the Salvation Army. One realises the
immense service rendered to the Army and to society as a
whole by the Booth family over a long course of years, and
especially by Evangeline Booth, the most brilliant of them all,
in compelling indifferent people to listen to what all people
ought to hear, and bringing the claim of the underprivileged
before the notice of those who are apt to overlook what is
going on before their eyes.
And first let us get rid of what in some minds may be a
misapprehension. So widespread has been the publicity ac
corded to the Booths that many people take it for granted that
anybody of the name is or has been connected with the Salva-
tion Army. But in 1865 the year when Evangeline was born, it
was quite otherwise. The Booths of that day were famous
within a sphere that the Booths of our day put out of bounds.
They were the Barrymores of their period, and it was, of
course, one of them who murdered Lincoln in the very yeai
when Evangeline Booth was awaited. It is, perhaps, note
worthy that so great a clan of actors should have yielded some
what in acclaim to namesakes whose activities have been quite
otherwise.
Over the ancestry of the Salvationist Booths a good deal
of ink has been spilt. People have thought it important to
make quite sure whether they were or were not remotely akin
to a certain Dr. Gregory, Dean of St. Paul's, a cathedral which,
however noble in its proportions and glorious in its traditions,
had little to do with the significance of the Salvation Army. As
we shall see, it took a coronation to lure Evangeline Booth into
Westminster Abbey. What does concern us, is the direct and
immediate heredity that determined the blood in her veins,
her outlook, her temperament, the acute sensitiveness that
enabled her to win people and sometimes caused her much
pain. If she was not always an easy person with others, it was
because she found it hard to be at ease with herself.
We begin with the paternal forbears and proceed to the
maternal side of the family which was fully as significant.
Evangeline Booth's grandfather was Samuel Booth. In 1824
he was a broken man. Not only had he lost his wife but his
only son. He resorted, therefore, to a spa called Ashby-de-la-
Zouche, interesting as the scene of the tournament in Ivanhoe,
there to recover his health, and during his recuperation he met
a woman, Mary Moss, whose age at the time was
thirty-three.
They were married and their eldest surviving son was William
Booth, Founder of the Salvation Army and father of Evangeline
Booth. Samuel Booth and Mary Moss were thus her
paternal
grandparents, and a photograph of the grandmother reveals a
dark eye and a finely moulded profile. It was from her that
William. Booth derived the splendidly Hebraic countenance
which, especially in his later years, recalled the prophetic maj
esty of an ancient people. This was the strong and spiritual
face that was inherited by his daughter, Evangeline.
Over the finances of Samuel Booth there has been much
BACKGROUND 5
gossip. He in the building trade, and during an

was, I take it,
era when workers were flocking from the farms into the fac
toriesEngland's industrial revolution it is entirely probable
that he made money from time to time by providing those
dwellings, hastily erected and monotonous in their regularity,
which left the nation with so serious a housing problem to be
solved later. One fact stands out stark and grim. Samuel Booth's
affairs collapsed and he with them. He died penniless, and
whatever delusions of affluence he may have fostered were
blown to the winds.
In the year 1851 Nathaniel Hawthorne published his
House of the Seven Gables. With elaborate art he told of
Hepzibah Pyncheon who pocketed her pride and opened a
little shop in her ancestral home for the sale of gingerbread
and other Working
trifles. folk who had
considered her to be
far above them, were now her somewhat contemptuous cus
tomers, and this was the ordeal faced by the widow of Samuel
Booth. With instant decision this brave woman departed from
her home in Nottingham and settled in a poorer dwelling on
Goose Gate where, with her daughter, she started a little shop
for the sale of pins and needles, cottons and the like. For years
these women toiled and planned to keep their heads above
water, true heroines of die shabby genteel, whose struggle
against adversity, had he known of it, would have been entered
by Charles Dickens in one of his notebooks.
Failure in this world's affairs and its humiliating conse
quences were thus the only heritage bequeathed by an im
prudent father to his young son, William Booth. The boy was
still at a school in Nottingham when the blow fell, and it was
the end of education for him as we define the term. But it must
be added by one who has deciphered scores of his hastiest
letters, that in expressing himself on paper he was, later in life,
verbally perfect. Seldom if ever did he repeat a word on the
same page and he was astonishingly precise in suggesting shades
of meaning.
But was in a harsh school that the training of the lad
it
proceeded. He was apprenticed at the age of

fourteen to a
in Nottingham and, by a curious chance, the
pawnbroker
pawnbroker was Unitarian in his belief. He belonged to that
group of intellectuals which, led by the Martineaus, strong
also in New England, were, as they put it, to be "weighed not
counted/' In all of this, there was, of course, little to indicate
the forthcoming emergence of a Salvation Army.
The pageantry of mid-Victorian England was at the zenith
of its pride and its pretensions. What confronted young Booth
was the background of misery that lay behind the magnificence.
His was a worse experience than the drab and sordid drudgery
that vexed the soul of H. G. Wells when a shop-assistant in
those eatly years before literary success enabled him to sit at
ease in the Reform Club and discuss Socialism. Desperately
in
poor himself, Booth had to deal with desperate* poverty
others. Families on the verge of destitution appeared before him
to pledge their worn and dwindling possessions pitiful little
trinkets, clothes out at elbow, furniture, even tools and wed
ding rings for petty loans of immediate cash. With wages paid
on Saturday they redeemed what they could.
The reward earned by William Booth, therefore, was not
the pittance he brought home at the weekend. It was a first
hand insight into the meaning of economic distress. On the one
hand drink and vice and gambling drove the workers to pen
ury. On the other hand, as the Socialists insisted, penury drove
the workers to drink and vice and gambling. People were poor
because they were sinful and they were sinful because they
iwere poor. In all of this we see foreshadowed what may be
called the practicality of Evangeline Booth. She knew where
shoes pinched.
v
The tolerance of such conditions by the political parties
then sharing parliamentary authority was provocative of deep
ening unrest. The nation was still without an effective fran-
qhise. It was swept by the Chartist Movement which seemed so
radical in its day and now appears so ordinary. The orator of
reform was Feargus O'Connor, an Irish disciple of Daniel
O'Connell, and the exuberant eloquence of O'Connor stirred
the resentments within the soul of William Booth. Amid the
seething maelstrom of discontent that was sweeping over
Europe, he might have been a Labour leader before any
Labour Party was in sight* Had that happened there would
have been no Salvation Army and no need to write the life of
Evangeline Booth. But what did happen was something else*
To the Duke of Wellington the Chartist Programme was
BACKGROUND 7
red revolution. In actual fact it consisted of little more than the

effective vote that the United Nations are demanding for
countries under alien dictatorship. William Booth had every
reason to know that the vote was less important than the pawn-
ticket, and of what use, he asked himself, are civic rights if the
citizen is all wrong? And he began with himself.
Here was what we call a good boy. He had been baptized
into the Church of England. He was working hard to pay his
way and give what help he could to his mother and sister. He
had no vices and he was the victim of a singularly unfortunate
start in life which he had done nothing to deserve. Yet he did
not grouch over his circumstances and he aired no grievances
against society. His one quarrel was with William Booth. To
be right with an easy-going church was not enough. To be
right with his family was not enough. To be right with his
employer was not enough. Nothing was enough but to be right
with God.
To the English-speaking world of a hundred years ago,
generally innocent of psychology, the word, conversion, yielded
the full meaning that the Bible has poured into it. It signified
more than changing a labeL To convert a Moslem into a
Hindu may be no more than transferring an item from one
column of religious statistics to another. But the conversion of
William Booth and of the Salvationists who arose around him
meant transforming a Christian into a Christian. "How very
hard it is to be a Christian!" Robert Browning was writing in
his Easter poem. To the Salvationist it can be done.
During those mid-Victorian days the Church of England
as a whole was still in the dpldrums. It had been weakened by
the widespread secession of the Methodists who had followed
the Wesleys. It was not yet awakened by the Anglo-Catholic
Revival which had been led for a while by John Henry New
man before he joined the Roman Catholic Church and became
a cardinal. The clergy in Nottingham regarded the decent and
dutiful boy called William Booth with complacent inattention,
which attitude was reciprocal. He wandered forth into a spirit
ual wilderness and, as a nomad, found an oasis at the Broad
Street Wesleyan Chapel where he attended a Bible class.
A polite idea in those days was that everybody should know
his Bible and his Shakespeare. If he wished to govern the em-
pire he must be acquainted also with Latin and Greek. Even at
the least spiritual times, four long lessons and several Psalms
were recited daily in the cathedrals and on Sundays in the
churches. And it had its value. But was it enough?
When the Methodists opened their Bibles they had in
mind more than such knowledge of Scripture. Texts were not
only expounded. They exploded. It was as an atom bomb
within a sinful community that the Gospel was released. And
among the aroused gatherings could be heard ejaculations still
echoing throughout the Salvation Army "Amen" "Hallelu
jah" "Praise the Lord." Prayer was impromptu, not liturgic.,
and it was mingled with hymns and choruses no less spontane
ous. The Word of God was quick and powerful, cleaving to
the very essentials of the being of man.
One evening William Booth, brooding over his uneasy
conscience, strolled into the Bible Class. "A soul dies every
minute," were the words that fell on his ears and they smote
him like a weapon. For he believed that man's destiny here-
aefter, including his own, is determined by his attitude on
earth. In that cheerless schoolroom was a plain wooden table
and at the table people were kneeling, confessing their sins
and surrendering their lives to God. Pale, thin and nervous the
boy knelt at their side. He arose a Christian.
At that wooden table Evangeline Booth has knelt in spirit
throughout her life. It bore a plate with the words of her
father God Shall Have All That There Is of William Booth.
. The table was brought over to the United States and used at
revivals with great effect. Evangeline Booth took it with her to
Japan and around the world. It was seen by immense audiences
whose hearts were stirred. She took it back to the Army's Head
quarters in Queen Victoria Street where it fell under the bomb
ings and vanished for ever. What grew out of that table was
something more spacious than itself. It was the Army's penitent
form, everywhere the same throughout the world, the Salva
tionist Communion Rail for renewing consecration, the Altar
where lives are dedicated, the Mercy Seat where sins are con-^
fessed and forgiven.
The effect of conversion on William Booth was at once
apparent. His conscience was stirred to sensitive reactions that

continued for the rest of his life, making him severe with him-
BACKGROUND 9
selfIn all his dealings with others. One such boyish repentance
borders on the humorous but he tells of itin his own words,
thus:
In a boyish trading I had managed to make a profit

out of my companions whilst giving them to suppose
that I did all in the way of generous friendship. As a
testimony of their gratitude they had given me a pencil
case.
He
called his companions together, owned up to the
deception and felt better. As for the other boys, they were ready
to follow him to the ends of the earth.
His was now
a new outlook on life. His occupation was
stillpawnbroking but the humanity that frequented the pawn
shop was transferred from the debit to the credit side of the
account. Business was still business but the question was no
longer merely how the poor creatures had come to their low
estate. It was also what would be their future if they were
saved. Suppose that a power beyond themselves raised them
out of the dunghill and set them among princes. What then?
For William Booth it meant that the chains of what Socialism,
following Rousseau, calls wage-slavery, were broken, and he
walked forth a free man, his life now radio-active. For it made
a difference to other lives and one conversion led to another.
"Besom Jack" was quite a character. He drank hard and
beat his wife. He was changed overnight into a considerate
member of society, and his wife, at any rate, had no doubt
that a husband is easier to live with when he is saved from the
Devil. A
young girl on her deathbed found Christ and her
departure was glorified by the sure and certain hope of resur
rection. The little group already gathered around William
Booth assumed the management of the funeral and, years be
fore the Salvation Army came into being, the body was carried
to the graveamid the singing of hymns and cries of "Hallelu
jah/* In an England obsessed by black plumes at interments
and prolonged wearing of black mourning afterwards, these
young people -little more than boys and girls declared to the
world that anyone, however sad his heart and sinful his past,
who commits his soul to the redemption wrought by the
Saviour on the Cross, is "promoted to glory" when he is laid in
the grave. It is white riband, not black crepe, that Salvationists
wear at their funerals. Incidentally loans at the pawnshop to
pay the undertaker were discouraged.
For a time the evangelism of William Booth was personal
and unobtrusive. He talked with people and won them to re
pentance. It was only after he was seventeen years old that in
a
most modest manner he overcame his timidity.
In those days a well-known institution was the cottage
meeting. Little companies of simple folk met, as met the early
Christians, in the humble homes of the people themselves.
These groups had no clergy, they sang their favourite hymns,
they prayed in their own language, they preached their own
sermons and it was with their own eyes that they read their
Bibles. Such a cottage meeting was held on Kidd Street, Not
tingham, and here William Booth first occupied a pulpit.
At eight o'clock of a week night he walked to the place
from the pawnshop. There was no gas as an illuminant. Even
lamps were a luxury and electric light was a magic unforeseen.
But a table had been set and on the table was a wooden box. At
each side of the box flickered a candle, and at this reading desk
stood a slender young man of seventeen years old. His were
a pale complexion, dark eyes, black hair, Wellingtonian nose
and sensitive lips. The congregation was small and composed
mainly of women but there was curiosity over the occasion.
Men stood around the door and watched what was going on.
It was not every day that a pawnbroker's apprentice stood
up
among the customers to preach Christ.
According to one present the words that they heard were
"very gentle and tender." For what lay heavy on the heart of
the young preacher was not the fate of the unsaved, however
terrible it might be, but the difficulties of those who,
having
accepted salvation, were trying to adjust themselves to a new
standard of conduct and motive. He talked of these babes in
Christ as infants learning to walk, an echo of the
exquisite sim
ile of the Prophet Hosea when, in the name of the
Almighty,
he wrote, "I taught Ephraim to go, taking them by their arms/'
as a mother holds up her tottering child.
Enrolling his converts,
William Booth was already shepherding the flock.
Jn due course he was heard at the street corner. He made
BACKGROUND 11
no bones about using the word sin, but for the sinner he
showed a sense of eternal value. "You liar! You liar!" shouted
a foul-mouthed objector. "Friend," replied the young evange
list gently, "it was for you He died. Stop and be saved."
The Wesleyans were, at the moment, torn between their
Right and their Left. William Booth had not been long con
verted before he was entangled in the struggle. He could see
no reason why the companions whom he had led to Christ
should not be as welcome at public worship as other Chris
tians. He inarched his little group, therefore, as a body into
the Wesleyan Chapel and seated them in the front pews. Some
would have held a praise meeting over this visible evidence
that the eternal Gospel was appealing to a rising generation.
But the intruders rough, ill-clad and in the first flush of their
common victory for the best that was in them offended the
congregation by their presence. Elder brethren and their wives
were not accustomed to see so many prodigal sons all at once
in the Father's house. If they had to go to church let them
enter by the side door and sit in side seats. The conservatives
were in a furore. It was the first brush between William Booth
and the churches as then organised.
In 1849 the five long years of apprenticeship to pawn-
broking came to an end and the graduate in a calling despised
a,s usurious was faced by the fact that in Nottingham,
at any
rate, he was out of a job. With but a few shillings in his pocket
he migrated to London where he visited his sister Ann whose
husband was a small shopkeeper. They had no liking for his
revivalist activities and he was driven back to the pawnshop
this time in Walworth, a poor district south of the Thames.
There was still the mediaeval tradition that a tradesman should
live with his help above his shop, and Booth thus received part
of his wages in board and lodging. It was an oppressive arrange
ment, only possible because labour was unorganised, and he
was left with little time for himself.
What saved the situation was a much derided principle
namely, Sunday observance the right of the worker to one day
rest in seven that he could call his own. From midnight of
Saturday to midnight of Sunday William Booth belonged to
the Gospel. He was, however, miserably discouraged by his
circumstances and he wrote of setting sail for Australia, By
preference he would take passage on a convict ship, and for a
significant reason. He would be able, so he said, to "preach to
the very worst of men Christ's salvation." Already the 'Very
worst of men" had become his obsession.
In Walworth there happened to be a man whose activities
illustrated the ease with which it was possible in the England
of that day to get rich quickly. During the piping times of
peace that followed the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo he
started business so he would boast on a borrowed half-a-
crown, and he amassed a fortune of 60,000 in real estate alone.
He made boots and his name was E. J. Rabbits. For years
people used to talk about "Rabbit's Corner." There have been
some sneers at the expense of Rabbits but I see no reason
whatever to mistrust the general opinion that he sold excellent
boots and was honestly desirous to promote the well-being of
those who wore them. With William Booth, he was much
impressed.
To follow the precise chronology of this early period is
not easy, but Evangeline Booth preserved with care an undated
letter written by her father from "Kennington Row,
Kenning-
ton" to Rabbits. He wrote:
Before your solemn convictions are registered on

high, will you as a Christian, as a friend of the friend
less which to me you have ever
proved, hear me.
In my present position I am unsettled unhappy
my occupation is so contrary to my views that I am
constantly desiring something different. I feel it in my
heart on my soul from day to day that I should be a
missionary of God. I wish to visit the dying and tell
of Him Who is life the prisoners and point to Him
Who is freedomthe wanderer and tell of Him Whose
arms and house and heart are open the great congre
gation and speak of that love which is boundless that
salvation which is free and that mercy which is infinite
and eternal. And the opportunity presents itself but I
cannot accept it. Souls want reclaiming Christ wants
preaching backsliders wajit reclaiming. But a difficulty
offers or I would without hesitation go I want bread
and water can I have it?
BACKGROUND 13
Strange words from a pawnshop and, perhaps, it was no

wonder that Rabbits was conscious o something outside the
usual run of business.
He told his young friend that he should give the whole of
his time to the Gospel and waste no more of it on pawn-
broking. Booth asked how he was to live on air? Rabbits
then wanted to know how much money a week Booth would
need to live on. He figured it out and answered 12 shillings
or about $2.40 according to that day's exchange. It was, of
course, the era of the sweatshop, about which Tom Hood wrote
his famous Song of a Shirt that startled the readers of Punch.
Yet Booth's idea of living on twelve shillings a week and con
tributing out of it to his mother and sister surprised Rabbits.
He was moved to be generous and he made it a pound. If
Booth would give up his job Rabbits would guarantee that
pound for three months. So modest was the stake gambled on
the faith that was to move mountains.
The maker of boots was proud indeed, a little possessive
of his young evangelist. He introduced the young man to
friends of their own missionary persuasion. A lonely child of
misfortune was thus welcomed into those homes of the English
middle-class where the mahogany was massive and the cushions
were comfortable. In such a home he met his fate and the fate
included the unsuspected future of Evangeline Booth. For we
may now say a word on the maternal side of her ancestry.
In the village of Ashbourne in Derbyshire lived a widower
called Milward with his daughter, Sarah. Hers was a delicate
and tranquil countenance lovely in itself and enhanced with
that beauty of holiness which defies all contradiction. The
Milwards belonged to the Church of England but Sarah was
unsatisfied by liturgical formalities an^d by the political minds
of many parsons. She found her soul's peace in the worship o
the Methodists.
She was a woman over whom any man might well have lost
his head and she already had a lover. He was ardent and impet
uous and she yielded her hand to his wooing. Yet something
about him made her hesitate. He did not pretend, apparently,
to be saved, and she could not allow herself to be unequally
yoked together with an unbeliever. She broke off her betrothal.
There were few railways in those days and it was on horse
back that the suitor, not yet accepting the decision, rode up to
her door. He wished to plead his case but she refused to see
him. In a fury of chagrin he galloped away, nor did he draw
rein until the steaming animal collapsed under him in its
death throes. He picked himself up from the road, not appar
ently hurt very much in body, but hopelessly deranged in
mind, and they had to send him to an asylum. So ended Sarah
Milward' s first romancethe grandmother that she was to be
of Evangeline Booth.
It was sometime before the girl recovered from the shock,
3md it was her reaction definitely to join the straitest sect of
the Methodists, adopting their way of life. She cut the ribands
from her dresses and gave up playing cards. No more did she
dance and her last visit to the theatre is on record. Entering the
playhouse she saw the usual direction:
THIS WAY TO THE PIT
There was nothing in the words that she had not passed
a dozen times. But on this occasion they struck her with a new
and ominous meaning. What if she, Sarah Milward, were to die
while watching a worldly performance? How would it be with
her then as she entered eternity? Never again would she allow
herself to take such a risk.
In the England of that early nineteenth century a factor
of far-reaching influence was lay ministry. Many thousands of
Christiansfor instance, Quakers in the Society of Friends-
objected to dependence on what they called one-man ministry,
paid by the Church, and held that a child of God is himself a
king, a priest,by divine right in Christ; and they quoted texts
to prove it. There were classes in Sunday School conducted by
the laity where the instruction covered all ages the infant who
could not read or write, men and women who had passed their
sixties, of whom many in those days before national education
were no less illiterate. Local and itinerant evangelists thus
followed the example of Paul the tentmaker. They earned their
living in a secular occupation and devoted their spare time to
the Gospel. Sarah Milward used to attend such lay services.
BACKGROUND 15
There in the pulpit from time to time she saw an impres

sive young man. By trade he was a wheelwright or coachbuilder.
His dark broad brow, his strong features might have
eyes, his
inspired Longfellow to write of a second village blacksmith.
Modest were his pulpits but his themes were divine, and
Sarah Milward as a worshipper discovered that she was also a
woman. She approved of the preaching and she fell in love with
the preacher. There came one of those evenings when John
Mumford escorted her home and the young people knew that
they were meant for one another. The lonely father did not
want to lose his daughter and, bound by England's subtle yet
stern distinctions of caste, he opposed the match. In that home
there were warm scenes and Sarah put an end to them by walk
ing out of the house without a penny in her pocket and no
clothes save what she had on her back. She took refuge with
friends, married her John and the father relented.
John and Sarah Mumford were Evangeline Booth's ma
ternal grandparents. They had five children but two alone
survived infancy. A
son migrated to America and passes out of
this picture. There was a daughter who thus became in effect
an only child. Her name was Catherine and this mother of
Evangeline Booth became one of the greatest of Victorian
women.
Catherine Mumford was brought up in cloistered seclusion
from a wicked and seductive world. Lest she be tempted to
read French novels, she was taught no French and the proprie
ties were partner to her Puritanism. She lived in that
precise
era when well-behaved young ladies had to purse their lips by
pronouncing plums, prunes and prisms, and for a time it
seemed as if she were doomed to be an invalid. She suffered
from curvature of the spine and she was a consumptive. The
child was a bundle of nerves and hypersensitive, the authentic
mother of an Evangeline who was to arise in her place.
suggestion of cruelty to animals drove her to distrac
Any
tion.She caught sight of some sheep that were being unkindly
goaded. She rushed home, flung herself on the sofa and relieved
her feelings by a flood of tears. She -saw a boy driving a cart
and hitting his donkey with a hammer. Catherine jumped from
the carriage in which she was sitting, fell on her face in the
mud, seized the hammer, assailed the lad with blows and words
and then fainted. There was that in her which became uncon
trollable at the sight of brutality.
Her companion was a retriever called Waterford, and the
creature regarded himself as her protector. One day he was in
the garden and heard his mistress cry indoors. Through the
glass of the window the dog flung himself
and Mumford did
not approve of it. A
large and powerful animal thus devoted
to one person and jealous on her behalf was a liability to the
household, and Waterford was shot. Catherine was, for a time,
inconsolable, and the incident is interesting because the same
kind of thing happened, as we shall see, to her daughter, Evan-
geline.
Catherine Mumford had no opportunity to go to college.
There would have been no Catherine Mumford if a college in
those days had been available. Some may hint that she must
have been lacking in what we now mean by higher education.
The answer is that, like Queen Elizabeth when a princess,
Catherine absorbed education in solitude, reading a great vari
ety of books with her own eyes, and developing her own judge
ment. The basis of her culture was the Bible and that best of
books she always put first. One vogue of that period, however,
was atheism and on atheism Catherine Booth specialised. She
knew as much about the propaganda of Bradlaugh and Inger-
soll as knew themselves. They raised the issue. This girl
they
met the challenge. She had no intimates and her constant com
panion was her pen. She wrote long letters, the English flowing
smoothly from page to page, no word being spared. It was
Evangeline Booth in a preview. For my first surprise when I
was admitted into her confidence was the distinction of her
epistolary style.
It was a romance of pew and pulpit that had drawn to
gether John Mumford and Sarah Milward. The pew and the
pulpit drew together Catherine Mumford and William Booth.
Catherine heard William preach and liked it and liked him.
Once more there was the evening after a service which
had been dynamic with appeal to the unsaved. They walked
home together to her home and they knew that they loved.
The die was cast, and what had been for each of them an over
whelming sense of individual responsibility to God became
BACKGROUND 17
mutual. They shared the calls that had come to each of them.
About the introduction of William Booth one evening to
the home of the Mumfords there was a momentary unpleasant
ness. For Mumford had heard Booth recite a lengthy and com
bative poem, quite popular in those days and entitled The
Grogseller's Dream which nightmare ended with the lines:
With a stifled sob and a half-formed scream,

The grogseller woke it was all a dream.
There was an awkward silence. One of the guests had been

much upset by the teetotal lyric. He confessed frankly that he
was a moderate drinker and he appealed to the Bible in defence
of his habit. William Booth as another guest was much em
barrassed.
The clear voice of Catherine Mumford was heard in reply.
She admitted that wine is mentioned in the Bible with com
mendation. But she argued that the Bible draws a distinction
between fermented and unfermented liquors, the ales and the
ades. She insisted that, despite all said to the contrary, people
could be kept sober by act of Parliament and she was sarcastic
over the contention that liquor should be sold for the sake of
the public revenue derived therefrom. We have another of
those previsions of what was to be Evangeline Booth's influence
in favour of abstention from intoxicants.
William and Catherine Booth thus loved with an absorb
ing affection. Their betrothal embraced prayers, hopes, princi
ples, anxieties and service of others. It was the more tender in
its loyalties because any idea of marriage seemed to be out of
the question. Their romance was sustained by an interchange
of letters which, assuredly, was remarkable. They dealt at
length with all manner of questions that had to be faced, nor
could a Prime Minister have written to his Sovereign with a
more mature sense of responsibility for what he was putting
upon paper. The Booth family that was founded by these
parents, as they became in due course,
cannot be understood
unless it be realised that they were trained and taught to take
themselves and each other seriously. Such was the theology, the
evangelism, the finance whatever topic arose in the minds
of
the lovers. All was illuminated by avowals of mutual devotion.
On one subject there was a sharp difference of opinion.
William's background was Anglican and masculine. Evan-
geline Booth is my authority for saying that the Mumfords had
associations with the Quakers who, then as now, lay insistence
on the spiritual and civic equality of the sexes. Catherine threw
herself into the argument which, as a result, was decisive.
Unless husband and wife were to enjoy the same status before
God and man she would not marry even her William. Thus it
was that in the fifties this determined young woman stood in
the forefront of progressive opinion, including herself among
the pioneers who claimed the suffrage for women and an
entrance into the legal and medical professions. Years before
her birth, therefore, the stage was set for the career of Evan-
geline Booth, the first and hitherto the only woman to be
elected General of the Salvation Army. The entire movement
before it rose to the surface of society was based on the whole
family husband and wife, brother and sister, son and daughter.
William Booth had been carrying on his evangelism as a
layman. But it would be a mistake to suggest that he avoided
or despised holy orders. On the contrary, he sought them and
for an understandable reason. Many times he found himself
face to face with audiences that included persons who had
enjoyed advantages of education superior to his own. He wished
to be trained for the ministry and to be addressed as "reverend/*
Among the Wesleyans, as we have seen, he had his trou
bles, and with Catherine's full approval he turned to the Con-
gregationalists where, he assumed, there would be greater
freedom of organisation, each chapel being "independent" of
the others. Suddenly he was faced by the sinister ghost of the
long deceased reformer, John Calvin, whisking through dark
corridors in his black Genevan gown. This grim spectre threw
a shadow across the Salvationist's path and uttered the sep
ulchral word "Predestination."
Not so many years later Gilbert was playfully to inform
Savoyards that "every little boy and girl that's born into this
world alive, is either a little Liberal or else a little Conserva
tive/' and it was this party system that Calvin applied to the
fatfe of man. Every little boy and girl was to be either saved or
lost, and there was nothing that anyone could do about it

not the individual himself, however repentant he might be
BACKGROUND 19
not even the Saviour on the Cross. William and Catherine did
not flinch from the contrast between heaven and hell. What
a man sows, they taught, that shall he reap. But they refused
pointblank to accept the Genevan edict that infants at birth
are denied the opportunity of redemption and consigned,
whatever they are and whatever they do, to the pains of the
inferno. William left the Congregationalists to themselves, and
one may add that most Congregationalists of our own day agree
with him.
It was thus within his own adopted Methodism that, after
all, William Booth was called to be a minister of the Gospel.
* 1 '
At last he was entitled to a 'reverend which courtesy he re

tained to the end of his life. He served in a number of churches
and was able to marry Catherine Mumford. They were affili
ated with the Methodist New Connexion, now united with the
parent body of Wesleyans.
He conducted services. He baptised, married and buried
his people. But his one interest was preaching the Gospel. It
was the Gospel preached by the great American evangelist,
Dwight L. Moody. It was the Gospel that drove Livingstone
into Africa and Grenfell into Labrador. It was the Gospel
engraved on the mind and expounded by the lips of Evangeline
Booth.
A plain statement of this Gospel is thus essential to truth
in biography. For apart from the Gospel the lives of these
Booths cannot be lived over again. It was, after all, a simple
affair. We are sinners. If we are honest with ourselves, we
know it, and sin is death to the soul. To be saved from sin and
restored in soul is thus essential to a life worth living. For this
reason the Saviour of the world died on the Cross, thereby
winning redemption for mankind of every race, religion and
nation. They who are saved are under an imperative obliga
tion to make known this salvation to others. Millions of people
subscribed to this faith. Millions still subscribe. The Booths
honoured their signatures. They were the Wesleys of the nine

teenth century.
Booth Wesley ran into trouble with his Church and
like
essentially was
it the same trouble. It was one of those troubles
where there was right on both sides. For we have, first of all,
the Church as crusader. Then, the crusade has to be organised
into an institution. Within the Salvation Army itself the
crusade and the institution may be observed and studied
under the same Flag.
Booth, later to build an institution, was starting as a
crusader. He crossed all frontiers. He preached in church,
chapel, theatre, tent or the open air. He was what on news
papers is called a free lance, and in the resounding words ot
Wesley the "world was his parish.
But the Methodist New Connexion had left some of this
crusading behind. It was organised into districts and districts
were assigned to certain ministers. William Booth did not
submit to the view that he must only preach the Gospel by
permission of tKe regular man on the spot, and his unauthor
ised meetings were attended by tumultuous crowds. As he
asserted the right to speak, so they insisted on the right to
listen. There was criticism. People talked about the after
effects of so much emotion, and Booth himself suspected emo
tion and did as little as he could to stimulate it. But the broad
verdict of history is definite. For what is meant by the dignity
of man, the poor man as well as the rich, the ignorant as well
as the learned, William Booth was already beginning to win
his great victory. He was one Of those in Britain who laid the
foundations of a national stamina that faced the tests of war,
depleted resources and a perfect plethora of difficulties.
The good men who guided the Methodist New Connexion
were hard put to it. How could they clip the wings of their
admired but inconvenient eagle? In 1861, four years before the
birth of Evangeline Booth, they held their conference in Liver
pool.
It was a dull and dusty chapel, long since
swept away.
There was a rostrum, seats below and a gallery above. The floor
was occupied by well-meaning but embarrassed clerics, among
whom sat William Booth in his long frock coat and with a
well-worn silk hat, broad of brim, on his knees. His pale black
bearded face was attentive and anxious, and no wonder. A
home crowded already with four young children was at stake,
and all the children were under seven years of age. In the
gallery, calm and courageous, sat Catherine Booth.
The debate was unhappy. Compromise was suggested.
BACKGROUND 21
William Booth looked up at the gallery, and a woman's voice
was heard.
"Never/' said Catherine Booth, in the first, the shortest
and the most important speech she ever delivered.
There were low cries of "order' and William Booth,
holding his hat, walked down the aisle to the door. On the
porch his wife was waiting for him and together they went forth
into the street to face whatever was in store for them.
The Methodist New Connexion was not hard on them.
But they were soon dependent on their own slender resources.
From that time onward they belonged to no denomination
recognised as such. They practised their faith in separation
from the Churches, and this has been Evangeline Booth's atti
tude during her long life. It has been a friendly separation.
Many years later than that, in 1861, King Edward VII invited
William Booth to a private audience. The Salvationist leader
expected to meet a man of the turf and a worldling. He was
greeted by an English gentleman, and during the conversation
the King asked the General what the clergy now thought of
him. "Sir," he replied with the humour that never failed,
"they imitate me."
Far in advance of the twentieth century the Booths had
thus to face what we consider to be the modern choice between
marriage and career. The fact that for both of them the career
was spiritual rather than secular only intensified the issue to be
decided. In 1845 Charles Kingsley, in his sturdy Protestant
fashion, had dramatised the conflict in the mind of St. Elizabeth
of Hungary when she was torn between love for a husband who
adored her and the demands of an ecclesiastic who exacted
from her what he h,eld to be a higher allegiance. Multitudes of
Catholics had abandoned the idea of earthly wedlock to find
their home in cell and cloister. Evangeline Booth herself stead
fastly resisted inclinations to matrimony.
To the whole of this asceticism the answer of William and,
Catherine Booth was defiant. They flouted the cult of celibacy.
Not only did they marry. They fulfilled the meaning of mar
riage to the utmost limits of its opportunities and its obliga
tions. The little woman who started her career with tubercu
losis and was to end it with cancer, as we shall see, became a
miracle o achievement. She managed a husband who was not
always inclined to be manageable. Within twelve years she bore
eight children, all of whom survived the perils of infancy. Yet,
with this to exhaust her energies, she was able to "mother" the
Salvation Army and take a frequent place on the platform.
Amid generations that read George Eliot, Jane Austen and
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, that followed Harriet Beecher
Stowe onto the battlefield, that applauded Jennie Lind, that
revered Florence Nightingale, that curtseyed to Queen Victoria,
a woman had to be somebody before she was anybody. No
woman of her day was more, no woman did more, than Cath
erine Booth.
Those eight children were brought up in the faith of their
parents. From birth to death, their lives were blameless of any
offence, and those who married were true to their vows and
responsibilities. All of them made their contribution to the
upbuilding of the Salvation Army. In or out of the Army all
of them preached the Gospel. There have been thirty-five
grandchildren and thirty great-grandchildren. In this year,
1947, the great-great-grandchildren are arriving.
YOUTH
one of his tours through the United States, Gen

DURING eral William Booth^ Founder o the Salvation Army
and father of Evangeline Booth, was received with the usual
honours by the Mayor of Chattanooga in the State of Ten
nessee. The Mayor remarked to him that in the year 1865 his
"
city had only 3000 inhabitants and look at it now! 'Sixty-five,"
said Booth slowly, "let me see. That was when your war ended
and my war began." For it was in 1865 that the Christian
Mission out of which grew the Salvation Army was initiated
in 1865, by a coincidence, that Evangeline Booth was born.
In the year 1865 Palmerston as Prime Minister died in
office and Abraham Lincoln as President was murdered. In
sixty-five Gladstone and Disraeli, now among the ancients, had

still to form their rival governments, and Evangeline Booth as
a young woman saw them pass beyond the scene. She watched
from afar the rise and fall of the united German Empire and
united Italy. She was active when Mussolini and Hitler, the
dictators, were lads, and she was still active when they passe<d
to their doom. She has seen a whole world of civilisation van
ish in blood, sweat and tears, and she has also seen a new world
painfully endeavouring to stagger to its feefc The eighty years
of her life embrace wars and revolutions innumerable and
apocalyptic in their summation, inventions that transformed
human life in homes, challenging claims by science, industry
and labour, both on the community and on the individual. Yet
she has been changeless amid the changes first, laot and all the
time a Salvationist, and when the reporters asked her if she
had any regrets, she answered, "Yes, one. I wish I had a second
life to give."
23
At the outset of the nineteenth-century England, including
Thackeray, gaped at nabobs returning from India and flaunt
ing the spoils of the gorgeous East. Byron was among the poets
who embroidered magic tapestries beyond the horizon with
verses that rivalled the Arabian Nights. The Prince Regent,
afterwards King George IV, followed the fashion by raising an
oriental palace at Brighton, facing the English Channel, and
this he called 'the Pavilion. After he had vanished unregretted
from the scene, his cupolas and his minarets were handed over
to the community as a museum, and one of the rotundas was
found to be suitable for public meetings.
In the year 1865 there gathered within these exotic sur
roundings some thousands of people. They were not outcasts
within the slums. They were serious looking and serious think
ing people whose sober demeanour was a complete contrast to
the aristocratic excesses of a former day. They listened to the
calm clear voice of a lady, still young, who was dressed like
themselves- and Queen Victoria in bonnet and mantle. Sur
rounded by spaces so extensive she seemed to be strangely
small on that platform, yet as she reasoned with her audience of
righteousness, temperance and judgement to come, the people,
like Felix when Paul addressed him, trembled. It was Cath
erine Booth, not yet a Salvationist in uniform but a Salvationist
at heart, a wife and a mother. For she had borne six children
and was assured of a seventh. The being of Evangeline Booth
was already pulsating within her and she was present on that
occasion. The prayer of the expectant mother was for a
daugh
tera daughter who would never marry but belong to the
Salvationist cause.
In November of that year the Booths moved their home

in Hammersmith west of London to the northerly district of
Hackney. Their new address was One Cambridge Heath, and
during December there was an air of expectation around the
place. It was expectation mingled in the mind of the mother
with nervous phantasies, and one day when she was
sleeping
she woke up screaming. There was, she cried, a spider
crawling
over her face. William Booth reassured her and if there ever
were a spider it was swept away. She must think no more of it
and go to sleep agîn.
YOUTH 25
It was, perhaps, a pity that an impressionable child was
ever told of that hypothetical spider. For to the end of her life
she disliked these insects, and even after eighty years she men- -
tioned the incident.

It was a white Christmas and on the eve of the festival that
home was full of subdued excitement. Would the expected
event occur on the great Nativity of Jesus Christ? Or would
it anticipate that anniversary by a few hours?
They waited and
prayed and hoped for the best.
Suspense was relieved by the chiming of bells in the
church near by, and in the street below were heard the waifs
singing once more their well-known carols. Amid the Yuletide
music was born the child and at once the mother asked in a
murmur whether the face was unmarked. She was made happy
with the statement that no spider in her thoughts had left an
impression on the tender skin, and within the half-hour Cath
erine drew the hand of her William over the infant's brow.
Together they gave their latest to God.
Thus was Evangeline Booth born, and it was within a
family full of high spirits that she found herself. The boys, on
the whole, were the lords of creation Bramwell, just eleven
and already called to be an apostle Ballington, a year youngei:
and ringleader in all escapades Herbert, only three and still a
toddler amid his elders. Catherine, Emma and Marian were the
girls. The general impression was that an angel had visited
their home during the night a rather more important visitant
than Santa Glaus and had left a little sister behind.
At the door as they were having breakfast appeared their
father. He was still wearing the long frock coat of a noncon
formist minister and behind the beard the face beamed with
delight. He was carrying a basket lined with straw, and wonder
ing eyes peered into Evangeline Booth's first cradle.
"Here," said her father, "is God's Christmas gift/'
They commented on her wealth of hair, and as she was
growing up Bramwell in his playful way would chaff his sister
about starting life in a wastepaper basket. She enjoyed his
banter and had her answer.
/'It's not true, Bramwell," she would retort, "and if it were
true, it would teach you the lesson that you should be careful^
how you throw things away."
Naturally there arose the question what the child should
be General Evangeline Booth remembers how Evan-
called.
geline was the name chosen for her by her mother. But, it has
to be added, that Catherine Booth had been reading Uncle
Tom's Cabin and she decided that there should be another
Little Eva, a joy in the home. Instructions to this effect were
given to a proud father but on the register, for some reason,
appeared the name, Evelyne, and apparently he really meant it
for there is Evelyne in letters that he wrote many years later.
However, Evelyne was never other than Eva in the home and
on a day that she dimly remembers she was presented to a
mouselike lady called Harriet Beecher Stowe, who unwittingly
had been created her patron saint. For many years she remained
Eva but in due course she came to the United States where she
met the veteran, Frances Elizabeth Willard, founder of the
Women's Christian Temperance Union, who had learned by
experience that prestige is essential to a woman of responsi
bility if she is to hold her allotted place in the world. Frances
.WiJJard advised Eva Booth that she would be wise to assume
tljejuse of the full name, Evangeline, to which she was entitled.
The suggestion was accepted.
On letters and cablegrams Evangeline Booth often signed
herself by her middle name Cory, and here again a tale can
be told. In the rough seaport of Cardiff on the southern coast
of Wales there were two brothers, John and Richard Cory.
They were coal merchants in a large way and on black wagons
drawn by cart horses one could see their name in soiled white
paint. The Cory brothers were hard-headed business men, ac
customed to deal with the mining industry, but they were con
vinced that William and Catherine Booth, visiting their city
and other places, were proclaiming and practising a Gospel
that made a difference to society, and they backed the Salva
tionist Movement with substantial sums of money. They owned
a fleet of freighters to which a new vessel was added. It was
called the William Booth and any profits it earned were to go
to the/ cause. The good ship William Booth was wrecked, how
ever, off the coast of Bermuda not that it made any difference
to the zeal of the Cory brothers. They continued to be firm
friends of the Booths and that was how Evangeline got her
middle name. Whatever happens to coal in England the good-
YOUTH 27
ness of the Cory brothers will be enshrined in the annals of the
Salvation Army.
From her earliest remembered moment Evangeline Booth
thus found herself in the midst of great doings. Across the
threshold of her home swept a tornado of telegrams, letters,
messages and, worst of all, callers. It was the central chaos of
an organisation as yet unorganised, o a success that needed to
be protected against itself. Even the undaunted Catherine
sometimes sighed. "I had always wanted a home," she confessed
when her end was near, "and it had to be an office."
What William Booth called the war was not the worry. To
be burdened with the needs of mankind required stout shoul
ders but the burden was light. For neither he nor his Catherine
would have had it otherwise. What did fret the spirit, was the
persistence of petty domestic claims on his slender resources.
Evangeline Booth was only four when her grandmother, Mary
Moss, widow of Samuel Booth ended her long and brave life,
nor could the granddaughter have recollected the fine old
lady. But we may recall scenes when, from time to time, the
grandmother, fiercely proud of her descendent brood, held the
little Eva in her arms and felt that her distresses had been,
after all, worth while. Evangeline does remember a tall thin
person coming to the house whom she was to call Aunt Mary.
It was William Booth's sister who for so many years had
helped her mother keep the little shop in Nottingham, To

assist that mother and that sister was among the cares of the
Founder of the Salvation Army.
Across Evangeline's crowded retrospect flits another faint
memory. She was introduced to a gentle old man whom she
was to call "Grandfather." It was only a glimpse that she had of
him but he won her heart. It was John Mumford, wheelwright
and lay preacher, father of Catherine Mumford, and when he
wa$ around there was an embarrassed sorrow in the air the
glimmer of twilight, never glad confident morning again. For
the contention over alcoholic liquor which had disturbed the
amenities during the first visit of William Booth to the home
of the Mumfords, had been followed by a regrettable sequel.
In John Mumford we see a man of blameless instincts, of
Christian principle, witness and example, yet it seems that
drink sometimes got the better of him. He began to be less
efficient than formerly as a worker and less helpful as a
preacher. It was with reason, then, that the Booths
narrowed
their minds on this question. They knew what they were talk
ing about, and among the texts that they emphasised was this
Let him that standeth take heed lest he jail.
Then there was the health of the family to be considered.
Those were the days before inoculations, medical inspections
in schools and all the paraphernalia of preventive medicine.
Plumbing was often primitive and local authorities left sanita
tion to take care of itself. Water had to be filtered before drink
ing and there were germs in the air that people breathed.
A trustful belief was that you never caught anything at
church or Sunday School. You were immune. In any event the
Booths did not hesitate to expose themselves night and day to
every kind of contact with poverty and uncleanly conditions,
nor in their case did the alleged immunity appear to be effect
ive.They seemed to catch everything that came along. Poor
Marian, already a victim to childish upsets, had the smallpox,
and Evangeline spun round on her toes in paroxysms of
whooping cough, and her voice, as she once wrote, a choice
between "a whisper and a croak."
In Evangeline's seventh year it was plain that things were
working up to a crisis. If William Booth had been made of iron,
he could not have stood the strains upon him and for a time
he collapsed. The doctors in their lavish way ordered him a
him to a hydropathic resort at Matlock in
year's rest, sending
Derbyshire which specialised in the restoration of shattered
nerves, especially among overworked Methodist ministers.
There they were told to keep him quiet.
During his alleged seclusion he heard of a young man
called George Scott Railton. He was of Scottish ancestry but
the son of Methodist missionaries, and his age was twenty-
three. He had been brought up under the terrific affirmation
that sin in the world is accompanied by eternal guilt and is
thus the road to hell. More real to this boy than the love of
God had been the fear of what God would do to him. One day
he heard his mother talking with another woman. What, they
were asking one another, should one do if one had only five
minutes to live? The friend of his mother answered with some
courage,
YOUTH 29
"I should just leave myself in God's hands and say to Him,
*Now, I trust you to pardon a poor guilty sinner, and if you
"
let me perish I cannot help it.*
The boy's clouded mind emerged into sunshine. He sang
out loud the hymn,
God is love, I know, I feel,
Jesus lives and loves me still.
At the time he was fifteen years old and his stamina was
tested no less severely than that of William Booth himself at
the same age. For his parents, reckless of consequences, flung
themselves into an epidemic of fever at Douglas in the Isle of
Man. In relieving others both of them caught the malady and
both of them died, leaving their boy penniless and an orphan.
He eked out a living with a firm of Anglo-Spanish merchants,
thus training himself in the strict discipline of finance and
learning the use of foreign languages. The years were not lost,
but when he was nineteen this Xavier among Protestants had
had enough of the secularities. Without resources he took ship
for Morocco of all countries and there he spread a banner on
which was the strange device, "Repentance, Faith, Holiness."
The consular authorities thought it wise to take him in hand,
he was enabled to work his passage home as a steward and
whatever else he did, he managed somehow to preach the
Gospel.
There was his congregation at Middlesborough in York
shire. people gathered in a butcher's shop. The pulpit was
The
the wooden block used by the butcher for chopping his meat,
with the blood cleaned away. Here could be seen the strange
fellow, at once sincere and practical, of whom the Founder
heard when he was at Matlock. He became William Booth's
secretary and for eleven years lived in the home as a member
of the family, the mother loving him as a son. His place at
table was next to Eva who, like other*little girls, sometimes de
clined to eat her food. Railton thereupon would say that she
must eat his food instead, and over eggs for breakfast there was
quite a struggle, Railton losing a spoonful for every spoonful
accepted by the child at his side. Why not let him have another
egg? she would plead. Not to be thought of, was the answer. If
Eva was naughty, someone else would have to suffer.
There was a young girl that waited at the table. She was
Polly, and in few homes would Polly have been regarded as
anything but a maid from the kitchen. But there was an in
cident that Polly remembered to her dying day. A hungry man
was loitering outside the house at Gore Road, and Eva jumped
from her chair and asked her mother if she might take her
helping on the plate to this sad fellow. At once the mother gave
permission, and the man was astonished to find the plate in his
hands. It was the first of all the free meals distributed by
Evangeline Booth, and there by the railings of the park he ate
it up. Polly saw the whole thing and it was one incident in the
home where she was earning her livelihood that led her to
become a Salvationist.
She proved to be the kind of person that was wanted as a
pioneer in the Army. One of the orders that she received was:
Proceed King's Lynn. No home, no hall, no friends, no

money. You must succeed. Writing. William Booth.
Polly had not the faintest idea where King's Lynn was on
the map and others whom she consulted were no better in
formed. However, it proved to be the ancient and famous
watering place in Norfolk and there she went, having only
sixpence left when she hired a hall. In the street at her first
meeting someone threw her three half-pence, saying that it was
a pity that such a respectable looking girl should have to sing
for a living. In the hall called the Athenaeum she was told
after her first evening that she had prayed seventeen times. The
police jotted down her name in their books on twenty-seven
occasions. But within three months a local clergyman had
enrolled a hundred converts in his church, and a
corps was
started in the Army. Thirty years later Adjutant Mary Ann
Parkin returned to King's Lynn for a celebration and was
welcomed as a benefactor of the city.
To the end of her life Polly was as vividly illiterate as
John Wycliffe who would have rejoiced in her spelling. In one
ojE her many letters to Evangeline Booth she wrote:
For our encouragement the dear Lord has told

us thereis more joy in the Presents of the
Angles in
YOUTH 31
heaven over one sinner that repenteth, and has I think

of you, ray darling, Miss Eva, in this your twentieth year
(as Commander in the United States), I think there
must be a greater and glorious note of trimhumph in
Heaven, not only for what you have dun, but for what
you are a true representative of Jesus Christ and your
glorified Parents; Hallelujah.
She told of Eva's sermons in the old schoolroom, and

when she died Polly was honoured with obsequies in the Con
gress Hall, Clapton the Army's Westminster Abbey and taken
to Abney Park Cemetery, where lay the Founder and his Wife.
Railton was an example of absolutely unquestioning obe
dience to William Booth as General, and a constant advocate of
centralised authority within the Army as a military organisa
tion. Also, the former clerk in a merchant's office was insistent
on precision in the keeping of accounts and minutes of pro
ceedings. Otherwise his spirit was free as God's air that he
breathed. Evangeline remembers him appearing on the plat
form carrying his boots and socks, thereby to demonstrate that
the grace of God is sufficient to save you even barefoot. The
Booths who were leading that meeting, however, soon put a
stop to that kind of thing. A much loved officer of that period
died of heart failure while leaping up the stairs of a station to
catch a train.
"Great news!" cried Railton, "a glorious rush up the rail
way steps to heaven. I wish for no better ending to my service."
And the wish was to be granted. For Railton, after racing hither
and thither at William Booth's command, and incidentally or
ganising the original wbrk in the United States which Evan
geline Booth was to develope to such impressive proportions,
was rushing around the great terminal at Cologne on the Rhine
when his hour came and he was promoted to glory.
On the kind of home in which Little Eva was brought up
there have been poured floods of ridicule. Fiction, drama, the
movies have combined to discredit what is popularly or un-
the Puritan household where it was not per
popularly called
mitted to dance, smoke, drink, play cards, go to theatres and the
race-course, where grace was said before meals and the family
joined with the servants daily in prayer and the reading of the
Bible. Yet, in the case of the Booths, one does not hear of a
whisper from any of the children, whatever their later differ
ences may have been, that would suggest a grievance against
the parental authority. Not one of these children at any time
would have had their home different from what it was, and
this original Salvationist household in which every day was
crowded with interest, endeavour and co-operation, has been the
example on which homes in the Army throughout the world
have been conducted.
The severities of the regime, as they seem at first sight to
have been, were without mitigation. In those days there were
no movies, no radio, no telephone, no automobile. Sunday
papers, such as they were, came under sabbatical taboo, and
outdoor games were encouraged during the children's earlier
years. Catherine Booth was a great believer in fresh air and
provided every inducement that would keep the children out
of doors. They played tennis, football, and cricket, and many
were the arguments as to which side Evangeline should be on
in cricket, where she won fame as a batsman. Evangeline Booth,
as I have known her, played none of the usual parlour games,
and in her conversation, at any rate, she seldom, if ever, alluded
to them. Yet never was there a home more abounding in happi
ness than this home where she was brought up. It overflowed
with high spirits and there was not a dull moment.
For the mother had thought out the problem to be solved.
If the children were to beware of the world around them and
to be in a measure deprived of its satisfactions, they must be
free to enjoy to the full a liberty of affection in the home to
which they belonged. They were thus made to feel that the
house where they lived was theirs by right of possession, and
they were encouraged to devise their own amusements. Their
mother was allergic to noise and she had her own sanctum.
Above the ceiling was a double floor packed with sawdust
which deadened the tumult in the playroom on the uppermost
floor immediately above. Their father was a stickler for tidiness
and punctuality. But there was always a hospitable kitchen, a
schoolroom and a playroom within which realms of romping
nothing was said if the carpets were rolled up, if the furniture
was turned up-side-down, if scratches were seen on the polish,
and chips on the ornaments. No accident that was really an
YOUTH 33
accident was punished as moral turpitude, and as long as the
rampaging continued the mother above it all sighed with re
lief. The distant sounds indicated that all was well with the
souls of her brood. Only when her William returned to his
home after his campaigning was there insistence on quiet. For
the husband and father came first and every child was made to
know it. On rare and remembered occasions William Booth
would join in the fun. His most rollicking pastime was the
game of Fox and Goose and, according to Bramwell's witty but
ironic comment, the father "was always the fox/' He led the
chase and provoked the screams.
When the place happened to be a bear garden it was
Ballington who played the bear. There was nothing in the way
of a prank that he did not think of. One of his triumphs was an
upturned table with its legs in the air. Rugs were draped over
the legs, and under the flat of the table was set a large roller.
The contraption thus became a ship at sea, rocking up and
down in the waves, within which craft crew and passengers
were huddled, Evangeline among them. En voyage the red
headed cook from the kitchen supplied occasional rations of
which red-headed cook we shall hear again.
There was not one hundredth part of the printing of
books, newspapers and magazines in those days that there is
now. But over the five-foot bookcase in this home, none the
less, was exercised a vigilant it should be added, a broad-
mindedmaternal censorship, calculated to reserve the chil
dren's attention for what in literature was really worth their
time. Nor did they worry very much over what in the second-
best they were missing. For they had quite enough to satisfy
their absorbent minds, and to neo-pagans it will be a surprise
to learn that their bill of fare consisted mainly of the Bible.
They were taught and, throughout their lives, never
ceased to believe that the Scriptures are the inspired Word of
God, unique among the writings of man. But this confidence
in plenary inspiration did not mean to them that their Bible
was a book apart from the lives that they were living with
such infinite zest. It was not with restraint and hesitating awe
that they turned over the sacred pages. On the contrary there
was about their use of the Bible something of what Chesterton
would have called the jollity of the middle ages that enthusi-
asm of minds unspoilt which animated sculptors and painters
when they carved scenes above the portals of cathedrals and
decorated their glowing manuscripts. To the Booths the Bible
was the most fascinating of story books. They dramatised the
record of patriarchs and prophets, themselves acting scenes
from the lives of Abraham and Joseph, David slaying Goliath,
Daniel in the den of lions, Jonah and the whale. These home
plays were not held to be irreverence and none forbade the
performances. It was as if God Himself, the Father Who loves
children, were having a good time with His own.
In their playroom an essential equipment was a Noah's
Ark of large dimensions and corresponding zoological capacity.
This Biblical menagerie was reserved strictly for Sundays, on
which day of rest the animals were paraded on a table, and
some of them showed signs of wear and tear, especially in their
lower limbs. One by one these crippled creatures was selected
for sacrifice, and the altar was the middle of the table which
soon showed a circle of black charcoal due to the ceremonial.
In later years, the officiating priesthood realised that their ful
filment of Levitical rites had been imperfect. For according to
Scripture the beast chosen for sacrifice must be without blem
ish (Lev* 6. 6.), whereas these wooden creatures had been
chosen for one reason that they could no longer stand up
straight. On the platform there were those in the family who
made effective use of the illustration.
The Bible, elsewhere recited in meaningless monotone,
was thus absorbed into these children's beings. It was inspired
yes but what mattered was that it was inspiring. It gave ideas.
It stimulated initiative, nor did the children's miracle
plays
end with Holy Writ, They attended revival meetings. Talk of
triumphs over sin was their table talk. They organised, there
fore, their own revivals. Seats in a room were arranged for a
congregation, with a penitent form in front. The preachers were
Ballington and Bramwell Katie and Emma with their dolls
and brooms dressed as such provided the congregation of un
saved.The young mothers insisted that their babies could not
be kept from crying. It was a baby's right to make its voice
heard.
This maternal view much annoyed the masculines who
would issue the command, "Take the babies out of the theatre/'
YOUTH 35
o which the protest of the sisters was devastating, "Papa would
lot have stopped preaching because a baby cried Papa would
3
lave gone on preaching anyhow/
Ballington would then deal with some special derelict
jeizing a pillow case and coaxing the helpless offender to start
afresh. There were brotherly slaps on the poor fellow's
shoulder.
Itseems strange this playful mimicry but an explanation
may be suggested. In Catherine Booth there could be discerned
an instinctive wisdom which antedated what nowadays we call
child psychology. Why were these youngsters allowed to include
the Bible in their games and play at revivals? It was because, in
their pastimes, they were making these living records their own.
There was, however, an unseen and subtle line drawn
between the allowable and the forbidden which could only be
crossed at peril. One day Ballington spent what few pennies he
had saved from his pocket money on a silver ring. He put in an
appearance with the new ring on his finger and immediately
there arose a singsong,
"Ballington's a backslider! Ballington's a backslider!"
"Silence!" said William Booth and silence there was. "You
will go to your mother/' he added, "it is a matter for her to
deal with/'
Ballington left the room and returned in due course, red
in the face, and without the ring.
Of the eight children, as we have seen, Evangeline was the
seventh. She was nine years younger than Bramwell and eight
years younger than Ballington. It was thus into an environment
already accepted in the home that she was plunged and the
environment was a domestic sunset. For Bramwell, returning
in the afternoon with his schoolbooks, would have his cup of
tea and set forth again with a portfolio under his arm, already
his father's intimate helper, and so was it with the elder chil
dren, each in turn. They went forth to the holy war, leaving
Evangeline to devise her own games, and like the rest of them
it was ozone that she seemed to be breathing.
The question in that home was not whether this, that or

the other say, the theatre was right or wrong in itself. It was
whether this, that or the other, however innocent, interfered
with aims of greater importance, whether it was compatible
with the discipline essential to militant evangelism. If a person
was living for self and sin, it did not matter so very much, one
way or the other, whether he spent his time in a music hall
or on a race-course. But it mattered very much if a person was
professing to devote his life to the Gospel.
William and Catherine Booth, moreover, were haunted by
a misgiving. They knew that their children interested people,
and they feared that one or other of them, on whom had been
lavished instruction and prayer without ceasing, would be
lured from the Army into the field of entertainment where
they would be found of the very stuff of which performers are
made. There was flattery, money, notoriety awaiting them in
secular fields. Could they be held true to the Christian crusade?
Let us answer that question. Difficulties, as we shall see, awaited
each one of the seven active sons and daughters of the Founder,
and at times they made difficulties. But not one of them drifted
away from the Gospel they had received in youth. Not one of
them was different in essentials from what their parents had
prayed that they would be. In the Encyclopedia Britannica
appears the statement that William Booth in old age "was sad
dened by the different views of theology taken by some of his
children/' That assertion is exactly one hundred per cent
erroneous. Not one of those children wavered in their full
devotion to the Gospel which they had learned from their
parents and not one of them failed to do a good life's work for
that Gospel. It is true that one son-in-law, with his wife, was
captivated by the prophetic Dr. Dowie, but this aberration
does not justify reflection on the fidelity of the loyal seven.
An instance of the parents concern for their youngsters
7
was the circus. It was an entrancing mystery, arriving from no

where and vanishing suddenly into the unknown. Its tent was
spread like a mushroom and to put the tent out of bounds was
simple. But the circus had a way of leaving its tent and parad
ing the streets, passing in front of people's houses whether they
approved or not. In the home of the Booths when that hap
pened, the blinds were drawn as for a funeral.
Half a century afterwards Evangeline Booth confessed
something that had always been on her conscience. On one
occasion she did raise the corner of a blind in her bedroom
just an inch or two and peeped at the parade as it passed. She
YOUTH 37
denies that was the elephants and camels and clowns that led
it
her into temptation, or the gilded floats on which sat glittered
goddesses on their Elysian thrones. What she yearned for was

just one glimpse of the beautiful lady riding a white horse, not
for the sake of the beautiful lady but for the sake of the horse.
During this guardianship of the family there was raised an
issue over which William and Catherine Booth took for a time
different views. Was there or was there not to be a piano in the
home?
Any idea that William Booth was indifferent to music,
should be set aside. He was not among those Quaker-like per
sons who conducted their services in silence rather than song.
On the contrary, he was never tired of his favourite hymn,
My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine.
And Evangeline Booth spent many a merry hour singing

to him popular ditties like "waiting at the Church" while he
had out a good laugh. When she was on one side of the Atlantic
and he was on the other and she wanted an answer to some
point she had put to him, she would hurry it up by the mes
sage that she was still "waiting at the Church" and the answer
would usually be forthcoming. It was William Booth who,
asked why he used choruses from the music halls for his sacred
words, replied that, in the words of Luther, he could see no
reason why the devil should have all the best tunes. It was not
music as such, then, that the Founder objected to. How could
he with the. Anglican and Wesleyan tradition in his blood?
No, what he feared was that his quite too musical children
would be lured onto the concert stage, and Catherine shared
the misgiving. But she was wisevery wise in her motherhood
and sne knew that music was not something outside her chil
drenlike gambling which they could 'pick up or leave alone
as they wished. It was an instinct born within them from which
they could not escape and it demanded expression. And she had
the Bible on her side. From Genesis to Revelation there is
music in the Scriptures and music is shown to be the only art
of all the arts that, surviving the here and now, is fulfilled in
the celestial regions. Catherine's arguments allayed William's
apprehensions, and the piano made its appearance.
The effect of that piano in the home
of the Booths reached
in years to come Within the Booths
to the ends of the earth.
themselves were discovered aptitudes which were utilised to
the utmost. Ballington's violin, the several concertinas they
enriched the revivalism and Evangeline, as we shall see, became
the Salvationists have not
quite an orchestra in herself. For
been content with hymns familiar to the community as a whole.
They wrote and still write their own hymns and set them to
music, and no hymns have been more popular thaii Evangeline
Booth's The World for God., to mention only one of her many
compositions.
Inspired by such leadership Salvationists became the Lol
lardsthe spiritual troubadours of the modern world, a sing
ing fellowship amid the shadows and the sighs of sin and suffer
ing. They began their psalmody with drum and trumpet and
tambourine. As years passed they trained bands that could
play with acceptance within the grounds of Buckingham
Palace. There are tens of thousands of bandsmen in the Salva
tion Army, including soloists and vocalists whose performances
would have a high value in orchestras or over the air if the
musicians had been up for sale. These men and women of
professional efficiency, however, give their services to the Gos
pel, (neither asking nor receiving any return in financial
compensation^
The old General was a realist over music. It was not
enough for his troops to volley forth a chorus. They must know
the meaning of the words they were singing. He had no use
for "la-di-da singing" making a sound with the mouth without
articulating any words. It was "not worship or commonsense/'
H^ would add that choirs in churches are assailed by three
devils the quarrelling devil, the dressing devil and the court
ing devil.
To her children Catherine handed .on that love of animals
which had been second nature to her when a girL Keeping of
pets was encouraged, for were they not to be accepted as a
part of the cjivine and wondrous universe that included flowers
and trees and mountains? Caring for animals, moreover, was
training in that thoughtfulness for others which is the very
essence of Salvationist principles. Evangeline Booth has amused
her mind with a memory:
YOUTH 39
My mother was a great believer in hydropathy. At

the first unfavourable symptom we were either stewed
in soap-baths or sweated in tepid damp sheets, or roasted
in tropical Turkish heated rooms or gargled with liquids
that would do to choke on or fed with benefits derived
from plain water in gruel and meal.
The boys had their guineapigs and it was their
hope that these fecund animals would multiply to a
hundred, but they never got beyond ninety-nine and
whenever they gave evidence of a disturbance in their
internal mechanism, what must be the treatment but
hydropathy! Enthusiasm for this cure-all as an element
of success in healing led us to throw our entire de
pendence on the benefit of hot fomentations, and before
long it was not a question of "ninety and nine that
safely lay/' but of the ninety and nine that didn't
"lay" at all. The investment in guineapigs vanished in
soap and water.
Like her mother Evangeline from the age of five onwards
was never without a dog. Catherine Mumford's retriever, as we
have seen, was called Waterford- Evangeline's was Nelson, and
Nelson like Waterford suffered for his too jealous adoration of
a young mistress. The charwoman tried to strike Evangeline
and Nelson bit the charwoman. Tearfully inconsolable, Evan
geline saw her guardian quadruped dragged, away to die and
hardly less disturbed was her father when he realised her grief.
There was no doubt of his profound affection and pride in his
children or of their pride and affection for him. Evangeline
Booth's whole soul went out in reverent and co-operative love
for one whose greatness she appreciated. But with a wit that she
inherited from her father, she would say, "He embraced us
but, of course, as a man clad in armour."
It was William Booth's idea that his daughter might be
comforted a little if she had something of her own to remind
her, of her lost Nelson. So he had the dog's pelt made into a
rug. But when the child caught sight of this she broke into
fresh floods of tears, and the father was not able to make any
thing of it. He kicked at the rug and cried,
"Here, somebody, take it away."
Such were the minor worries of a great man surrounded
by gteat events.
Of morning the work for the world began early and in
a
his dressing-gown William Booth would be seen pacing up and
down his room. On one such day Railton was sitting at a
table with pen, pencil and paper in front of him. He was, as
we have seen, a careful scribe with a passion for accurate detail
which, largely owing to his influence, has ever been a feature
of the trained efficiency of the Salvation Army. Bramwell was in
that room co-operating as a youngster and learning what was
to be his long life's work.
The older men were hammering out the annual report of
what was still known as the Christian Mission. William Booth
was General Superintendent and already Railton had a way
of dropping the word, Superintendent, when he addressed his
chief, so calling him "General/' Said William Booth,
"We want a name for the work."
Railton wrote on his pad, "We are a Volunteer Army."
William Booth walked across the room to Railton and
stooped over his shoulder. He took the pencil, crossed out
"Volunteer" and substituted "Salvation." The passage then
read,
"We are a Salvation Army."
Thus casually did the Founder coin the phrase which is
now familiar and unforgettable throughout the world.
The phrase was perfectly timed. For nineteen centuries of
tidal advance and reaction the Christian Church had declared
itself to be militant here and triumphant hereafter a challenge
to all faiths in all continents. Reginald Heber, the missionary
bishop in India, had uttered the marching hymn,
The Son of God goes, forth to war,

A kingly crown to gain;
His blood-red banner streams afar:
Who follows in His train?
Another Anglican had been a curate in Yorkshire where
he in love with a mill girl whom he educated and married.
fell
At Lew Trenchard in Cornwall he was both squire and rector
and when, years later, he lost his wife, he inscribed on her tomb,
Half My Life.
YOUTH 41
He was Baring-Gould the poet who sounded forth the
trumpet call
Onward, Christian Soldiers,
Marching as to war-
stanzas which Sullivan, at the very peak of his fame as a

composer, set to music which has become the battle hymn of
English-speaking democracy. This expresses the aggressive de
termination during Evangeline Booth's girlhood to win the
world for Christ for what the world ought always to have been
and the spearhead of the confident impulse was the Salvation
Army.
At the heart of things dwelt Evangeline Booth, a slender
little a thing, with a very decided will of her own,
slip of
observant, missing nothing of what was going on around her
and failing in no lesson to be learned therefrom. It was not a
quiescent and serene Christianity that she absorbed into her
being but a Christianity determined to make a difference and
to take its place among the makings of history. She heard the
discussions around the supper table. She was thrilled by news
of victories and defeats. She was awed by the news of riots that
added a spice of peril to her own prospects.
Suddenly everybody that she was concerned with went into
a new kind of costume. Her father was no longer arrayed in
the long frock coat of a nonconformist minister, but in uni
form. So with her mother. It suggested quite a new situation.
The General stepped forth into the street in dark blue regi
mentals with a red waistcoat across his heart. It was not long
before the cloth of those waistcoats became of monetary value.
For it was made up into various domestic articles, including
tea-cosies, of which I was to purchase one which cost me if I
remember aright thirty shillings. Catherine, wife of the

Founder, William Booth, and the Army's Mother, with her own
hands designed the Salvationist bonnet. It was the bonnet of the
Puritans which that earlier Evangeline in Acadia wore as she
tended the sick, and Acadia was to be the name given to the
home in the United States where the Salvationist Evangeline
was to live for so many years. The bonnet of the Puritans had
been worn by the Quakers long after it had gone generally out
of fashion, and it may well have been that the Quaker blood
which has been attributed to Catherine as a Mumford thus
found expression. In any event, the bonnet became a new
symbol of faith and service -even appearing in musical com
edies as a popular feature of the scene.
The Salvation Army was considered by startled observers
to be playing at soldiers, and the impression was spread by the
rapid adoption of a military vocabulary. Mission houses were
much more appealing as "citadels" and "forts/* Prayer became
"knee drill." Reading the Bible was "taking one's rations."
Every revival was heralded as a battle, every convert was a
prisoner of war, every opposition was the enemy of souls called
the Devil. Simple minds, quite outside the ranges of theological
disquisition, caught onto this combative presentation of the
Gospel with the immediate understanding of essentials which
was revealed in Paul, when he talked to the Roman world of
Christian soldiers in their armour and gladiators and athletes
striving for the mastery and standing sentinel.
The impact of all this on the mind of the child had its
amusing side. Her pet at the moment was a marmoset called
little Jeannie, of very affectionate disposition to its mistress but
somewhat indecorous behaviour otherwise. She would race up
the curtains until she was out of reach and then she would
peer down on the people below her with disrespectful grimaces.
The hat$ of the ladies who called on the Booths sometimes very
impprholt and dignified ladies greatly offended the artistic
tastes of the monkey who would leap onto these headgears and
signify her disapproval. Evangeline was very sorry about this

and hoped that her small sinner would reform. Her accom
plices in the kitchen helped the good work and clothed the
animal in a miniature uniform of the Salvation Army, with
insignia according.
Catherine Booth entered the room and saw the monkey.
She looked at the uniform. There was another of those silences.
Quietly the monkey was unclothed, and Evangeline wanted to
know the reason why.
"But, Eva," said the quiet voice, "she doesn't live the life/'
The words stayed with Evangeline Booth throughout her
career living the life. A man may be changed but, as Cath
erine Booth put it, "once a monkey, always a monkey/'
Her especial resort was the kitchen but there were also
YOUTH '
43
the schoolroom and the playroom. The red-headed cook was
her obedient vassal and regarded her with some reason as an
infant prodigy. For Eva stood one day on a table and pro
ceeded to enliven a somewhat discouraged household by a
sermon on cheerfulness. Her text was the stanza:
Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon,
The little dog laughed to see such fun,
And the dish ran after the spoon.
Good cheer amid adversitythat was the homiletic. "Hey

diddle diddle" meant, of course, "alas, alas," and there was
reason for being upset. For the cat had got into the fiddle which
is the last place where a cat ought to be, and the cow, instead
of staying around like a good cow and giving milk to poor

little hungry babies, had taken it into its head to jump over
the moon. But be not downhearted! Still let us look on the
bright side of life. For the little dog laughed to see such fun,
and as for the dish, bless its heart, it went running around and
around after the spoon. And what a grand time they had.
Her father heard about it, and desperately in need of
recruits for his Army, he kept his eye on his daughter. We
catch a glimpse of him on the stairs, head forward, pad and
pencil in hand. For Little Eva, now somewhat older, is in the
kitchen, mounted on a chair with an improvised congregation
ranged in front of her. This time her text is God Is Love, and
William Booth would not miss a syllable flowing from those
lips.
His stout heart was stirred to a fierce exultation. Bone of
his bone, flesh of his flesh, there she was, one of his very own,
in whom already he could read the promise of what would
draw thousands of lost sinners to the foot of the Cross.
Here on the desk lies a neatly typed pad of notes for an
address. The text is "God Is Love" and we see what a child's
idea became when her powers had been matured by experience,
We read:
Justice cries out:

Whatsover a man soweth, that
shall he also reap. Ye must die.
Ye
Judgement thunders; The wages
of sin is death.
must die.
But breaking through the ranks of heaven and hell
there comes one with garments died crimson red.
His brow drops blood,
His side is torn,
His hands have nail-prints,
His feet are bruised,
His heart is bleeding,
And He throws his emaciated body across the gap
ing chasm between justice and mercy, and cries:
Stand back, ye lawful accusers,
I die a ransom!
I turn aside the blood soaked mantle and I see
five bleeding wounds,
And I say, Behold the Lamb of God who taketh
away the sins of the world.
No grand-daughter of Sarah Milward, no daughter of

Catherine Mumford, could have been other than a tempestuous
child. Yet in her impetuosities there was manifest a generous
instinct. It was not any thought of herself but indignation on
account of others that sometimes upset her. She writes:
My mother often said that our sister Marie, two

years older than I, was her most beautiful baby. But at
a very early age smallpox weakened her health and
she could not profit by study as did the rest of us, nor
in later years take part in public life. Being nearest
to her in age, my mother asked me to make it my duty
to help her with her lessons and see that she had a place
in the games.
One day she failed to grasp the intricacies of a
French translation,and our governess, becoming irri
tated, took hold of her beautiful hair and pulled her
head first one way and then the other. My mind re
called the verse often quoted by my mother, "What
soever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,"
and my small hand smote the cheek of the governess. I
was ordered to bed without lunch or supper nothing
but dry bread and a glass of milk.
My mother happened to be away and the red-headed
cook we shall hear more of her insisted that she would
YOUTH 45
never have punished me by loss of food. After dark
she stole into my bedroom with jam tarts under her
apron and never was I happier to see her red hair shin
ing like copper in the candlelight. My conscience trou
bled me, however, and I asked, "Do you think I should
have jam tarts when I am supposed to have only dry
bread?"
"Your mother would wish me to do this/' answered
the cook, "Miss Berry" our housekeeper "gave me a
kind of 'int like."
For two days I refused to say I was sorry for the
reason I could not say so truthfully, after which my
mother returned. She explained to me that, even if
-we have the highest motives, restraint is wisdom. It
might have been right to defend Marie but she was
sure I was sorry for the way I had done it. I still wanted
to say, "No," but I caught a dimness in my mother's
eyes and I replied,
"Nearly."
I was nearly sorry.
mother used this incident in a concluding ap
My
peal to a well-to-do audience in the West End of Lon
don, and a gentleman who had great possessions wrote
to her,
'My life is full of nearlys nearly repentant nearly
confessed nearly saved nearly all things to God but
never more than nearly'
have asked Evangeline Booth whether she was ever

I
conscious of undue pressure on her mind and will on the part
of her parents who were so prayerfully anxious for her conver
sion and inclusion in their Army. She denies that any such
pressure was exerted at any time. The words that she uses to
define the position are influence and example. Day by day,
what her parents said and did and were brought her face to
face with what Carlyle called the decision between the Ever
lasting Yea and the Everlasting Nay, the question not what
'do I believe, not which is to be my Church, not am I to go to
college, not what is to be my occupation, not do I wish to
marry, but this to whom do I belong whose am I and whom
do I serve and the day came when she gave her answer. She
writes:
For some reason my mother suggested that I visit
the gallery where paintings by Gustave Dor were on
exhibition in London. The artist was at the time en
joying his greatest vogue. I was ten years old and had
no particular taste in art, save that I did strongly
object to the vivid red of the cook's hair and was cor
rected by my mother for being too outspoken in the
matter. "Well/* I promised, "I won't mention it again
but will you not ask her to wear black instead of her
brick-colored dress?" However, holding our housekeep
er's hand, I found myself gazing at the immense pic
ture, Christ Standing Before Pilate. There before my
eyes was the unyielding majesty of Jesus, infinite pa
tience and tender forbearance manifest in his firm and
silent lips. The slender figure in the seamless robe, the
eyes that looked on the screeching, maddened mob with
fathomless compassion. I shivered as if I were cold.
My mother had told me in words of the crucifixion,
and on another canvas I now saw the scene. I burst
into tears.
"Will no one come out to help Him?" I asked.
"Why does not some strong man shoot them down?"
The housekeeper she was Miss Berry drew me to
yet another picture known as The Vale of Tears.
"No one," she said, "is hurting Jesus here."
The Redeemer was holding His krms outstretched
toward a motley throng of men and women, decrepit in
body, miserable in soul. One victim of calamity was
torn by evil spirits stnd I felt that I must go to his aid.
"Why doesn't he throw them away from himself?"
I asked.
"You can't throw evil things away from you with
out the help of Jesus Christ," said my companion.
"Do they cling too hard?"
"Yes."
In this picture my child's logic saw the reason for
the cruelty to Christ on the Cross, and my own future
spread out before me. My life should be lived for the
poor, the wicked, the helplessthey should have my life
have it all.
It was time for lunch but I refused to leave the
picture. My companion insisted but I still refused, and
YOUTH 47
a lady who happened to be standing near broke in

with,
"Excuse me, can I be of any assistance? Let me
take care of the little girl while you run out and get her
something to eat.'*
"Will you stay with the lady?" asked my compan
ion, and answered,
I
"Yes, I will, if the lady will stay by the picture/*
On returning home I poured forth my experience
to my parents who were never too busy to listen to
their children.
Years later I had to face a great temptation-
wealth, jewels, a position near the Court, passionate
adoration all that a young heart could desire. He was
a Christian too. It was then that my father reminded
me of Dor6's paintings and my refusal to go to lunch
when I was hungry. [We sat under an old tree. In the
scarlet of a setting sun I saw again the picture. I wrote
the next day: I am not coming.]
The way in which this event in the life of Evangeline

Booth has been put by her on paper somewhat strains chronol
ogy. For it was years before marriage
became a problem that
she had to face, and she states, "I always sent the proposals to
my mother." It was when she was twenty-nine that the big
test came, and the suitor was Prince Galitzin, belonging to one
of Europe's historic families. It is hardly necessary to point out
that the allusions to Russia in what follows refer to the Russia
of fifty years ago when the Czars were on the throne, closely
related to Queen Wilma. Prince Galitzin's disappointment
when her refusal was found to be absolute is reflected in two
notes:
Paris, April 2nd, 1894

My Dearest!
Commissioner Clibborn and everybody here are in
deed very kind for me and they do their best but it is
not my dearest and I cry! When I remember what you
are for me and that you are so far away, I cry! When
I look at dear little watch, I cry! Why? Because
my
I love you and because I know that you pity me!
Here I try to do my best for the work! And I
hope to do the same in Russia. Here I am working
under the name "a Russian friend" and in a quiet way.
I will also be very prudent because we have to be
prudent sometimes. I will stay here only some days more

and in Germany also a few days and afterwards Rus
siathat means troubles and persecutions probably.
Goodbye to all! And to you, my dearest, always
with you and fully yours, G.
Paris, 1894
My
dear Dearest,
I am still here trying to do my best to forget you
a little, and to be able to go more bravely then to
Russia. But it is not easy to forget you.' I am work
ing here very hard and seriously in a private way. I
have been much blessed, specially with the cadettes
in lecturing. Tomorrow morning I have to go to a
little water-place near Havre on the seashore for about
,
^ two
days and afterwards Paris Berlin Petersbourg . . .
and, I hope, not Siberia or Caucasus. It is hard, very

hard, because it means Goodbye to you, my dear Dear
est. I was thinking to go to London to see Mrs. Tucker
and perhaps somebody else, but the first thing, I fear
to meet somebody of the Army in London, and the
second thing it is too hard to say you Goodbye. My
poor heart knows that experience .Tell, please, the
. .
Little Lamb to send me a few lines dear sweet Little

Lamb, MY
Little Lambis she? is she not tired of me?
God bless youl
Yours in Jesus,
Galitzin
For years Evangeline Booth was pursued by rumours of

possible marriage. "Go to it," she would say to the gossips,
"and watch the press so that you won't miss the
wedding!"
And now we mustreturn to the child not yet in her 'teens
for whom romance lay still in the future. Hour after hour, one
night, she tossed in her bed, sleep much disturbed, and it was
morning at last. She was still in her nightgown but she had to
tell somebody about it. She burst into her
parents' room and
the words came. She had made her choice. Her whole
being had
JfcK.-fl YOUTH 49
been surrendered to the Saviour of mankind. William and
Catherine Booth were filled with gratitude to the Holy Spirit
Who had guided their daughter. They knelt at the bedside with
Evangeline between them, and not without tears they gave
thanks.
Surveying in retrospect the many occasions on which, with
thousands present, she has been the central figure, and the
large affairs that have been influenced by her judgement, Evan
geline Booth has been inclined to impatience over what she has
called "the little girl stuff.*' Yet there is a certain fascination in
the contrast between her 'teen age and girlhood in our later
day, and one conclusion is obvious. Whatever of modern educa
tion she missed, she did at least escape the shades of the prison
house that envelope and sometimes stifle personality. She did
remain herself and was not required to be anybody else. She
carried no sheepskin but she was graduated for leadership.
She was an impulsive child. She has always had her moods,
and often her health, though robust on the whole, has. been
uncertain under exceptional strains. But never for one instant
did she flinch from her decision to be what the Salvation Army
means by a Christian. With an inflexible purpose in her heart
she set forth on a new path through the world around her nor
at any time did she stray from it. Many a change was wrought
in her time many a social order shattered to chaos by war and
revolution. Many altered ways of thinking swept like shadows
over the pages of her Bible. But in the last long eighties Evan
geline Booth, making allowances for inevitable weariness of
spirit and the effects of prolonged dealing with the harsh real
ities o a sometimes selfish human civilisation, is what she had
been when she was eighteen and younger essentially un
changed. Nor did her parents doubt the reality of her conver
sion. They had prayed for it and God had answered their
prayers. As He had called the child Samuel, so had
He called
the child Eva, and when she answered, "Here am I," He had
taken her at her word, and for time, for efernity, it was a pact.
Here and there through the years lived on some aging
person who remembered that scene of long ago when Evange
line Booth made her d<but. It was a crowded hall. The audience
was seething with an excitement that even William Booth
could scarce restrain. Amid cries of "Hallelujah" and "Praise
God," sinners advanced to the penitent form, and the General
called for quiet. There was a hush.
"My Little Eva will sing for us," he announced and for
the first time in her life the child stepped forward and gazed
on a sea of upturned faces. She looked fragile there in her
brown smocked dress with her face shaded by one of those large
hats like an inverted saucer that were popular in those days.
She was quite collected and sighs of sympathy rose from the
women in front of her, "God bless her." Her voice was un
trainedsome will say that it scarcely needed it for it kept
true to the music- and as her father wished you could distin
guish the words. The people joined in the chorus and raised
the roof in their exultation. It was as if the prophet Isaiah were
in that building he who had foretold that "a little child shall
lead them." ,
At the age of fifteen she was measured for the uniform

of a sergeant. The bonnet that her mother had designed was
fitted by a mother's hand to her head with its auburn hair,
and the riband was bound under her chin. So did she receive
her commission at the very lowest rank in the hierarchy of the
organisation to which she was to give all that there was of her,
and with it came a kiss from Catherine Booth to whom hence
forth she was to be more than a daughter in the flesha fellow
comrade in the conquest of the world for God.
ENGLAND
WAS into a movement already surging through society

IT that Evangeline
1861 her
Booth was plunged.
the Methodist New
We
have seen that in
parents left Connexion. That was
four years let us recall before Evangeline was born, and the
first
important revival of the parents after they had cut them
selves adriftfrom the Churches was in Cornwall. The use of
chapels was often refused for their meetings and scorn was
poured by clergy on "the perambulations of the male and the
female." "Is not a Cornish miner as much worth converting
as a Chinaman?" was Catherine's devastating reply, and the
people rose in their thousands. They tramped over hills to

attend the meetings. Across the darkened seas around their
rocky coasts they rowed their boats, and with cries and groans
that embarrassed the evangelists they threw themselves on the
rail where sinners were saved* It was a revelation o the unsatis
fied depths in the restless soul of man at last finding peace.-
From Cornwall the Booths invaded the midlands. At
Walsall there was a desperate character prizefighter, drunkard,
gambler who required half a dozen policemen to land him in
1
"This
jail.
is the boy/ he shouted through the; bars, "who will
in.' William Booth tackled that man and his cry
1
never give
changed. "The lion's tamed!" he boasted, "The Ethiopian's
whitel The sinner's saved! Christ has conquered." At Sheffield
appeared a Hallelujah Band. It marched through the streets in
51
red shirts and the Garibaldi was a dealer in white mice and
pigeons.
So it went on
until 1865, just before Evangeline's birth,
when William Booth arrived at two decisions. He must con
centrate his attack on London, and he must only use the pave
ment and the street corner as a preliminary means of getting
people into a hall for more concentrated attention. There was
a burial ground of the Quakers off the Whitechapel Road,
dark, dank and deserted. There William Booth took his stand
on a soapbox and there he raised a tent. It happens that we
can visualise the actual scene. For when Evangeline Booth was
General of the Salvation Army and was at work in England
there came a weary evening when she declined positively to
talk with one other person. Nobody, she said. But a policeman,
backed by all the majesty of the law, told her that somebody
must see her. The car had broken down, it was drizzling and
they had thrown a blanket around her as she stood impatient
on a ricketty platform in the open air.
"Then let him come here/' she said.
"Hecan't come," said the policeman.
"Why can't he come?"
"He can't climb those stairs."
"Why can't he climb the stairs?"
"He's ninety three years old, General."
"Ninety three years old!"
"And he's come two hundred miles to see you."
The tired out General clambered from the ricketty plat
form to the ground. She greeted a very aged man, bowed and
crippled.
"I'm a lamplighter by trade," he explained slowly collect
ing his thoughts. "And I'm the boy that helped your father
in the tent on the burial ground."
"How did you help my father?" asked Evangeline Booth.
"I strung the lamps on a rope," and he seemed to wish to
say something further. At last, the words came,
"Your father said something to me. He said that one of
these days they would be stringing lamps just like that around
the world. That's what your father said."
And in sixty countries or moje it had come true, a fore
cast that would have been forgotten if the man to whom it was
ENGLAND 53
addressed had not come two hundred miles that wet day to
meet the Founder's daughter.
The tent collapsed and William Booth attributed the
mishap to a gale of wind. But one of his helpers had a look at
the tent ropes, and this man had a reason to know. He reported
sabotage by roughs who had cut the ropes. The cemetery thus
dedicated to resurrection is now a children's playground.
William Booth was now like the Founder of his faith wan
dering around without anywhere to preach his Gospel. He made
use of a vacant chapel, a stable, from which he was evicted
because his services were a nuisance to a sparring club next
door, a carpenter's shop, a shed adjoining a pigstye, a pigeon
shop and a skittle alley. His organisation was known first as the
East London Revival Society, then as the Christian Mission not
confined to East London and, finally, as we have seen, as the
Salvation Army.
The change from General Superintendent to General was
verbally trivial but William Booth soon found that it aroused
comment. For the moment Queen Victoria was annoyed. Hers,
after all, should be the only army in her farflung empire, hers
the only generals. Huxley, the scientist, poured scorn on "cory-
bantic Christianity" poor Huxley. Many clergy considered that
the Army was an irreverence, and the people themselves had
to be won to their own peculiar expression of faith. In Croydon
an Irish Catholic hurled a heavy saucepan at the street meeting
but his aim was inaccurate. The black coats of the Salvation
ists were daubed with whitewash, they were pelted with flour
in paper bags, with mudand stones and cabbage stalks, even,
with pepper in the eyes. At Harrogate, the health resort in?.
Yorkshire, Sanger's Circus found itself in close proximity to
the Salvation Army. Drums and cymbals, supported by the
trumpeting of a large elephant and two camels, drowned the
voice of the speaker, and one enthusiastic fellow beat a Sanger
drum with great energy. Only afterwards was it disclosed that
he was an ally of the Army who carried a penknife concealed
in his hand. It was war and the Salvationists made no secret of
it. With a humour that never deserted them they would sing:
The devil and me, we can't agree;

I hate him and he hates me.
And then they would break into the chorus:
We're marching to Zion,
Beautiful, beautiful Zion,
We're marching upward to Zion,
The beautiful city of God.
At Chatham a publican emptied a pail of water over a
She wiped her face and said,
Salvationist lassie.
"May the Lord save that dear man," and the little company
added a fervent "Amen." Thus dishevelled, bleeding and be
grimed Salvationists marched to their halls, mounted the plat
forms and proclaimed dauntless deliverance from sin.
In 1863 Kingsley wrote his classic The Water Babies. The
hero of the phantasy was a chimney sweep who now appears
faintly on human memory as a mythical being of the bad old
days. But'in 1843 there had been born at Coventry a child who
really was what Kingsley described. He answered to the adver
tisement, "Small Boys for Narrow Flues." They put calico
over his face and a scraper in his hands and forced him from
the fireplace to loosen the soot above. He started work at four
in the morning and from the age of six onwards he was
plied
with liquor. When he was seventeen he took up boxing as a
pastime.
With his partner in the ring, he spent a Christmas at
Warwick watching a public hanging. The bodies were dangling
in the air and the other fellow said, "That's what you'll come
to, 'Lijah, one day." The lad was afraid. He gave
up tobacco,
liquor,swearing and everything that his Methodist grand
mother had condemned. Elijah Cadman was converted, and no
mistake. The village of Lutterworth, once the home of
Wycliffe,
was arou$ed by a handbell. It was rung by one who announced
himself as "Mr. Cadman, the Sober Sweep from
Rugby," and
he shouted that 60,000 people were "lost, lost, lost/' in the
year through drink. He would run out of the house saying, "I've
seer; Jesus Christ," and in the street he would
repeat, 'Tve
seen<Jesus Christ." ,
He swept the chimneys in the

home of a master at Rugby
where Arnold was headmaster and Tom Brown went to school.
There was a pretty parlormaid in that house and the Lord told
Cadman to marry her. He was quite illiterate but hemanaged
ENGLAND 55
to get some kind of a note into her hands, and when he asked
her what she thought o it, she answered, "Nothing at all." He
replied briskly, "Let me know 'yes' or 'no' by tomorrow
morning's post. I can't stand any longer waiting/* The letter
came and it said 'yes/ The marriage was perfect and it lasted
for fifty-seven years.
Elijah Cadman was an institution in the Army. the On
platform he seemed to overawe everyone else, the Booths in
cluded. He carried a Bible with the words "Cadman's Sword"
on the flyleaf, but he could not read it and often holding the
volume up-side-down he would recite verses that he had
learned by heart. He would even sit astride the rail in front of
the platform to show how people wabble over salvation.
His posters were characteristic:
WAR! WAR IN WHITBY!

2000 MEN AND WOMEN
Wanted atonce to Join the Hallelujah Army
That is Making an Attack on the Devil's King
dom , . .
The Battle is Begun; Thousands Killed and

Wounded; a Few Saved from Death . . .
Captain
Cadman will Lead his Army and . . . will Throw
some Hot Shot into the Enemy.
HOSPITAL FOR THE WOUNDED

and All who Want to be Healed from Sin and
Freed from the Devil. Come in Thousands.
On the impressionable personality of the child Eva, this

strange saint, Cadman left an ineffaceable memory.
Those were days when Salvationists were a law unto them
selves. Converts would embroider gospel texts on their clothes
and so appear in the streets. There was a terror of a woman
whose heart was changed. She wore a placard on her back with
the words, "I am Happy Eliza" and happy she really was. For
with fine insight St. John Ervine insists that William Booth
"appealed to the joy in the English poor/' the inexhaustible
jocularity that sustained the Tommies in the trenches. Happy
Eliza was acclaimed in songs of the music hall, dolls were
named after her and bought in the shops, and Happy 'Lizas
were sold over the counter.
as sweets
The whole idea of Salvation was that it turned darkness
into light, sorrow into joy, death into life. One of Cadman's
devices was a little slip of cardboard, recalling tlê railway, for
instance:
Hallelujah Ticket
Leicester to Heaven
First Class
And at Leicester he had a field day. For the year was 1877
a man called John H. Starkey was there hung for murdering
his wife. Without a moment of hesitation Cadman announced
that in the evening General William Booth would preach his
funeral sermon. The hall was jammed with the crowd and the
crowd interrupted the proceedings by stamping their feet.
But when William Booth managed to get in the words, "John
H. Starkey never had a praying mother," there was silence.
Yet he could be gentlethis rough man in his imitation
of Christ. At Barnsley in Lancashire an outspoken woman sold
oranges. Cadman spoke to her and she seized a fish from a
near by stall in the market and struck him across the face,
driving home the insult with her customary ribaldry.
"Glory be to God," he cried, "God bless you. He can save
you."
And saved that woman was, becoming a Salvationist.
Salvationists did not
complain of the resentment they
aroused. It was the Devil fighting back, nor was the
animosity
wholly spontaneous. Of all the financial interests in Great
Britain, coal, cotton, steel, shipping, themost powerful, politi
cally and was liquor, and liquor did not like what was
socially,
going on. "That woman," complained a publican at Middles-
borough in Yorkshire, "has spent seven or eight shillings many
a Sunday, and it's no joke that she's saved,
taking away custom
like that." Sadly said William Booth as he looked into the bars
where the trade was going on, "The poor have
nothing but
ENGLAND 57
the public house." And it was true. For in those days there
were no moving pictures, no soda fountains, few schools, only
the roughest games up and down what Robert Blatchford, the
Socialist, in bitter anger, described as "Merrie England,"
In 1882, when Evangeline Booth was seventeen, her father
braved a head-on collision with the Trade. On City Road
stood a public house called the Eagle Tavern and an adjoining
theatre. William Booth bought up the unexpired lease and so
ended a notorious resort. There was uproar in the district.
Salvationists were robbing the poor man of his beer, and the
other public houses in the neighbourhood distributed free
drinks to a mob that bombarded the Eagle Tavern with stones,
bottles and stinkpots. Within the edifice knelt men and women
amid the glass of broken windows.
Against William Booth was invoked the law. The owners
of the freehold argued that by refusing to sell liquor on those
premises he was endangering the renewal of a valuable annual
license, which, under the law, he was forced to maintain and
he found himself in a cleft stick. He had staked money en
trusted to him by the public and he could not withdraw from
his investment. Under compulsion of the Court, therefore, he
set aside a small room as a bar and painted his name over the
door William Booth licensed to sell alcoholic liquors!
Large were the sums of money spent by the "trade" on
hiring ruffians to defeat the Salvationists, and the money talked.
It was two centuries since John Bunyan in Bedford Jail had
written his Pilgrim's Progress, an allegory second only to the
Bible in Victorian England as a plan of Salvation. Thackeray
adopted Bunyan' s Vanity Fair as the title of a novel descriptive
of high society in thê days of Waterloo. No fury and no folly
described by Bunyan and Thackeray surpassed the excesses of
blasphemous ribaldry that assailed the Salvation Army.
Above smooth mown sward rose the spire of Salisbury
Cathedral, painted by Constable and one of the loveliest things
made by man. Under the shadow of that spire lay Salisbury's
police court where stood a poor
widow accused of preaching
the Gospel. "I exhort sinners to flee from the wrath to come,"
she explained and, led by His Worship the Mayor of Salisbury,
the magistrates broke into laughter. ''The Lord bless you, my
lord, and save your precious soul," said the widow, and the
merriment was renewed. She was exhausted and could only
add, "Lord help you!" at which there were roars o ridicule.
Who now wants to know the name of that mayor o a cathedral
city with its ecclesiastical reputation? But as long as
the Salva
tion Army lives and works throughout the world, the name o
Sarah Sayers will never be forgotten.
For many of these years an important friend of the Booths
was William T. Stead and Evangeline knew him well. He was
a journalist and he founded the Review of Reviews, for which
monthly he interviewed the Czar himself in his palace at St.
Petersburg. His career ended on the Titanic.
"You work your people too hard," said Stead to William
Booth. "Of what use to you is an officer when he is dead?"
"It's a bad general/' was the stern rejoinder, "who spares
his men and loses the battle."
It was a discipline from which William Booth did not
spare his own children. They who only know
the Salvation
Army in our own day get the idea that the Founder favored
his own flesh and blood in making his appointments. The fact
is, of course, that he had nobody else to help him in their par
ticular fields. Bramwell, shadowing his father everywhere, was

a glutton for work that somehow had to be done. Ballington
handsome, genial, the sweetest of singerswith the fiddle that
he played as he liked and the concertina that he had really
mastered went forth bearing a name that filled any hall. In
Cornwall he followed in his parents' footsteps and with similar
results. Once more there were the "Glory Fits" that somewhat
disturbed William and Catherine Booth and might be com
pared with the attitudes of the Holy Rollers. After one evening
of conversions the offerings on the penitent form included
seven feathers torn from women's hats, three pipes not again
to be smoked, a fine pin, an Albert chain for watch and waist
coat, a tobacco pouch and two rolls of twist for chewing, one
of them twenty-four and a half inches long.
It will be recalled that Catherine Booth had been educated
in cloistered seclusion from the French language. Many were
the mutterings, therefore, when it was found that her daughter,
Katie, ^sras working hard at her French, and people asked what
it meant. They were told that William Bocfth was encouraging
the girl to seize the weapon wielded so wickedly by Balzac and
ENGLAND 59
Rabelais, and turn its edge against the Devil. Defensive was
reversed into offensive.
Salvationists were not alone in regarding Paris as the
City
of Destruction. Its prevailing religion was not Protestant but
Catholic and the Catholic religion did not always prevail. In
1871 the Seine was lighted up with the flames of an incendiary
Communism, while every heresy, religious and political, was
rampant, and some indecency. It was into this Paris that Wil
liam Booth was to send a girl of twenty-two years who had
never been out of the country before, and powerful friends
protested. To all who came to him, the Founder answered
quietly, "Kate knows the Lord." Hers was the first landing of
the Army, not only in France but on the continent of
Europe,
and France, after raising her eyebrows over the spiritual es
capade, as Paris regarded it, was polite. Catherine the Younger
was addressed as La Marechale.
Evangeline began her Salvationist activities by selling
War Crys. She claims that she became the champion seller of
War Crys in the Army, and her position was on the pavement
outside Liverpool Street Station close to a big public house.
She reduced her business to a system* First, she read the cur
rent issue of the paper with careful intent. Then, she made a
list of all the countries and towns mentioned in its columns.
This list she committed to memory, and she would then pursue
passers-by, telling them that there was an interesting piece in
the War Cry about this or that place. Over and over again it
meant a and she had to give two-pence a time to a boy who
sale,
brought her further supplies of the periodical, bundle by

bundle. She just sold those War Crys.
It was in her seventeenth year that Evangeline Booth to
quote a later phrase went over the top. Her comrade was none
other than the redoubtable Elijah Cadman, the chimney sweep
converted into an apostle, and they were a noticeable pair. On
the one hand strutted a squat little man, stunted in stature
by mistreatment in childhood, bearded and broad in the beam,
with a face beaming with benevolence, full of love for sinners
but terrific in his shattering attacks on sin. On the other hand
walked a girl, with pale and serious yet eager face, abundant
auburn hair and a voice, untrained and unspoilt, that we who
have heard them both compare with the "golden tones" of
Sarah Bernhardt. Twice did the two o them sally forth to
gether, but not the third time.
Over insults to himself Elijah Cadman behaved like the
saint he was. But the spirit within him was sorely tried when
he saw boys trounced by magistrates for no reason except that
they were trying to live as they ought to live within the Salva
tion Army, Like Jonah in Nineveh he dealt out judgement in
no uncertain terms. Suddenly he would appear on the doorstep
of the city fathers' residence, would drop on his knees and
awestruck passers-by would hear him pray, "Lord take him
take him away."
And the record that in one case after another the blinds
is
in the house had tobe drawn.

Evangeline spoke to her father about it. How to restrain
Cadman, claiming to be guided by God, was, however, some
thing of a problem, and firmly the girl insisted that God was
guiding her in a different direction. She and Cadman parted,
each into a distinct sphere of activity.
Evangeline Booth found herself at Whitchurch in Shrop
shire. It was an ancient place with six thousand people and the
making of turret clocks which were much admired. The Mayor

was Melville Porter and he saw no reason why his bailiwick
should be disturbed by Salvationists, in which view the neigh
bours agreed.
The young captain persuaded a local butcher to give her
a ride in his cart. The vehicle offended the proprieties by draw
ing up at the Mayor's front door and the butler was even more
upset by the Salvationist uniform right on the step. She wanted
to see the master o the house. Most unusual, said the butler.
She insisted that the master of the house be consulted and
reluctantly the butler paced the hall to the library, unaware of
tip-toeing behind him. She walked into the room and there
was nothing that the Mayor could do about it.
She asked him why he was so hostile and it was not long
before she was kneeling on the carpet in prayer. The Mayor
was a gentleman and in courtesy he knelt beside her. He
offered to send a guard with her back to the town but that,
she said, would not be necessary. For there was no further
trouble in Whitchurch.
The leaders of the Salvation Army in those early days were
ENGLAND 61
working a seven-day week, often the clock round. The amazing

thing is not that occasional incidents occurred over which there
may be more than one opinion in retrospect but that such
incidents were so few and far between. As to one such case
there has been a discussion extending over half a century, and
it enters into this story because it was Evangeline Booth, then
a girl of seventeen, who was called upon to handle the situation.

There was a gipsy boy called Rodney Smith. He came
under the influence of William Booth who saw that, despite
his wild upbringing, there was something to be made of him.
Soundly converted he accepted service in the Salvation Army.
He was a gentle and lovable man, albeit emotional, and he was
gifted with a voice that, singing or speaking, sounded forth
what has often been called the wooing note. His success as an
evangelist was immediate and sensational. In December 1881
he was asked at Headquarters where he wanted to go next.
"Send me/' he said, "to the nearest place to the bottomless pit."
With a wife as young as himself, one child and a second ex
pected, he found himself at Hanley in the potteries. At first,
being a Salvationist, he could hardly get lodgings but within a
few months he was drawing crowds and selling 10,000 copies
of the War
Cry every week.
It perhaps, no wonder that it went to his head. Never
is,
in his life had he been trained to respect Orders and Regula

tions, nor did he see that for such discipline there is usually a
reason. In his autobiography he has confessed quite frankly
that on two occasions he wrote out his resignation from the
Army and, on his wife's advice, tore up the letter. He did not
'like the uniform" and felt that he "was a little bit too respect
able for the Army." It was decided to remove him from Hanley
to another sphere of work. The wife was expecting her baby
and sympathetic women in the town asked Mrs. Booth as wife
and mother to postpone the change, which request was granted.
Hanley was on Gipsy Smith's side. At a public meeting
the people gave him a gold watch, with 5 for Mrs. Smith and
another 5 for their sister. There was ntf doubt that William
Booth had set his face against such presentations, nor, as we
can now see be held in the high respect accorded to it in
our own day if such generosities, however well-intentioned,
had been encouraged. What happened at Hanley was that the
recipient of the watch refused to give it up and incurred dis
missal.
There were indignant protests and a deputation to Lon
don. But the dismissal took effect, and when William Booth
heard of the uproar, he uttered two words: "Send Eva/'
The girl of seventeen arrived on the scene. The few stal
warts who were left to the Army stood by their Flag and the
crowds followed the bands elsewhere.
"What are you going to do about it?" she was asked.
"I shall preach the Gospel/' she answered, "as I always
preach the Gospel/' and preach it she did, night after night, to
empty pews. Then happened the incredible. Of their own
volition the bands and the crowd marched back to their
familiar hall. The Salvation Army had won, and Evangeline
Booth, with the old head on young shoulders, had helped
the Corps to weather the storm.
The letters that have had to be examined are full of
coincidences. For fifty years later when Evangeline Booth was
in the United States she was the recipient of a very desirable
wrist-watch with her name already engraved on it. The donor
was a Salvationist officer whose means enabled him to make the
gift nor was there the slightest suspicion that his motives were
other than entirely innocent. But thê wrist-watch was declined.
Another and very difficult case arose when a number of Amer
ican officers asked permission to give their Commander a new
harp. She would have used it on the platform and also in the
composition of tunes for hymns. But she decided against accept
ing what was so well-intended.
Gipsy Smith always admitted frankly what he had owed
to the Christian Mission and the Salvationist influence. He had
a way of showing his watch to his audiences which was, perhaps,
small-minded. But he did a great day's work for the Gospel,
only ending his career in 1947, and with dignity and gentle
kindliness,A passenger on the Queen Mary, making her maiden
Voyage after reconditioning as a civilian ship, he died on board.
It was in her eighteenth year that Evangeline Booth
received her next assignment, and it was formidable. Just north
of Westminster lay what is now the Borough of Marylebone.
A little &ream called Tybourne, later built over, had flowed
by
the church o St. Mary, whence the name, and the water so
ENGLAND 63
blessed had reflected the gallows where, for so many
years,
criminals had been hung, drawn and quartered in
public.
Charles Dickens had his home in Marylebone, Madame Tus-
saud had her waxworks, not forgetting the Chamber of Horrors,
and Sherlock Holmes there had his rooms on Baker Street.
Marylebone was an area in the metropolis where the middle-
class lived within a stone's throw of slums, not
yet scheduled
for clearance. In Marylebone stood a Salvationist edifice known
as "the white elephant." It included the Great Western Hall
the largest auditorium owned by the Salvation
Army at the
time.
What she first noticed is significant of the whole spirit of
the Salvation Army. That the children in
Marylebone were
often ill-fed and ill-clothed was obvious. But what cut the
young Captain to the heart fresh from the magic garden of
infancy was the fact that they had no toys to play with.
Some carpenters were astonished when a Salvationist lassie
in her bonnet called on them and asked what
they did with
their sawdust. They agreed to let her have all the sawdust that
she wanted. She visited a toy factory. Didn't
they have discards
heads and limbs of dolls that were imperfect and had to be
thrown away? Yes, was the answer and, again, they would be at
her disposal. Next she had to win over a bustling woman
worker in a linsey dress, and finally she secured a cellar. On
the outside of the cellar was posted:
ALL BROKEN TOYS MENDED HERE

DOLLS MANUFACTURED
Thusyears ahead of his poetry did Evangeline Booth
anticipate The Everlasting Mercy
of Masefield, Labour's Laure
ate, and especially his lines:
And he who gives a child a treat

Makes Joy-bells ring in heaven's street.
Heaven's must be confessed, became something

street, it
of a pandemonium and the bits of treasures brought to the
doll's hospital were pitiful. One customer deposited white mice
that were sick unto death and was delighted to receive white
mice, alive and well, on the following day. Here, of course, was
sheer miracle, for which and other reasons Little Eva was
canonised as the "White Angel of the Slums/'
The girl was conscious that a line was drawn between her
self and the people at the base of society that she wished to win.
She must cross that line and feel within herself what it is to
earn a living on the pavement. Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion was
a flower girl who was turned into a lady. Evangeline Booth
decided to be a lady turned into a flower girl. She clothed
herself in a ragged costume and took her place on the steps o
the fountain in Piccadilly Circus.
The other flower girls in their shawls did not know what
to make of her. Her hands were smooth. Her voice was gentle.
But her boots were worn, her stockings were darned, her dress
was tattered and her demeanour was wistful. They pitied the
"dearie" who had come down in the world so low as this. Not,
that she was slow at the game. She sold as many flowers as the
best of them.
One late afternoon William Booth was told that a young
girl in great distress wished to see him. He always had time for
those who needed his help and he listened to her story. When
she disclosed who she was, he laughed as he always could laugh
at a joke against himself.
One late afternoon she found herself in Rotherhithe, sell
ing matches for -her living. It was a rough neighbourhood and
there was a rough looking man on the pavement with a stove in
front of him. He sold hot potatoes for a half-penny apiece. She
held out her coin.
"You don't belong here/' he said brusquely, "go back to
your mother go back to your mother, I tell you/'
She tried to make her voice as rough as his and she told
him to mind his own business. Go back to mother not she.
He became earnest in his persuasion, and he told her his
story. He had been a drunkard and had made a hell of his
home striking his wife in the face and kicking his children
around like footballs. But that Salvation Army had got hold of
him and he'd been what they called saved converted if she
knew wh?it he meant. He was spending no more money on
drink and his home was now decent to live in. If she wouldn't
go back to her mother, he begged her to try the Salvation Army.
ENGLAND 65
It must be one or the other one or the other. And he "wouldn't
charge her nothing for the potato."

It was incidents like this that developed within Evangeline
Booth an unshakable confidence in the potentialities of the
under-privileged. "If the rich would help the rich," she has
said, "as the poor help the poor, it would be a different
world." Profound was her belief that a man may be down, but
never out. If he falls, and falls, and falls again, he must go on
rising again after every fall until he finds his feet and stands
upright.
Scraps of a scrawled correspondence tell of the intensity
with which a young girl called Nellie Eglinton struggled for
decency and faith. Here is a cry from the depths:
Dear Captain, you ask me in your letter have I

given up the drink? This is the truth I have neither
smoked a cigarette or drank a drop of spirits. It was
not because I did not want some. I was craving for it
when I saw it. But I love you and I thought if I drink
and Miss Eva knows, she will not love me any more.
In another letter she tells her story:
Just before you came to the Great Western Hall

my father said to me "If you don't give up the Salva
tion Army you must give up me.** I had been going to
the Hall then for over two years and I felt it very hard.
So I did not take any notice of what he said. I thought
to myself he will forget all about it soon. But he didn't.
The first Saturday night you was there, you remember
you took us all into the Hall. My father was watching

you talking to me round the march. The next week I
took your jersey home to mark. My father caught hold
of it. I asked him to give it to me. I said "If you don't
I will kill myself." He said if I give it to you you must
leave your home." This seemed very cruel as I had a
very nice home. My father keeps a large house, and he
is very well to do. I did not have to do any work while
I was at home. But my love for the Army was too great.
I said "Give me the jersey it is not mine and I will
work for my own living."
Nellie had a little money and for a time she stayed with
girl friends one of whom had a sister
<4
We
on the street." read:
While there I was offered (sum cannot be de

ciphered) to go to see a gentleman but I said I have
more respect for myself. I would sooner starve. ... I
did not taste drink until that Easter Sunday when I
was so wicked to you, but I have signed the pledge.
Now I am living with my sister. She hates the Army
but I am bound to stop here, because I shall be out
on the street if I don't. And may God in His mercy
keep me from that . . .
Her great moment came when in the twilight Evangeline

was limping home along a back alley. After a hard day with the
flowers she was weary. An old man was moved to sympathy by
her appearance. He suggested that she should apply to the
Salvation Army for assistance.
"Do you think," siie asked doubtfully, "that they'll do any
thing for the likes of me?"
The old man thought it quite possible.
"I was worse than you," he said, "I was a real bad 'un.
They took me in hand and pulled me out of it. You go to
them, my lass. They'll help you don't be afraid."
The anecdofewenFTrouHd the world.
There was great concern in those days over what were
called "the lapsed masses." People did not always go to church.
As a Salvationist Evangeline Booth saw the situation the other
way round. Going to church with her meant going into the
highways and hedges where there were souls to be saved.
She managed to scrape together a few shillings with which
she presented herself at one of those pawnshops that her father
had known so well. How much would that guitar be that hung
in the window? After a little bargaining the guitar was hers.
She bought a nice new riband and hung the guitar round her
neck.
The public houses were doing business as usual. The
customers, as Wodehouse would say, were draped by their
elbows along the bar. Softly the swing door was pushed open
and there was amazement. Many a wife had sought to retrieve
ENGLAND 67
a husband and their money for housekeeping. But this young
woman was different. She thrummed her guitar and sang. They
listened. The barman told them to stop their swearing, and no
rude jests, please. It was what Evangeline Booth meant by going
to church.
She states that never in her life has she, as an individual,
encountered personal insult. Always she has commanded and
received the courtesy due to her. But organised rioting had to
be faced.
The liquor trade enrolled what was called the Skeleton
Army. Its flag was the Skull and Grossbones of piracy on the
high seas and its aim was to break up Salvationist processions
in Marylebone. Thus was the Blood and Fire Flag challenged
Blood for the redemption that flowed from the heart of the
Redeemer on the Cross, Fire for the Spirit of flaming love that
glowed in the hearts of those who went forth in His name.
They snatched at the ribands on her uniform, and on one
occasion Evangeline Booth was struck by the missiles and
stunned. With blood flowing from her forehead she was borne
away for first aid. Another day she was seized by an angry
constable who twisted her arms and dragged her roughly to the
police court. The charge against her was disorderly conduct
and the officer behind the desk declined to enter such a charge
on his pad. She was released. The people resented being "told
by a lady/' better off than they. They threw hot water from
their windows, followed by f curses and jests.
In handling opposition the Captain, for this was now her
rank, pursued a certain strategy. She kept her eye on the ring
leader. A young fellow bent on making trouble would be asked
innocently for his co-operation. "Walk by me/' she would say,
"I need you." And suddenly he would be transformed from a
rioter into a bodyguard. So with his gang. They still followed
him, but right about face.
A particular worry was Whipsie. This youth was as hand
some as they are made and he earned occasional money by sit
model for artists who painted his face and his hands.
ting as a
Otherwise the Adonis lived by his wits and incidentally drove
a donkey cart. The youth fancied himself and the Salvation
Army aroused within him the seven devils of mischief. If
Evangeline Booth felt whiskey trickling down the back of her
neck she would know that Whipsie, with the countenance of a
choirboy, had had something to do with it.
She sent a message to Whipsie and asked him to see her.
She received a note that she always treasured:
21 Suffolk Place
Lisson Grove
Marylebone
Dear Miss Evea
I dont now if it is write but ginger told me that
you wanted to see me at 6 oclock and I thought he was
having a a game with me so I thought I would just drop
a line to see weather it was true so will you send word
weather it is true.
Whipsy
She asked Whipsie if he would do her a favour. He was
taken by surprise but quite agreeable. Would he drive her
around in his donkey cart and tell her all about Marylebone?
He was, as we say, tickled to death and he polished up his cart
until it shone. His donkey barely survived the grooming to
which it was subjected, and proudly the three of them did the
district. Whipsie's friends were informed that things were now
changed. Anyone annoying the Captain would have to deal
henceforth with him. For he was convertedsoundly converted
and wore the Salvationist jersey.
It is in Evangeline Booth's words that we have the
story of
Bones:
I was living no longer at home but in the midst of

the slums where I commanded the corps. It was Christ
mas and my simple quarters had been crowded with
poor guests. With heart full of joy over this celebration
of what was also my birthday I laid me down to
sleep
that was deep and refreshing.
"Take that, you .1" and a crash, a woman's
. .
scream and the smash of broken glass awakened me.

I jumped from my bed and looked down into the
street. Two men were
fighting and, a few feet away,
a baffled policeman sprawled in the gutter. His baton
had been snatched by the girl who had screamed and
ENGLAND 69
she had run away with it. One fighter had been felled
with a blow.
I did not wait to put on shoes but hastened as I
was, barefoot, into the snow, only throwing a cloak
around me. What I felt in that chill darkness was the
Presence that had never failed me when in difficulty
that Fourth One of Whom I had read in the Book of
Daniel the Companion of the three in the fiery furnace.
With my two hands on his shoulders I said to the
taller man,
"Don't! Don't! I want to speak to you," by which
time the smaller man had vanished from the scene.
"You've got the goods, miss/' from the policeman
as he adjusted his helmet, and he drew forth the hand
cuffs.
"No," I pleaded, "it is Christmas night and you
mustn't lock him up. I will take him home. Who is
he?"
"He's Bones," said the policeman, "and he's a ter
ror."
Bones had so little flesh on him that I understood
how he came by his nickname, and his clothes were so
torn that it was a mystery how they hung together. I
kept him waiting for a few minutes while I dressed
for the expedition, after which, drunk and disorderly
according to the law, he led me into a resort called Bell's
Court which had been shunned for years by the re
spectable. Tousled heads and bleared eyes appeared
dimly in windows that concealed many a criminal
secret.
We
dived int6 a cellar, which was the only home
that Bones knew. Not a stick of what could be called
furniture, no window save a grating without glass, damp
walls that oozed and rats for company that was his
residence. And for the fun of it he would catch the
rats and roast them alive. I bound up his bleeding
temples and left him on the makeshift of a bed with
a tin can of water at his side.
On the morrow I visited him and was greeted by a
grunt quite a compliment from Bones.
"Who done this?" he asked, indicating the bandage.
"Thought I'ld wake in the lock-up. Who brought me
here?"
"I did."
"You!" he ejaculated. "A little bit of a thing
like you! Well, all I can say is, you're a chunk of
pluck/'
He silent and docile while I took off the
sat
bandage, and he gulped down the bread I had brought
him as if he had not tasted food for days. I talked to
him about drink.
"Drink!" he replied. "It's the only friend I've got.
Wrong to kick a man?
was kicked into the streets
I
when I was seven years old and me father it was that
did it. Me mother would come sneaking after me in the
shed with a crust of bread. Reckon I don't owe no man
nothing."
I asked Bones how he made a living and he an
swered,
"Selling chips," meaning, of course, the fried chips
of potato that accompany fish beloved of the people.
"But if you've no chips ." . .
"Steal," he answered as if it were a matter of

course.
I left him in the cellar for I seemed to have caught
some kind of a fever. They put me to bed and I woke
from a troubled slumber. I was amazed to see Bones
at my bedside.
"How did you get in?" I asked, for there had been,
as I knew, someone watching at the door.
"I knocked him down," he explained.
He held a paper bag that he was carrying. It con
tained grapes and I asked him where he had found the
money to buy them.
"Sold my jacket and waistcoat," he answered, and
he invited me back to the cellar where, he said, he had
something to show me. In due course, I accepted his in
vitation and he drew from the straw and rags that were
his only bed three soiled leaves from the Bible. They
were scarcely legible but I noticed that two were from
Matthew and the third from Isaiah.
"My mother give them to me," he said. "It was all
she had to leave me. She said they were enough to take
me where she was going and she would wait for me
there."
I read the Beatitudes in Matthew Blessed are the
ENGLAND 71
poor in spirit for their's is the kingdom of heaven.

And then I read from Isaiah, He
was wounded for our
transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities . . .
"Little Captain," he said, "He didn't fight for Him

self, did He?"
Bones was finding his mother's Saviour.
Converts in the Army are known as trophies, and one

trophy usually leads to another. Alexandra Palace was the- rival
in North London to the Crystal Palace in the south. There was
held the first of the Army's International Congresses. William
and Catherine Booth occupied the reviewing stand. Radiant
with pride was the face of Evangeline Booth as she stood before
her parents and offered two of her trophies, Whipsie and Bones.
To continue what she has written:
Years later I was in London on work for the First
World War. I revisited the old battleground against
sin,and a woman pushed her way through the crowd.
She thrust a crumpled scrap of paper into my hands
with the words:
I read: "Him as wrote that died just two hours
since."
Dear Little Captain, I am dying now with your pic
ture and the Bible leaves close beside me ... I can
die happy now that I know you are near. I shall tell
mother how you saved me. In heaven I shall look for
you all the time.
Bones.
England in those days was a paradise of the pedestrian.

The only mechanically propelled vehicle on the highway was
the steam roller and a man with a red flag had to walk in front
of it. Riots permitting, therefore, Salvationists were free, more
or less, to parade the streets to and from their citadels. They
formed circles on the pavement. They blew their trumpets,
they beat their drums, they shrilled their tambourines, they
prayed their prayers, they declared their testimonies, they
shouted their Hallelujahs. Never had there been seen anything
quite like it in the annals of religion.
This was the daily procedure at Marylebone, and Evan
geline Booth's little congregation began to grow.
She who had
begun her oratory by preaching to her dolls had a way with
her that won anaudience. Voice, smile, youth, sincerity, under
standing of others were passports to popularity. But with a
facile success she was never satisfied. Never was she one who
thought that any old way was all right for the greatest message
ever proclaimed by God to man. "The best is good enough for
me," was what Arnold Bennett the novelist said of his creature
comforts. Nothing less than the best preaching was good enough
for Evangeline Booth.
Her first audience in the vast hall consisted of fourteen
persons. But she spoke to them as if her life depended on it,
and a boy walked to the penitent form. She put her hand on
his shoulder and he was converted but he seemed then to drop
out of sight this her first trophy in Marylebone. Fifty years
later she heard of him again. He was Cuthbert Shepherd, the
Borough Missionary of Southend-on-Sea, a man whose career as

free lance of evangelism had become known to the press. Mr.
Shepherd received a letter of thanks from George V and when

Evangeline Booth as General of the Salvation Army wrote to
him, he replied that hers should be framed and hung by the
side of "the King's/'
Evidence of her zeal for the message she had to deliver is
an old, worn but still serviceable book for manuscript, bound
in red leather, with a place for a clasp that has disappeared. On
the sumptuous pages she inscribed notes of addresses, some on
Salvation, others on Holiness^ the headings sub-lined in red
and the handwriting faultless. About that idea of preaching
there was nothing hasty, slapdash or superficial.
Those were days when the impromptu speaker had things
all his own way. No manuscripts had to be sent in advance to
the press and reporters took down what was said in shorthand.
There was no radio for which the script had to be approved.
For the resxlltant out-pouring of rhetoricians with a gift of the
gab, Evangeline Booth had a genuine admiration. She won
dered how they did it. But afterwards she would remark, "I
can't remember one thing he said/' Her view was that "a
sermon should stick/'
And should be a sermon. By training her father was a
it
Methodist minister. It was from the text that he preached

ENGLAND 73
first, secondly,
thirdly and in this conservatism his daughter
firmly believed. Even an unprepared address should have a
point and the point like a nail should be driven home. Hard-
pressed for time, the Captain would join the procession leaving
the citadel and as she marched would look around
her, seeking
for a topic. For instance, there be an advertisement on a
might
billboardPz'ZZs for a Weak Heart which was
just the thing
for a discourse how to
get the best of a weak heart. Another
of these billboard texts, was "Blood, to Cure All Ills/ 1
Paul the Apostle urged his

disciple Timothy to "stir up
the gift that was in him," and it was thus that William Booth
encouraged Evangeline. "Plunge in the sword, Eva," he would
say, "plunge it in to the hilt. Reach the souL" Words should
be weapons wielded with what she was fond of
calling "passion"
a surging emotion that, however restrained, kindled
every
phrase to fire. The weapons should be shining with polish.
Gold and jewels are lavished on altars, no loveliness wasted
where the scene is adoration. Thus did this
young missionary
of the Gospel lavish on her
messages of hope and comfort and
warning the thought, the aptitude, the literary grace and
clarity, the elocution that acting dedicates to dramatic
speeches
on the stage. "Why/' asked someone of a
great tragedian, "do
people crowd your theatre when churches near by are empty?"
He replied, "I will give you the reason. In the theatre we actors
recite our parts as if
they were truth but in your churches you
preach your truths as if they were a part/' Evangeline Booth
never made that mistake. So absorbed were her audiences in
her sincerity that she was able to stand silent before thousands
for a minute at a time amid a
profound stillness, "If anyone had
coughed," said one listener, "I should have fainted."
^
To officers who were inclined to be rough spoken in their
revivalism, she would say, "Do not tread on velvet
carpets with
hob-nailed boots." Where there had been sin and sorrow in
families with consequent estrangements, let the touch be as
tender as the wounds to be healed. Not for an instant did she
allow it to be thought that the common
people were common
in the sight of God. They were
approached with the respect
due to their status, even if it be a lost status, as men and women
made in the divine image. Drawn into the citadel they were met
with a tact and a consideration for their feelings that became
a truly redemptive hospitality. "Bring forth the best robe and
put it on him."
Meetings to which the poor had been invited, began to be
attended by all classes, and in that hall at Marylebone appeared
a man who seemed to be apart from others. His was a stout,
solid figure and his overcoat was drawn up to his ears. His face
was leonine, pale and with sideburns white as the abundant
hair on his venerable head. Again and again would he listen
to the girl, so many years younger than himself, and when the
meeting was over, he would come up to her to make sure
that she was well wrapped after her effort, before facing the
chill air outside. "Take care of yourself, my child," he would
say, "with that voice of yours, and do not overtax your
strength." For in such matters he had had experience.
He wrote to William Booth in similar terms. He must be
careful of his young daughter and not tax her energies too
severely. "Keep her in cottonwool" was what he advised. She
was, after all, only at the start of what might well be a life of
The mentor was John Bright, England's Quaker states^
value.
man and her conscience in public life. And for John Bright to
the end of her days Evangeline Booth has cherished a reverent
gratitude.
Eminent friends were gathering around William Booth,
and among them was Lord Onslow whose peerage was founded
by an important Speaker of the House of Commons in the
eighteenth century. He heard accounts of what Evangeline
Booth was doing in Marylebone and his curiosity was aroused.
The name of the Captain was thus discussed in the
smoking
room House of Lords. Earl Cairns, Disraeli's Lord
of the
Chancellor, was also an admirer of the Booths and in the
group was the ever memorable Earl of Shaftesbury, the William
Wilberforce of his generation, and perhaps England's finest
exemplar of caste overcome by love of the poor.
Years before the recognition of trade unions
Shaftesbury
fought in the House of .Lords against the wrongs of labour.
Multitudes of ragged children were gathered under his
protec
tion and, standing on a soapbox, he preached Christ to
passers-
by. Wherever there was good to be done, there he was, ready
to help.
ENGLAND 75
Onslow, Cairns and Shaftesbury wanted to know more

about this girl hardly out of her 'teens, Evangeline Booth. How
did she get hold of the people? They would like to meet the
girl.
The Captain received word that she must go to the Palace
of Westminster, better known as the Houses of Parliament. She
was conducted into an inner lobby where she was seated in an
armchair lined with red leather.
"Come, my child/' said Lord Chancellor Cairns, "just talk
to us as if we were listening to you on the pavement."
"Look on me as a drunkard," added Shaftesbury, impec
cable as he was immaculate, "what exactly would you say to
me?"
"I should tell you that you are a fine fellow," answered the
visitor, "and I should want to know why you
treated yourself
like that spoiling your looks and making yourself ridiculous.
I should say to you that you are worth more than that and it
is time you should know it."
"But replied that I couldn't help it
if I ." . .
"I should ask you to kneel with me and pray for God's
help."
"If I was not quite convinced ."
. .
"I should remind you of Christ on the Cross. He died to

save and He did not die for nothing."
"That is what you mean by the Gospel," said Earl Cairns
gravely.
"Yes, sir. That is what we mean by the Gospel?"
was surely one of the most remarkable conversations
It
ever heard in those surroundings, and the statesmen remem
bered that they had been dealing with a girl who, after all, had
her human side. They took her down to the terrace by the
Thames and she was regaled with afternoon tea, including
Parliament's famous strawberries and cream.
Not long afterwards Lord Shaftesbury died. The site
chosen for his memorial was the fountain in Piccadilly on the
steps of which Evangeline Booth
had sold her flowers. It hap
pened that way.
The day came when the Little Captaip. was ordered to
leave Marylebone, and Marylebone did not like it. The police
sent a deputation to the Army's Headquarters where a petition
was presented to the General to reconsider his decision. Even
the public houses hoped that she would still remain in the
neighbourhood. They pointed out that the customers dropped
their cursing when she was around. In the bar itself she had
stood for the dignities of man.
From time to time a letter from Evangeline's mother,
Catherine Booth, seems like a candle illuminating the whole
situation. One of these letters, in its severity, its sound sense
and its profound appreciation of a brilliant daughter's temper
ament and opportunities, is surely a classic, and it affected her
outlook on the future,
78 Marine Parade,
Brighton, Jan. 20th
(1886)
My dearest Eva,
Your been long in coming but I was very
letter has
glad to get it anddown to answer at once but was
sat
hindered. I am very sorry to hear that you have been
in such a down condition. Why did you not send me
the letters you speak of? If your mother cannot enter
into your feelings, who is to do so? ...
I cannot understand about you being so down.
What is it about? Face the question for yourself and
look at your mercies. You are only twenty. Your health
is improving. You have already such a position as many,
even public women, don't reach in half a lifetime.
You have the love and care of parents and brothers and
sisters such as few have. You have the chance if you will
use it of improving yourself as much as you like, and
you have such an object in life as no other girl in the
world hasll Now why with so much should you be so
down?
If it is the state of your health, then the state of
your health must be improved, and that can only be

done by improving your habits. . .
First, get up to
,
breakfast and if you get tired lie down a bit after din
ner. Secondly, walk part of the way down every morn
ing. Thirdly, don't drink too much hot drink. Eat
what you know you can digest and nothing else. Go to
bed as early as you can and make a law not to talk after
in bed.
ENGLAND 77
Nowthese look simple rules and would require a
bit of determination to carry them out but they would
pay and you would reap the advantage o better sleep
and improved condition all round, and through all
your future life. Now could you not begin? Is it not
worth the effort? . . .
Do something for your mind. I shall never forgive

myself for being weak enough to let you give up school
at the time you did. I might have known what it would
corne to. You see you have not kept your promises.
You perhaps say *I could not.* Well, that is what I
ought to have foreseen and so not have allowed you
to go into the circumstances [active service for the
Army]. However, it is of no use regretting the past.
Will you begin now? By the time you are twenty-two
you may make yourself a comparatively educated
woman. I am ready to do anything possible to help
you. . . .
Perhaps you will say, 'But see how down you get/
Yes and therefore I can better counsel you not to give
way to lowness while you are young. I had fifty thou
sand times the cause to be down when I was your age
and yet I struggled above it and made myself what I
am without any idea of ever having any sphere of act
ing it out. I am worn out with long strain such as I
hope you will never know some of it known only to
God and myself. But you are young and have had no
great troubles such as I had when I was sixteen years
old. Don't allow [yourself to think that yours are]
imaginary but rise up in the strength of God and re
solve to conquer. Do. My love for you makes me
desire your highest good. How can love desire less? Any
thing that desires less is selfishness, not love. You may
have others who will be more demonstrative but never
who will love you more unselfishly than your mother
or who will be willing to do or bear more for your good.
I shall keep your little flower and cherish it believing
that it represents more than you can speak.
Your ever loving mother,
C. B.
Mind where you put this.
Thus wrote the Mother of the Salvation Army, and a

comment on her letter is inescapable. Nothing that Catherine
Booth endured when she was sixteen compared with what
Evangeline Booth had to face in her twenties that was true-
but not at all in the sense that Catherine Booth intended. For
whatever her troubles may have been, she had her William
Booth and as wife and mother she fulfilled her personality.
But Evangeline? Time and again, she turned aside from the
blessings that her mother had enjoyed and faced the sacrifice
of herself with nobody at her side to be a companion. Never
did Catherine Booth have to go through that experience.
About the farewell letters of "affectionate roughs" in
Marylebone as some of them signed themselves there was a
pathos such desperate attempts to express themselves, such
limited caligraphies. Couldn't they see her again just this once?
Would she be careful to smile when she was photographed
they liked it when she smiled? One signed himself:
From your obediant servant, one of the rough smooth

down with emery cloth,
God bless you Captain Eva,
Moggy.
You must excuse these letters as i have never wrote any
before.
Burn this after read.
That letter has not been burned. For sixty years it has
been preserved. "Jack the drummer sends his love to you,"
was one message "there ain't no good Samaritan to give me a
good cup of tea in the afternoon" was another. "If," he wrote,
"the Vestry was to go and see some of the starving poor in
Marylebone instead of paying for decorating the Edgware Road
for the Queen to pass through, there would be some sense in
that, and buy them some food to eat. This is all I have to say at
present."
The withdrawal . of her personal influence had reper
cussions: v
Dear Captain, me and fuller has not been in the

hallnor around the march since you have been gone.
Dear Captain, I nearly got into a scrape on last Sat
urday night but as luck would have it the copper went
ENGLAND 79
over on his head but two o the lads got locked up.
One got 7 days the other 7 days or 7 shillings.
A private of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers stationed in Ireland
thanked her for the letter she had written him. "A great many
of the men/* he wrote, "squander their money in the beer, but
since I went to your hall I have not tasted any, and I hope,
please God, I shall not have atiy more, and I am much better
without and great deal of money in pocket . Thank God
. .
For Miss Eva Booth."

Fitzie was a persistent "fan," and quite in earnest about it:
I have not got much time to write a long letter for

you thismorning as I have to go to work. I prayed for
you last night and always will pray for you when I see
you so dull. I know youVe got a lot of troubles to get
over, but cheer up, Captain, Fitzie will do his best for
you. ... I like to see a smile on your face.
In these ill-spelt unpunctuated letters there is revealed a

spiritual experience as deep as sanctity among the canonised:
I am sorry to say I have been a backslider but I

have been to Jesus and He has forgiven me for all.
It is three months now, Dear sister, God has been
speaking to me very much since I have been saved.

There is a verse that is always ringing through my
ears Go he (ye) out into the world and preach the
gospel to every creature. I have been down on my knees
before the Lord with that verse, and I prayed to God
and asked him if he would show me a verse that I
may think about. As I opened my bible my eyes fixed
on that same verse. Dear Sister, I feel I can't thank you
enough for speaking to me about my soul when you
came to Wotton Underedge.
The influence of this girl's parentsthey were Baptists was

against their daughter joining the Army but even in the chapel
attended by the family she heard the beat of the drum.
Of Wootton-Under-Edge one who became an officer's wife
in the Army has written as follows:
It was in the year 1886, in a little hired hall in
the small town of Wootton-under-Edge, in Gloucester
shire, that I first saw and heard Miss Eva Booth. I
vividly recall the day, it was for me a great day the
impression made upon my young heart and mind has
remained until now.
It all happened in this wise. We were a party of
young people from a distant town lured by the pe
culiar announcement [of the Army], and the fame of
Miss Booth. We hired a wagonette and drove to where
she was speaking, although at the time riding on Sun
day was very much against our scruples, However, we
thought that our purpose would justify the act. When
we reached the hall, what crowds, men, women and
children, all eagerly pressing forward to get a sight
of this wonderful woman. Never shall I forget when
Miss Eva sang to the accompaniment of her guitar this
verse:
Sinner for thee, a pardon so free,

Though dark thy career may have been,
Thy burden shall roll from thy guilty soul
When the light of His Face thou shalt see.
Then followed a more wonderful address, and I

fancy can hear the ringing tone expressing such words
I
as these 'Don't run risks with the Salvation of your
soul/
I remember my reasoning as to how these appar
ently refinedyoung women can talk and sing with such
unction and power. There must have been something
very genuine and strengthening in their faith and love
for Christ that enabled them to wear such plain bon
netsand what a size they were, too! Then there were
the glaring red jerseys with buttons all down the back.
Here was what Evangeline Booth has called straight hit

ting. "The gun," she once wrote, "is no more than the forma
tion of the sermon. It is the shot from the gun that does the
shattering of the defences which the soul has erected against
God. The shot without the gun is useless. Worse than useless
is the gun without the shot. It is to be condemned as a de-
ENGLAND 81
ception." Over the wording of her letters she was even in

those days especially careful. She set a high value on the person
to whom she was writing, and in so doing she set a similar value
on herself. One such letter, dated October 9th, 1893 and sent
from her office of Field Commissioner in London, is among the
earliest preserved,and pasted onto supporting paper it was
evidently treasured greatly by the recipient. We read:
My Dear ,
I must send you a few lines straight from myself

to tell you how deeply I feel for you in the sad and
crushing sorrow that has overshadowed your home. I
can fancy that as yet you feel too much stunned arid
overwhelmed to realise that is not an awful dream, but
in the midst of all I thank God that you know to
Whom to turn for help and support. He will not fail
you now, and His arms of love and tenderness will bear
the sufferer over the river to the land where pain and
separation cannot enter.
Do not fail to let me know If there is any service
or assistance I can render you, and think ofas bear me
ing you and yours continually before the God Who can
alone fully realise and comfort you at this time of grief.
Yours in the Kingdom to serve
Evangeline Booth.
The fact was that the Little Captain had been doing quite
too much and needed a rest. For eleven months she had to
recuperate, and only when thoroughly rested^ did she resume
her role of leading forlorn hopes.
Adjoining Hampstead Heath lay the prosperous suburb
of Highgate. The Army had been doing well in Highgate but
one day the citadel was burned down and there had to be a new
one. "Oh yes/' said Evangeline Booth, recalling the occasion,
"we got the money lots of it."
The custom had been to set the big drum on the ground
and invite the onlookers to throw their pennies and shillings
onto it. But Evangeline Booth preferred half-crowns and, at
Highgate, she needed even bigger contributions. So she laid on
the grass a sheet with golden edging. Within that edging noth
ing must appear save half-sovereigns at the least or bank notes
worth even more. The crowds were interested but something
was needed to start them off. So the young Salvationist slung a
snare drum to her waist, saying she would beat the drum if the
cash began to come. Beat it she did, and not as an amateur. Her
rolls and her taps were a tour de force and funds for the new
citadel were forthcoming.
They sent her to a market town in Buckinghamshire
called High Wycombe, and in this sleepy place the Salvation
Army had not been getting on too well. She gave one look at
the angular streets and then she enquired,
"Where do the men work?"
She was directed to brickfields on the outskirts of High
Wycombe and to the brickfields she made her way. A horse
was harnessed to a pole and it walked round and round a vast
sea of what looked like mud that was being stirred
by huge
flanges. Given a horse, Evangeline Booth usually found some
thing that needed to be done, and the men were astonished
to see the Salvation lassie
accompanying the creature and
bestowing on it an attention that, shaking its mane, it evidently
appreciated. Soon she and the men were sharing lunch. When
she left High Wycombe there was a thriving corps in the
Army.
It was thus not at
Headquarters but in the Field itself
face to face with the people that she learned what it means to
be a Salvationist officer who is up against it. Only when she had
served this exacting apprenticeship was she promoted to
higher
commands. She was put in charge of the International Train
ing College at Clapton in London, and she became Field Com
missioner for what England knows as the home counties
around the metropolis.
Of secular education William Booth had been suspicious.
He much preferred an untutored person who was wholly
God's to scholars and scientists agnd artists who were half and
was the soldier who could fight without
half. It
flinching that
would win the battle, that would do his duty without a doubt
within him. Drunkards, gamblers, utter heathens, if
soundly
converted, would win the world.
This meant, however, that kneeling at the
penitent form
was only a first step. The convert must be taught what it means
to be a Christian. There must be "a
deepening of the spiritual
life." Careful instruction of Salvationists in the whole wealth
ENGLAND 83
of their heritage as reborn followers of the Saviour was thus
from the first an essential of the
Army's system. In the evening
the Gospel was preached to the unsaved. But in the
morning
there were Holiness Meetings which, to
according Evangeline
Booth, are often more significant than the public rallies.
At an early date in the Army's progress it was found that
these Holiness Meetings were not
enough for the training of
officers whose whole time would be
given to the active service
under the Flag. In 1880, therefore, when Evangeline Booth was
fifteen, her sister, Emma, was entrusted with the care of thirty
women cadets. The experiment was a success and Ballington
was withdrawn from his revivalism in order to take charge of
selected men. Thus developed the International Training Col
lege at Clapton over which Evangeline, at the age of twenty-
three, was called upon to preside. In addition she was in com
mand of operations in the metropolitan area of London as
Field Commissioner.
"Very often/' wrote one of those early cadets, "I would
meet her in the passages with her arm around a cadet, encour
aging her not to leave her God-given post in the Army but to
be faithful and win through. I used to wish sometimes that I
had done something that would make her put her arm around
me, but I do remember on one occasion that she gave me such
an artful look as though to say, 'Never mind. I have got my eye
on you.' "
She was insistent on the high standard of personal ap
pearance which is now the accepted rule in the Army and the
cadet recalls how in those early days years ago she would say
quite plainly:
Never appear on your public platform with dirty

finger-nails.
Always maintain a clean appearance when present
ing the Gospel to your audience.
The Mother of the Army and of Evangeline Booth would

sometimes address the cadets. One of her topics was
Courtship and Marriage^ and she said:
Dear Cadets, before coming to this meeting I asked

the General, 'William, tell me what to say to those
young people on this subject/ He answered, 'Tell them
from me not to think of marrying the fool who pulls
the strings first, but to put a circle round them, and
make everyone feel they fall in step inside that circle.
Be friends with all and intimate with none/
To a young officer who was much discouraged by the

results of her work, Catherine Booth said, "My dear, it is not
so much what you do, what matters is how much you love, for
7
love isthe fulfilling of the law/

The four years that she spent in the realm of education
appear in retrospect as a fairy tale. Never had she herself been
to school never to any kind of college never had she studied
pedagogy for in those days people did not use such a word. Yet
she left her mark on what, throughout the world, has proved to
be a method of training the individual which admirably suits
the purpose in view. It is more than a training for service. It
is a training for sacrifice, for consecration, for the Gospel.
It was not until 1870 that education in England became
national and even so it was only elementary education. At
Clapton, therefore, some cadets were as illiterate as the redoubt
able Cadman and had fo be taught to read and write. They had
to be carefully coached in accountancy and instructed in the
why and wherefore of the Army's regulations. And there was
something further. It was William Booth's hope that Salvation
ists would marry and have children who, like his own, would
carry on the work of the Army in years to come. But it was

found that the girl cadets had been often more carefully
brought up than the boy cadets. The motto of Winchester
College, Manners Makyth Man, thus became a principle in the
Salvation Army. There were hints as to eating at table/ per
sonal cleanliness and general deportment.
In the Training College, Evangeline Booth was both
teacher and pupil. She led her cadets into the streets, accom
panied them in their labours at the penitent form, watched over
them as babes in Christ and upheld them when, as sometimes
happened, they wondered whether they could carry on. Thus
did she learn the inner mind of those on whom the future of
the Army would depend. She acquired the patience and sym
pathy which, mingled with inflexible firmness, accompanied
ENGLAND 85
hei later administration. She was
growing, day by day, into
what she was to be.
She was still a child of irrepressible initiative, filled with
the fun of giving others a
surprise. Regent's Hall was delighted
and amused one day when the first woman's band in the
Army
took the platform with concertinas and other instruments.
People asked, "Why?" to which the Field Commissioner gaily
replied, "Why not?" She was the first Salvationist woman to
defy convention by riding a bicycle, and in looking over the
papers one comes across a note that Bramwell Booth and his
Florrie spent a well-earned
holiday on the East Coast also
riding their "bikes." The last instruction received by their
sister before she left the
Training College was to make sure
that all cadets before
commissioning as officers were able, as
she was, to ride a bicycle. The record of her
height, by the
way, was five feet ten inches, and of her weight, one hundred
and fiftypounds.
Education in the Army was thus practical. Nothing was
included in it unless it served the needs of the Kingdom. But
its origin was
spiritual and it arose out of the instinct within
the Booth family. The choice of the name Bramwell
expressed
this instinct. For it had been the name of a certain Reverend
William Bramwell who had died in 1818. He was the very
personification of what was meant by holiness, a man of perse
vering devotions, monastic austerities and unceasing evangelism
revered and ridiculed as a modern saint. Bramwell Booth
would be, so his parents hoped, what William Bramwell was.
The Holiness Movement was sweeping the Churches. In
1875 just ten years after the Salvationist Movement began
a summer tent was raised in Keswick, Cumberland, the heart of
the Lake District. Every year onwards there was held in that
tent the Keswick Convention where clergy and laity abandoned
ecclesiastical distinctions and met as "one in Christ
Jesus/'
Thousands of missionaries went forth from Keswick to the ends
of the earth. Piety within the Salvation Army in those days was
thus atmospheric.
In her attitude to all of this Evangeline Booth reflected
the mind of her father. Together they stood for piety and
against impiety. But they had no use at all for sanctities which
were merely an escape from actualities. "People pray all night
over an emergency," Evangeline Booth would say, "and are too
tired next day to deal with it." Most
blessedly true is it that
Our Lord will again come to earth. But He is not coming to.
be crucified a second time. He is coming to reign and the
hope
of His Coming is thus a call to get busy. In the Salvation
Army,
therefore, prophecy has been more than an inspired plunge into
an apocalyptic future. It is an immediate summons to take the
next step.
Within Evangeline Booth's experiences there was a philos
ophy on which often she would give her belief. She distin
guished between the heart and the head. Doubtless there was
a good deal of heart in the head and of head in the heart. But
the heart, not the head, is the pacemaker. The heart acts and
the head follows up the action. The heart is the
pioneer in the
trek towards a better world.
It was the heart that drove her to
mingle her life with the
poorest of the poor in Marylebone, and in due course there
arose at Oxford and Cambridge what the head had to
say about
it. The Salvation thus
Army anticipated the foundation of
university settlements like Toynbee Hall and Hull House in
Chicago. The has long since been superseded.
doll's hospital
But here again the idea behind it bore fruit in
play centres.
The face of Evangeline Booth was towards the light.
The uproar against the Salvation Army during these years
was heard in the land. There were riots, there were arrests.
still
In Sheffield stones were thrown against William and Catherine

Booth themselves, and the band was pelted with mud. The
champion wrestler of Northumberland, Lieutenarit Emmerson
Davison, rode a white horse and when he was attacked, he cried,
"Anything for Jesus/' They tried to pull him from the horse
but failed. For some tugged at his
right leg and others at his
left leg and between them fixed him more firmly in the
they
saddle, "If it had not been for the
grace of God," he said rue
fully, "I'd have been equal to half a dozen of them," In the
struggle Evangeline Booth played her part, encountering dis
orders at Eastbourne and other
places. It happens that there
are detailed records of one such disturbance at
andTorquay
% we will proceed to that somewhat lively affair.
TORQUAY
are two ideas of religious liberty. The first may be

THEREdescribed
their own
as static. Good people are to be allowed to wear
labels, believe their own creeds and sit in their
own pews. That is what we mean by toleration. The second is
dynamic. People are permitted not only to hold their faiths but
to spread them, not only to sit in their pews but to
change
their pews, not only to accept their gospels but to preach their
gospels, and to preadi them anywhere and everywhere and at
any time that others are willing to listen. It is not enough for
faith to be orthodox. It must be evangelical. It must be a salva
tion that saves in order to make salvation known. It must be
more than a theological tenet. It must be glad tidings.
This was the issue fought to a finish by the Salvation Army
throughout the world, and the fight is still on. The war was
waged at times in the least expected battlefields. Take the little
town of Torquay on the south coast of Devon, with its fisher
men, its visitors, its coves and its caves, its ancient church, its
bathing beaches and its medical baths. Who would have imag
ined that Torquay of all places, so sheltered by its headland, so
relaxing in its leisurely enjoyments, would suddenly become
the scene of a struggle that filled the local prisons, disturbed
the serenity of western England and finally aroused the re
luctant attention of Parliament itself? Who would have thought
it possible that at the crisis on so strange a stage would
appear
a young woman, still in her early twenties, called Evangeline
Booth?
First, let us state the law. According to the 259th section
of the Public Health Act of the year 1875 a town like Torquay
87
was empowered to adopt a measure forbidding processions ac
companied by music in the streets on Sunday. In 1885 Hastings,
also on the south coast, obtained sanction for this regulation,
and in 1886 Torquay followed suit. The argument was ex
pressed in a petition signed by certain ratepayers:
It isour wish that the town of Torquay, which is

much resorted to by invalids and visitors, should be
protected from the continuance of these processions on
Sundays.
In January 1888 summonses were issued by the police

against the Corps Commander of the Salvation Army in Tor
quay, his bandmaster and several of the bandsmen, who were
charged with infringing the regulation. For years they had
been marching to music, and it happened that the Friendly
Societies of the town had hired a band to enliven their parade
on the Sunday in question. After a hearing in court the
Friendly Societies were let off with the nominal fine of 10
shillings for each offender. But each Salvationist was fined no
less than 5 for identically the same offence.
TheSalvationists could not pay their fines and, in any
event, had no intention of so doing. They were committed to
prison at Exeter for one month, and if on this occasion they
only served a day there was a reason. A local vicar could not
sleep that night. The imprisonment of Christians who had done
no wrong upset him, and early on the morrow he went to the
police court and paid the fines. The case, based on a Salvation
ist playing a concertina, was
appealed to London where the
High Court, finding a convenient technicality in the town's
procedure, quashed the entire proceedings. The Army, having
silenced its music pending the legal decision, held that it was
.again free to blow the trumpet and beat the drum. The police
took down some names but The Torquay Times of January
27, 1888, expressed the view that "with their past experience"
it was very
improbable that the Local Board would "again
take action in the matter."
However, on February 3rd, the Local Board, a little more
careful of the technicalities, decided by eight votes to two in
favour of more prosecution, and summonses were served on
TORQUAY 89
eleven Salvationists. The comment of The Torquay Times was

outspoken. The Local Board was "out of harmony with a large
number of the ratepayers." Their action "savours somewhat of
persecution/' and "the religious zeal and fervour of the Army
will be no more quenched by a police prosecution than are the
national aspirations of loyal Irishmen stifled by the imprison
ment of their honoured patriots/' The editorial continued:
The methods of the Salvation Army may be pe
culiar and such as not to command
universal approval,
but they should be regarded as a means to an end, and
be judged by the results obtained; and it cannot be
gainsaid that here in Torquay, as in every town and
city in the Kingdom, the Army has been singularly
successful in reclaiming the drunkard, the depraved
and the irreligious.
On February 16, the case came up for hearing and the
prosecution asked why a sect numbering only 229 in the town

should disturb the other 20,000 inhabitants. The leading Salva
tionist was fined 2 and each of his comrades 1 apiece.
Thus began the Battle of Torquay that raged for six

months. The bandsmen went on playing every Sunday, the
Local Board persisted in prosecutions that became ever more
numerous and with severer penalties. The streets were crowded
not only by townspeople, but by spectators from the country
side, and sympathisers with the Army formed a bodyguard
for
the band, often sharing in the attentions of the police. The
Salvationists gathered around them an immense congregation
towhom they preached the Gospel that many in the audience
badly needed. Hustling the prisoners to Exeter Jail
became a
For the band would arrange for a Hallelujah send-off
problem.
as the train drew out of the station, and at Exeter, when the
the Salvationists gave them breakfast
prisoners were released,
and later in the day they told of their experiences behind the
bars. Their arrival at Torquay was triumphal. Two brass
bands of the Army escorted them from the station, handker
chiefs were waved and tambourines were beaten. Through the
streets a procession made its way between lines of spectators on
the sidewalks, the Salvationists decked out with red and white
ribands. Some of the released men showed signs of what they
had been through under solitary confinement what one of
them called "seven days with God/'
So it went on "fifteen more sent to prison*' and "fifty
summonses issued." This was the kind of thing:
A great crowd gathered in Market

Street, waiting
for the to be taken to the railway station. The
men
Royal Hotel 'bus was hired, and the prisoners were
placed in it in charge of four constables. The progress
of the vehicle was greatly obstructed while proceeding
down Market Street, and on turning the corner it was
nearly overturned. The confusion was so great that
many people, including two constables, were thrown to
the ground, and the bus passed over the leg of P. C. Cole.
He could not walk and, seriously injured, had to be
removed to his home. The other officer had his arm
hurt, his clothes were torn from him and his helmet
was crushed to pieces.
Ofthe sixteen prisoners, one had his fine paid and was
released, ninewere in jail for a fortnight and six for a month.
On March 16th there was received this telegram:
Your General praises God for self-sacrificing devo

tion for salvation of poor sinners, shown by the pris
oners and relatives, and by those who voluntarily per
severe. Confident of victory.
William Booth
By time the Salvationists were giving attention to

this
strategy. Their bandsmen in Torquay could not carry on the

fight alone. They were well-known to the police and were often
in prison. Bandsmen, therefore, from towns near by, Exeter,
Newton Abbott and others, slipped into Torquay, marched
and played, then vanished beyond the range of local authority.
With feeling running high and largely in favour of the Army,
there was little that magistrates and police could do about it.
Within the Local Board which had to meet twice weekly the
Army had two champions, Bovey and Mountstephens, and
Bovey and Mountstephens made things exceedingly lively for
the anti-Salvationist majority. A memorial signed by five hun-
TORQUAY 91
dred and fifty ratepayers was sent to the Home Secretary in

Whitehall but he replied that the Act, as it stood, allowed the
magistrates to proceed as they were doing.
On March 26, 1888, William Booth addressed a letter to
the Local Board at Torquay. He wrote:
I have neither the power nor the wish to cause any

inhabitant of Torquay to do what will bring upon them
a prosecution. .But I cannot fail to recognise, with
. .
the utmost sympathy and commendation, the conduct of

all who do so act from a
pure desire to carry on the
good work which up to the passing of the Act (a local
law) had gone on uninterruptedly for years. Nor can I
suggest to those who value my esteem and advice (that
is, Salvationists) that they should, for fear of this ill
wind or ill-treatment which may be meted out to them,
cease to do that good work which is permitted to go on
unhindered in every other portion of Her Majesty's
Empire. The experiment of marches without music has
been fully tried in Torquay, and has resulted in the
conviction that the music is essential to the gathering
into our barracks of those whom it is especially our
duty to care for.
Torquay was now split into opposing camps. There was

the petition supporting the Local Board in its action. On the
other hand, a group of the gentry, tradespeople and ministers
of religion in the town appealed to the Board "in the name of
order and Christian charity to take off their hands from these,
our fellow townsmen and fellow Christians, and in the name of
God let them go free/'
So ended the preliminary skirmishes between the Board
and the Army. Both sides now decided that they must give
serious attention to their difference of opinion. The Army
came to the conclusion that it would be wisest to withdraw
from the firing line those units in Torquay who were not at
the moment in prison. Their places on the march to music
were taken by Salvationist reinforcements drawn from the rest
of Devonshire from Exeter, Crediton, Ilfracombe, Barnstaple
and other The police on their side organised a counter-
resorts.
surveillance of any Salvationist who might be musically in
clined. Whenever a notorious bandsman in some town not too
far from Torquay failed to appear at his home, a constable
hurried to the scene of action and tried to indentify him march
ing behind a drum or trumpet. Sometimes the pursuit was
successful and Salvationists over a wide area found themselves
spending their days with God in jail.
One drummer was a great worry to the agents of law and
order. He would march with the other bandsmen and then
vanish. They sought him in Exeter, they sought him in New
ton Abbott, they sought him everywhere within what Torquay
in her guidebooks called the environs, but he could not be
spotted, and public opinion surmised that he was some angelic
phantom imported by the Salvationists from the celestial re
gions with which they were known to be familiar. It was only

at long last that his secret leaked out. He had been lurking in
Torquay all the time, employed by a resident on his estate.
This drummer had been converted without anyone knowing
about it and was making the most use of his somewhat surrepti
tious salvation. The police got him in the end. But he was not
allowed to go to prison. Anyone who had given such amuse
ment to so many people in the community, so it was argued,
was entitled to his liberty and the drummer's fines were paid.
He continued to be a Salvationist in good standing, serving as
treasurer of his corps, and later he became an outstanding
tradesman of the town.
Another Salvationist who greatly perplexed the powers
that be had a way of disappearing after they had laid hands on
him. They seemed to have him in the firm grip of the law. But
it was found that such a man did not exist and they had to let
him go to play in the band again. The police insisted on spell
ing his name, Cox, nor did the Army object. For the correct
spelling of his name was Cocks.
But, despite these humours, it began to be a grim business.
The summonses ran well over a hundred and the first enthusi
asm of the resistance went off the boil. The welcomes home of
discharged prisoners ceased to be a sensation. They still drew
crowds but not quite the same crowds that had gathered earlier
in the campaign. Young men flocked into Torquay from the
countryside and indulged in rowdyism and riot. Salvationists,
like their neighbours, did not approve p this disorder, and to
make matters worse, some of them suffered in health from their
TORQUAY 93
confinement in jail while their families underwent
privation.
William Booth decided that the
thing could not go on like
this and, once more, the order was "Send Eva."
It was
playing high stakes. For there has never been a day
when Evangeline Booth has feared to march to the music of
the Gospel, and was she to receive a
summons, to be haled
before the magistrates, to be committed to
prison? With such
thoughts in her mind she stepped from the train at Exeter. A
national symbol in her bonnet and
cape, she faced the curious
crowds.
Five Salvationists had been released after
serving their
month's sentence. Early in April she
accompanied them to
Torquay where there was arranged a tea in the Army's "Fort"
on Temperance Street. Evangeline sat with these men at the
high table and so many people came to the tea that there had
to be two servings. A
procession was formed with a strong
brass band and it paraded the main streets of
Torquay, draw
ing the crowds to the Royal Public HalL Evangeline' s aide-de
camp, Captain Nicholls, sang a solo for which she played an
accompaniment on the banjo. She was greeted with enthusi
asm. Captain Hopkins then related what had
happened to him
in jail.
Owing to an accident he had lost his left arm. Cries of
"shame" arose when he stated that his wooden arm was taken
from him. Feeling great pain on his left side, he asked the
prison doctor for it, and his request was declined. Later he
found that this treatment had affected his heart (more cries of
'shame'). Well, they had deprived him of his liberty but they
could not deprive him of his Saviour. Great sensation was
evoked when another speaker declared that he had heard of
persons armed with implements he would not name who were
lodged where they could prevent any Torquay Salvationist go
ing to Exeter Prison that night. Evangeline Booth delivered an
address which was described as "lengthy" and "forcible," the
audience frequently breaking into a "high state of enthusiasm."
A rising vote carried a resolution unanimously, and the plat
form was supported among others by the President of the
Y.M.C.A. nor were finances forgotten. Not only was admission
by payment but there was a collection, all on behalf of the
families of the imprisoned men.
Evangeline Booth returned to London where her father
was deeply stirred by her account of things from the firing
line. He was asked to speak on behalf of foreign missions in
St. James' Hall, Piccadilly, and he sent forth his challenge. "We
are/' he said, speaking of Torquay, "all determined to go on,

again and againyes, again and again! Bandsmen are volun
teering from all parts of the west country and when they have
all done their best, if the opposition still goes on, we will
send down officers and men from London."
Among influential journals in those days of small circula
tions was London's evening daily, the Pall Mall Gazette. Hon
oured by the editorship of John Morley, the biographer of
Gladstone for whom was founded the Order of Merit, and,
sensationalised by the flair of William T. Stead, the friend of
William Booth, the Pall Mall was at the height of its prestige
when the Battle of Torquay was raging. The paper sent a
special commissioner to the town who reported:
Rest and placidity are just now the very last things
that a great many people are thinking of at Torquay.
A little Iliad is there going forward; poor men, hum
ble and obscure, are the actors in it and the bards who
commit their toils and triumphs to posterity write in
the rude pages of The War Cry.
The dispatch continued:
Everyone is sorry for the men, and among the can

did assertions of their good work was one in a courteous
chat vouchsafed by a member of the Board's legal firm.
I then gathered that the Board originally acted on
complaints from a class to whom they would naturally

defer but who are not in any way on the procession
route. Those who are on it signed a hasty petition in
large numbers on the Army's side, and against enforcing
the Clause.
Various opinions are quoted in the article, "We should

like to let the thing alone," confessed a confidential constable,
and the chambermaid in the reporter's hotel declared, "It's a
very good band," on which the comment was:
TORQUAY 95
And it certainly is, by comparison. There was at
Torquay the usual man with a grind organ who said on
a placard he was blind, and made you wish he was
deaf. There was the brazen bronchitis of the inevitable
German band. I heard them both and I thought the
mission of theArmy was to raise the taste of the town,
The Army band at Torquay have their heart in their
work. And it is not the least democratic side of the
Army, that ideal of theirs to foster music among the
masses till it becomes an art for the people and by the
people. The class at Torquay amid which, and for which,
the Army works, seems to have grasped that it is fighting
the battle of the masses. That is truth and it is recog
nised by the local press. On the other side are ranged
local 'society' black-hatted respectability, practical Tory
ism, the Army's "betters' generally everything that cries
"Hush" when one asks for a law to prevent wrong,
and "Law and Order'* when one protests against a law
which destroys a right. How will it all end?
"Ten pounds to the man who will quiet her," shouted irate
proprietors of hotels along England's southern seaboard.

Certain released Salvationists appealed to the Home Secre
tary for redress of grievances. They alleged that they
had been
held at Torquay in police cells from three p.m. of one day to
seven a.m. of the next morning with no more than two meals
consisting of "a small bit of bread and cheese" with coffee they
could not drink. Treatment at Exeter Jail was considerate but
they had been detained there illegally for two days
after the
expiration of their sentences. Nothing apparently

was done
about these complaints, and a further setback was encountered
when three members of the Local Board came before the rate
payers for election. All of
them retained their seats and this
victory at the polls was held to be a confirmation of the Board's
proceedings against the Army. The Clerk to the Board wrote

in this sense to General William Booth and expressed the hope
that Salvationists would now comply with the law "that more
peaceful action
will result." New summonses would be post
... to
prevent further contention."
poned pending "steps
The Founder's reply was negative. The fact that the Salvation
that
ists had been let alone for a fortnight, so he argued, proved
"no evil can result, only good" from a continuance o that
policy. The band still played and the Local Board, with two
dissentients, resumed the coercion.
On the following Sunday matters came to a head. The
Army marched to music. It was a nice fine day and there were
crowds of expectant onlookers. In the morning the police
tried to take down some names and that always provoked feel
ing. But the band reached the Fort without serious incident.
Not so in the afternoon.
The Flag was carried by a woman. The band consisted of
reinforcements imported into the town. At Market Corner a
posse of police marching as if for duty broke into units and,
led by a sergeant, fell foul of the procession. The band marched
ahead and reached the Fort. The other Salvationists were in
volved in a riot, some of the "lassies" losing their tambourines.
With considerable tenacity the woman held onto the Flag.
On the following day the prisoners were defended by
counsel sent from London but they were all convicted, and the
Chairman of the Bench exploded into a bitter harangue. He
referred to the Founder of the Army as "Booth" and declared
that "the responsibility for all this rested upon Booth who had
absolutely refused to stop the processions," Addressing a de
fendant called Addison, he said:
\
You have willingly and knowingly broken the law

and willhave to be punished. No doubt you consider
yourself to be a martyr, but I am of the opinion that you
are simply a walking advertisement for getting m6ney
for Booth. There was nothing of civil and religious lib
erty in the matter but it is just a question of getting
money for the Salvation Army.
That evening Evangeline Booth appeared in Torquay for

the second time. She was welcomed by Salvationists from the
districts around and
Torquay by three visiting bands. Fifteen
hundred people paid for admission into the Royal Public Hall,
and there she stood in her simple uniform and a white sash
over her shoulder. A (Jusky faced boy from Ceylon named
Pounchee attracted curiosity. He wore a yellow turban and
skirt and scarlet jersey, and he was introduced
by Captain Eva
TORQUAY 97
as a lieutenant "perfectly saved." She joined in the Army song,
"Bound to Win." Verses were:
The Dawlish Board speak well o us,

But Torquay runs us in,
The L.B. says, on Sabbath Day
To play it is a sin.
And to bring about our fall,
With law do us assail,
But like Silas and St. Paul
We sing and pray in jail.
They grumble at the music,
They grumble at the drum,
They grumble at our marching
To make the people come.
They grumble at our uniform,
And say it's all
display,
But still we are the people
That are bound to win the day.
The allusion to the neighbouring resort, Dawlish, is ex

plained by the fact that its Local Board had written to the
Local Board of Torquay to the effect that, with the same powers
in law, it had been so convinced of the good work the Army
was doing as to allow them to continue their ^marches.
The chairman of the meeting was J. W. Grossley of Man
chester, one of England's leading philanthropists of that day
and a warm friend of the Army. He admitted that the clash
between the Army and the civil authorities was serious. If the
Army was seeking to win a victory for its own sake, he had no
sympathy whatever with the Salvationists. But if they were
using methods to bring men and women to their services who
never went to church, he was heart and soul with them against
all the Local Boards and Governments in the world. Instead
of trampling on the Salvationists by a local Act they should
praise God that there were people who go out and collect
drunkards and outcasts while others met in churches and were
too comfortable to do such work themselves. The matter was
very grave because success for the Local Board would hinder
the work of the Salvationists in other parts of the country.
It was a scene swept by gusts of enthusiasm, indignation
and spiritual aspiration, every word from the platform greeted
by outbursts of endorsement. The central figure on whom all
eyes turned was the young daughter of the General, eager, full
of zest and humour but self-contained. When she rose and said
that she was herself staying in Torquay, there were thunders of
approval. Of her speech we have but a brief report but it was to
the point. She did not blame the ratepayers for the trouble.
The offending clause had been smuggled through without their
it at all. Salvationists were not against
knowing anything about
keeping the laws. On
the contrary they had done as much as
any other Christian Society to uphold the law, to empty prisons,
to take work out of the policemen's hands. They had promised
God that they were ready to go to death to bring sinners to
Him, and they could not go back, therefore, and stop their
work. to be antagonistic to the Local Board
They did not want
but as was for souls they were fighting they could not allow
it
any Local Boards, magistrates or governments to prevent them

carrying out the work by which sinners were reclaimed. The
Army was not responsible for the commotion in the town and
if the Local Board dropped the matter, not another word
would be heard. She told of people who had been converted at
services to which they had been attracted by hearing the drum,
and she was ready, if necessary, to beat the drum herself. For
it was a weapon used by God for bringing poor sinners to Him-
selL She had been asked, "Why don't you stop?" She replied,
"Why should Torquay be deprived of the same privilege as
that enjoyed by Plymouth and nearly every other town in the
country?" They were fighting the battle, not only for Torquay
but for all the land and thousands were praying for them,
When victory came, as come it would, the bells of heaven would
ring.
About this time the situation, as we have seen, was com-,
plicated somewhat by a municipal election. Three members of
the Local Board had to face the ratepayers and all of them
happened to be opponents of the Army. The three were re-
elected and this result was held to be an endorsement of the
prosecutions. But, whatever the pertinence of this talking point,
any idea of surrender by the Army was now at an end, and
incidents suggested a certain bitterness in the air. There was an
application for hire of the Bath Saloons, a large assembly room
TORQUAY 99
owned by the town, for a missionary meeting to be addressed
by Commissioner Booth-Tucker, Evangeline's brother-in-law.
The reply was that the room could be had for the usual fee if
the Army discontinued its processions. A somewhat youthful
looking policeman was taken out of his uniform and told to
march with the Army in plain clothes, so recognising particular
Salvationists. He was somewhat rudely
pushed away and told
to "run along to his mother." The case was
brought into Court
but dismissed. The Local Board decided to order further prose
cutions without comment and the Chairman received a letter:
You can depend that other people will comment

and that inno uncertain terms that long after
. . .
your body lies mouldering and forgotten, the Salvation

Army will be marching along, playing their songs of
Zion more sweet, more loud, and Jesus will be their
theme. Do get saved for it is appointed unto man once
to die and after that the Judgement.
It was noted that the Llanelly Local Board Act,

containing
a clause identical in terms with the Torquay Clause, was
blocked in Parliament by the sitting member.
Evangeline Booth spent her first clear week in Torquay
visiting the soldiers in their homes, praying with them and
cheering them. She then devised and explained a somewhat
novel way of testing a new legal technicality.
On the following Sunday the town was prepared for
eventualities. The two o'clock train to Torquay was crowded
by five hundred passengers hopeful of witnessing whatever was
to happen. The Salvationists met as usual in the street and
Evangeline Booth joined with the local corps in the services.
The spectators numbered many thousands.
Morning and afternoon the strategy adopted came as a
surprise. The Salvationists met as usual at a strategic point in
the street and nobody paid much attention to the fact that they
were carrying two Flags instead of one. Evangeline Booth took
part with the local corps in the preaching and praying, and
at the end of these open air services suddenly the crowd
marched in one direction towards the Fort. The lassies led
with their tambourines.
The band, with Evangeline Booth and her concertina,
stood at attention for several minutes, and then marched in a
direction different from that of the crowd. Two legal points
thus arose. Was a band permitted to march if there was no
procession behind it? And was the sound of a tambourine at
the head of a procession to be certified as music within the
meaning of the law? In the morning, there was no disorder but
in the afternoon a cabman tried to lash his horse through the
Salvationistsand blows were exchanged. Also, roughs brought
in from the neighbourhood and led by two policemen attacked
the band with Evangeline Booth at the head. One casualty
with a bleeding nose was reported. The Fort was packed to the
limit and there was a milling multitude outside. In the police
account the boy from Ceylon with his tom-tom was mentioned
and Evangeline Booth was defined as "a female with a con
certina/'
A curious sidelight on the tangled trouble was the eager
ness of the Local Board and the magistrates to exchange respon
sibilities, and the Board with alacrity thus evaded the legal
puzzles devised by Evangeline Booth. The magistrates decided

that her concertina was a musical instrument and that a band
was a procession.
"You don't propose, I presume, to summon Miss Booth,"
asked the Clerk.
"She wishes to be summoned/' was the answer, and with
out delay she received the now familiar blue paper over which
she had a laugh, saying that she would have it framed. She was
called upon to face the Court on the Thursday.
In the meantime she addressed to the Chairman of the
Local Board a respectful letter in which she asked for a hearing
before the Board that Monday afternoon. She was invited to
attend, and was given a seat immediately in front of the Chair
man. There sat the girl, her face surrounded by bonnet and
bow, of broad riband, tense, calm and determined, while oppo
site was the embodiment of the law, solid, obstinate, angry.
She suggested that a majority of the town favoured the
Army, and the Chairman replied that the recent election had
disposed of the idea. Evangeline Booth insisted that ownership'
of property had a great deal to do with the result of that poll,
and there was a wrangle over the question whether the police
or the Local Board were responsible for the proceedings against
TORQUAY 101
the Army and other legalities.
Very great harm was being done
to the Sunday Schools of the town, so it was
alleged, and Miss
Booth replied,
"I am really very sorry for that. It isn't
my wish. But if the
attraction of the Army is than that of other denomina
stronger
tions, they should start something themselves."
"Do you think it would be proper," she was asked, "for
all the other
places of worship to play music in the streets on
Sunday?"
"Certainly," she replied, "if it brought more honour and
glory to God."
"You are allowed processions six days a week."
"Then why sacrifice Sunday?"
"Some people," said the Chairman, "think that Sunday
should be respected."
"It's an Englishman's boast that in this
country men may
worship God in any way they think best."
"The minority yields to the majority," persisted the Chair
man, "but you do not seem disposed to do that."
"The majority in the world are sinners, and are quite
against goodness, and I'm afraid it's the same in Torquay."
The argument was pointed on both sides, it led to no
settlement and the struggle continued. The joy of the Salva
tionists was atmospheric. They went about
singing,
I'm saved and happy on a Sunday,

Monday and Tuesday too,
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
Saved the whole week through.
And Thursday came when Evangeline Booth faced the

magistrates. It appears that they did not press the charge against
her and, like Portia, she spoke her piece.
"Gentlemen," she said, "you have seen some of these men.
They have been brought before you in this Court. You have
imposed penalties on them for far other offences than playing
a trumpet or beating a drum. You have fined and
imprisoned
them for being drunk and disorderly, for thieving, for other
wrongdoings. What is to be said of you as magistrates when
these men who are known to you as offenders against the law
come back changed, and guilty of noth
sober, orderly, honest,
ing but praising God
with the instruments of music authorised
by the Psalmist and blessed by the Saviour of mankind?"
The prisoners were convicted as usual.
For a third time Evangel ine Booth faced a Sunday in
Torquay. It was a hot and exhausting day and, in the afternoon
at the Fort, she collapsed and had to rest quietly until the eve
ning. Summonses were issued according to the rule and one was
received by the General's daughter. On the Wednesday a fare
well meeting for those ordered to be prosecuted was held in the
Royal Public Hall and amid enthusiastic laughter Evangeline
declared again that she was having her bit of blue paper
framed. A Captain in giving out the announcements stated
that the next meeting would be at the police station, eleven
o'clock sharp. In an address full of cheerful jest amid serious
appeal Miss Booth declared that there would be plenty of
music in heaven, and if there were not she must take her
banjo and introduce it there. They had two bands at Brighton
parading on Sunday and surely Torquay could put up with
one. "I led the band," she went on, "and if anyone gets three
weeks, I ought to have six." If they paid her fine she would be
very angry indeed.
Next day the Police Court was packed to the doors, and
the first name called was Evangeline Booth. She stepped into
the dock.
It was a dock that, at the moment, happened to be famous,
At a place called Babbacombe there had been perpetrated a
particularly brutal murder, and the convicted man, John Lee,
had escaped hanging. Where had stood this abandoned felon,
now appeared "the Angel of the Slums," and after defence by
Counsel she was convicted. But, added the not very courageous
Bench, no penalty would be imposed. Counsel asked the Mag
istrates to state a case for the High Court in London and when
the Magistrates refused he intimated that he would apply for
a mandamus compelling them to take the requested action.
The mandamus was granted.
Things now began to interest the House of Commons.
The massive Henry H. Fowler, Solicitor, was member for
Wolverhampton and the most impressive Methodist layman of
his day. Under Gladstone he became Secretary of State for
TORQUAY 103
India in which capacity he is remembered by a single sentence

uttered in Parliament. "All of us, Mr. Speaker/' he said, "are
members for India." Hedied Viscount Wolverhampton. This
was the pillar of societywho gave notice that if the Home
Secretary did not bring in a bill to repeal Clause 38 of the
Torquay Harbour Bill he would do so at the first opportunity
after Whitsuntide, On that Whitmonday a meeting was held
at the Royal Public Hall and eight of the released Salvationists
appeared in prison costume. Evangeline Booth was most force
ful in her presentation of the Army's case, and perhaps a little
pointed in her banter at the expense of the Local Board. She
couldn't understand why she had not been sent to prison like
the others. "I suppose/' she said, "that if a woman picked a
magistrate's pocket, she would be let off." And the crowd en
joyed it to the full.
But there was a darker side to the drama. A
bandsman
named William Cowell had served his term, and now he had to
face a distress warrant on some of his furniture. In the front
room the sale proceeded by auction. In the kitchen sat a sick
mother and two sick children, with Evangeline Booth helping
out with care and comfort.
The Fowler Bill repealing the coercion clause forbidding
processions on Sunday with music was introduced on June 4.
In view of this circumstance the Local Board suspended its
prosecutions and it was assumed that the processions would be
peaceful. But someone tried to seize a Salvationist's instrument
and there was something of a riot along the route, and the press
continued to be interested. Even the comic papers joined in
the fray, for instance, Funny Folks, which perpetrated a series
of atrocious puns, referring to Torquay as "talkee" and asking
whether the tyranny was 'Tor-bay or not Tor-bay." Amid the
*
confuted sensations that followed each other day by day, Evan

geline Booth was recalled to London. Her farewell to the town
of her warfare was indeed moving. There was nothing in hu
man expression of gratitude and confidence that was withheld
from her by the crowds.
In London there was business to be done and for the
second time in her still young life this girl in her bonnet was
brought to the Palace of Westminster. For the Fowler Bill
at Torquay was bound for a
putting an end to the absurdity
Select Committee and Evangeline Booth was needed as chief
witness. She was coached with the utmost care by the Army's
lawyers. She must answer all questions with a simple "yes" or
"no'' not a word beyond these and as she sat on the green
leather chair facing the semi-circular tribunal of members, she
obeyed orders. It was just "yes" or "no."
Something then happened. The Chairman of the Select
Committee was a lawyer at the height of his fame. He was the
defender of Parnell against charges of complicity in the Phoe
nix Park Murders by the Irish Invincibles. He was the persist
ent upholder of Mrs. Maybrick's innocence against the charge
of poisoning her husband. He was the most dreaded of
all living counsel by witnesses under cross-examination. He
watched the witness in her bonnet and then said quietly,
"Now, my child, come up here and sit with me. Tell me
all about it."
The crowded room was silent as the duet went on the
strong slightly rasping voice of the Queen's Counsel, the clear
tones of the voice that conversed with him so freely. For the
Chairman was Sir Charles Russel, whose honours were in
numerablean Attorney General, a Lord Chief Justice and
Lord of Appeal, an arbiter in the Behring Sea dispute, and a
great gentleman with tenderness in his heart amid the sever
ities, towards whom, for the rest of her life, Evangeline, Booth
cherished something of a daughterly reverence.
The Bill was passed and the Battle of Torquay was won.
The triumph was celebrated in London and within the town
itself. General Booth led the
rejoicings and in the Fort could be
seen in later years two of the summonses framed on the wall
as trophies of victory. Itwas after Torquay that Evangeline
Booth was promoted to be Commissioner of the Salvation
Army.
In 1927 Evangeline Booth happened to be in
England and
she visited Torquay. There was only two hours notice of her
arrival but she was met in the
City Hall by the Mayor and
most of the Town Council. She was taken to the old court room
where she stood in the box to plead the cause of the Army and
saw the dock where Salvationists were sentenced to
prison.
5
SORROWS
William and Catherine Booth those eighteen-eightles

FOR were the golden era of the rapidly extending Salvationist
movement. Every prayer that they breathed into each other's
ears, seemed to be answered by God Himself. Every hope that
they had cherished amid the storms and the floods of unpopu
larity seemed to be in fulfillment. In undisputed leadership
they were together united, and everyone of their eight children
were of one heart, one mind in unquestioning loyalty to the
Flag they had raised. The great idea of a family dedicated as
one domestic unit to the spread of the Gospel had become a
fact.
Increasing numbers of people, hitherto critical and con

temptuous, were won over by the sheer evidence of its victories
to approving the Army. Even royalty began to be gracious. But
beneath the surface o this friendly opinion there was an under
current of whispered scepticism. It was good this crusade of
the Booths very good indeed incredibly good. But might it
not prove to be too good to last? By their obedience to Christ
and His call to give up everything for the Gospel, the Booths
had become indeed, they have never ceased to be fairly det
scribable as unique. But even the Booths were human. They
were subject to the inexorable law of what some people call
natiire and other people call Providence. One by one they
would marry, as their parents had married, and for love. They
would have children of their own for whom they would care as
they had been themselves cared for. They would travel over
land and sea, living for long periods in separation from the
home in England and learning that the absent sometimes feel
as if they were treated as in the wrong. Over the family would
105
steal the shadowy hand of deathfirst one parent and then the
other would be removed from the earthly scene. All of this
would develope a new situation, testing the strength of the
Army and proving that it had come to stay.
The long saga, spiritual and clanlike, begins with the eld
est son of the family, William Bramwell Booth. As a boy he
gave his very being to his father, playing no games with the
other boys, relaxed by no amusements usual to youth and
swept by emotions which sought for sympathy. An over
wrought youth of eighteen years found relief in a first love with
a lady older than himself towards whom in his heart love
allowed no reservations. A day came when his mother asked
him to see her. She broke the news to him that the lady had
decided to marry a clergyman, and Bramwell almost fell from
his chair. He proceeded to play the part of a confirmed bache
lor but his mother was uneasy about him. He wore his clothes
carelessly and with a shabbiness that was somewhat of a trial to
others. "We must find William a wife," wrote that mother to
her daughter, Emma, and as Catherine Booth was addressing
one of her mixed audiences of rich and poor in the West End
of London a young woman slipped into a back seat. She went
home and gave herself to God. "Everything else," she wrote in
her diary, "seemed empty and cold even my old idols, painting
and music." She was Florence Soper, daughter of a doctor in
Plymouth, and with others in her family she joined the Army.
She first met Bramwell at a Holiness Meeting in the White-
chapel Hall. He
was handing round the Communion and his
first words were thus, "Remember tKe Lord's
to his future wife
death till He come."
Against the wishes of her father, Miss Soper accepted
Bramwell Booth's offer of marriage, and the wedding was
celebrated in a manner that attracted notice. For the General
announced that the ceremony would be performed by himself
in the new Congress Hall at Clapton adjoining the Interna
tional Training College. A sum of one shilling was charged for
admission on which terms the number of guests were about six
thousand. There was also a collection and the total proceeds
of the happy occasion amounted to 8,000, the equivalent of
$40,000. The money was devoted to reducing the Army's out
standing liability on the transformed Eagle Tavern to which
SORROWS 107
already reference has been made. So did Bramwell and his

"Florrie" sit side by side in the Congress Hall while blessings
were showered upon them. Like all the romances within the
Booth Family the union was indissoluble. Not one marriage in
this family failed to hold until death did them part, and never
was there a breath or a hint of a breath of anything approach
ing, however remotely, to impropriety.
The Rector of St. Anne's, Limehouse, was the Reverend
Samuel Beddome Charlesworth. His kith and kin were literary
as well as religious, and one of them, Maria Louise Charles-
worth, wrote the widely read story Ministering Children. An
aunt, Mrs. Barclay, was author of a book called The Rosary,
to be distinguished, of course, from the song so named. Mr.
Charlesworth had a daughter Maud who, with his consent,
accompanied Kate, the Marechale, to Paris. The trip was on
the clear understanding with the father that she was to be in
no way associated with the Army as a Salvationist. Unspeakable,
therefore, was Charlesworth's horror when he learned that his
"young and delicate child" had been selling En Avant, the
French War Cry, in front of the Opera House, and had been
ogled and quizzed in the street by the Parisians. He wrote a
pamphlet on the subject for private circulation.
With Ballington Booth, his personal charm, his gifts as an
evangelist, his kindliness and sincerity, Maud Charlesworth
was
fascinated, and her love was returned in full measure. In writ
ing to the Rector, William Booth made no secret of the situa
tion between the young people or of his respect for the girL
Firmly the General stood for her right to join the Army and
marry his son. On his side Charlesworth was no less candid. A
Booth was not good enough for a Charlesworth that was the
long and short of it. Enough that Maud overruled the parental
veto, and once more a wedding in the Army was a triumph for
the uplifted Flag. The date was September 16, 1886 and the
price of admission
was raised to half a crown. Beaming with
delight,William Booth evoked thunders of laughter by leading
Maud onto the platform, kissing her and declaring,
"This is my bride."
Within a few months Ballington and Maud found them
selves in New York, charged with responsibility for the Army
in the United States.
One marriage followed another in rapid succession until
six of the eight children were wed, leaving two to be single.
These were Marian with her sweet disposition and weak health,
and Evangeline Booth. There was no foreboding in any quarter
that the clan, devoted to the Gospel, would fail to hold together
in their Salvationist comradeship. On the contrary, each of the
sons-in-law in turn added Booth to his surname, so enabling his
wife still to use it. Emma became a Booth-Tucker, Lucy a
Booth-Hellberg and Kate, the Marchale, a Itooth-Clibborn. It
is not to be regarded as domestic glorification. The
public
wanted it. The Army wanted it. For the name, Booth, was
magic, and the marriages were not considered to be a diversion
of energies from the Army. They were additions of energy to
the Army. Everything was still working out according to the
hopes and prayers of William and Catherine Bootheverything
save that which was in higher hands even than theirs.
In February 1888, Catherine Booth consulted a leading
physician, Sir James Paget. He told her that a small tumour on
her breast was cancerous, and he advised an immediate opera
tion. The sufferer asked how long she might
expect to live if
the disease was allowed to take its course. After must hesitation
the doctor replied, "From eighteen months to two years." Cath
erine accepted that period of retrieve and went on with her
work as usual. On June 21st, she spoke for the last time at the
City Temple in Holborn, the cathedral of Congregationalism
which later was to vanish during the blitzkreig.
The misery of William Booth was unutterable and his only
relief was a desperate intensity of concentration on the work
of the Army. He happened to be crossing the Thames one
night and he caught sight of homeless men and women wander
ing along the pavement. Next morning Bramwell found him
half dressed, his braces hanging and his hair ruffled. The Chief
of Staff was greeted with the question,
"Do you know that fellows are sleeping on the bridges?
Sleeping all night on stone?"
After hearing a reply, the General burst out with the
order,
4l
Go and do something, Bramwell! Do something!"
Anything would be better than nothing a shed a roof-^
a wall around their bodies, and from this conversation what
SORROWS 109
psychologists would call an escape from mortal sorrow devel
oped the social programme of the Army which has affected so
profoundly the outlook of statesmen.
During those two clouded years the great journalist, Wil
liam T. Stead, assisted William Booth in
presenting the needs
of the "submerged tenth" and here there has been some con
fusion in the mind of the less instructed
public. For there were
other than Salvationist Booths in
Liverpool and they ran not
evangelism but shipping. Charles Booth spent his wealth on a
masterly survey of Life and Labour in London, which became,
volume by volume, a doomsday book of the
under-privileged.
It was cold, factual,
objective. But the title of William Booth's
manifesto was not only In Darkest
England. He added the
words And the Way Out. Something should be done about it.
As the Army developed its schemes of betterment,
suspi
cions developed. Was not William Booth
using the situation
of the poor as a means of
collecting money for his organisation?
He invited, therefore, a Committee of Enquiry, over which'
Lord James of Hereford, a Law Lord, presided.
Evangeline
Booth was busy at Bristol when, unexpectedly, she was sum
moned to London. She was to give evidence.
The Committee took precautions against any attempt to
coach the witness. She was to proceed alone to their room.
They asked her how she raised money and what she did with
it. She told them of the
desperate need of many families known
to the Salvation Army. She collected the
money from those who
were willing and able to give, and then she spent the money on
necessities for such homes. Her statement was
simple even
obvious and it carried conviction. Her father thanked her for
what had helped him to maintain the confidence of the public.
The sixtieth birthday of William Booth was celebrated
on April 10th, 1889. There was a banquet of Salvationists in
Congress Hall and in an adjoining room out of sight lay Cath
erine Booth. She heard the General at his best,
indomitably
humorous as he poked fun at himself, evoking gusts of laughter
as he stated solemnly that he had inherited his mother's
meekness and self-depreciation. Then there appeared walking
through a side door a pale, frail woman, hardly able to steady
herself but smiling and cheerful. The welcome that she received
was also a farewell, and a whole range of affectionate emotion
was expressed in the demonstration that greeted her. She said
one or two sentences, her face alight with the love of a life
time, and insisted that her husband's description of himself
was quite true. Many a time had she bolstered him up to efforts
when he had hesitated. The audience laughed with tears in
their eyes and graciously she left them in the hands of God.
There does not appear to have been any serious attempt
to ease her pain with narcotics. Following the example of the
Saviour on the Cross she insisted on remaining conscious to the
last. During one terrible night she drew from her finger her
wedding ring. She slipped it onto the finger of William Booth,
saying, ''By this token we were united for time, and by it we
are now united for eternity/' For eighteen lonely years William
Booth wore that ring. When he was dying he kissed the ring
and said, "Send it to Eva. Tell her it was on her mother's
finger the Christmas morning she was born." Long and arduous
were the years when she had it on her person, and the golden
circlet travelled with her around the world.
On the ridge of Sydenham Hill there still stood the Crystal
Palace, later to be burned down. It was the only building that
could begin to accommodate the Salvation Army in its grow
ing numbers, and on July 15th, 1890, 50,000 persons en
tered the grounds of whom 20,000 as Evangeline Booth well
remembers managed to crowd the vast glassy domed nave. In
front of the great organ had been erected two immense rollers
around which had been wrapped a long strip of calico. Slowly
the rollers were turned and, word by word, the gathering read
the last message of one whom they had hailed as "the Army
mother."
were admitted to the bedside in
Little groups of officers
her home where
they prayed and sang hymns of triumph, see
ing for themselves what it means when a Salvationist awaits
promotion to glory. As the end drew near the family gathered
and heard her pleading voice, murmuring,
"Love one another, oh, love one another/'
With
the group standing around her bed she turned to
Evangeline Booth and drew her ear close to her lips.
"My Christmas Box!" she whispered, "Don't fret. You'll
follow me! Ill watch for you/'
SORROWS 111
With her lips pressed to the lips of William Booth in a last

long kiss she died.
Then was seen the first of the great public funerals which
revealed what the Salvation Army had become. At Congress
Hall the Army's Mother lay in state with her Bible, her bonnet
and the Flag as her regalia. Fifty thousand persons filed past
her. At the vast Olympia in the West End, there was held a
mass service, and through the streets moved slowly a procession
amid crowds of mourners only seen hitherto at royal pageants.
In a closed carriage sat Evangeline with her sister, Marian, at
her side the much loved but weakly Marian who had been
bidden by her dying mother to "mind the babies of the Lord."
In a swaying carriage, open to the air, William Booth stood for
hours until he was exhausted. "Some may say that I made an
exhibition of myself/' he wrote* "That is what I have been
doing with myself for my Master's sake all my life, and what I
shall do through all eternity for my Master's sake and the
people's sake. And now I am restarted on the same path, the

same work."
The Army without its Mother this was the posi
Salvation
tion that had be
tofaced after the death of Catherine JBooth,
and the organisation had the feeling for a time that it was an
orphan. But it went on from strength to strength, impelled by
a twofold urge, the need of man and the call of God to meet
that need. Year by year the Army achieved a magnitude and
influence of which Catherine Booth, standing like Moses on
the heights of her Pisgah, could only conceive as a promised
land beyond the River Jordan that she was so soon to cross by
faith, dry shod.
The immediate business, day by day, was administrative,
and there grew up a system of Orders and Regulations of which
a complete code was issued that broadly is in force at this
moment. Evangeline Booth's large view of
It is characteristic of
her duty that not for an instant did she demur at any time to
submit to the authority so expressed. She believed that the
mind of her father was divinely guided, and with her father
it had to be one thing or another. Her compliance
with his
decisions was thus absolute, and no issue ever arose between
her and Headquarters in London over this discipline. She went
where she was told to go and she did what she was told to do.
It has to be added that she enforced on others what she accepted
for herself, and it was this unquestioning obedience that led
her away from the England she loved, oversea to a new world
where she was to spend so many years of her mature life.
The origin of the Salvation Army in the United States was
as a seed sown by the wayside. In 1872 a man called James
Jermy migrated to Canada, He belonged to the Christian Mis

sion out of which developed the Army, and it was noticed that
he preached the Gospel to Negroes who addressed him in the
street as "Mr. Jermy, Amen." He made his way to Cleveland
where he came across a small resort entitled: Christian Chapel:
The Poor Have the Gospel Preached Unto Them. He entered
the place and, once more, found a few Negroes. Their preacher
was called James Fackler, and Jermy wrote to William Booth
asking for advice. Booth read the letter and fell on his knees
like King Hezekiah, spreading the communication before the
Lord. Jermy returned to England and the two branches of the
Christian Mission that he left behind him in Cleveland do not
enter further into this narrative.
In October 1878 two soldiers of the Salvation Army left
Coventry ip England and settled in Philadelphia. They were
Amos Shirley aixl his wife, Anna. Amos was employed as fore
man in the Adams silk mill. There was also their daughter,
Eliza, who was a trained officer of the Army with experience
of service at Bishop Auckland under Captain Annie Allsop,
known as "the Gospel Trumpet." The Shirleys started a corps
of the Army in a vacant chair factory which resembled a stable,
and in the birth of the movement at Philadelphia there was
thus a suggestion of a greater event at Bethlehem. The Shirleys
mother and daughter came to be known locally as "the Hal
lelujah Females," and their services were "The Female Min
strel Show." When William Booth read of it in The War Cry,
he wrote in that journal:
WE MUST news has come upon us
col This like a
voice from heaven, and (s) us NO CHOICE.
leave
An "advance" on the United States was immediately

ordered.
The Salvation Army was still having to fight furiously for
SORROWS 113
its very existence on the home front. With the unconcealed
complacence of Harvey Goodwin, Bishop of Carlisle, drunken

ruffians were hired by publicans to assail the corps in that
cathedral city with fists and feet but none of that deterred the
Founder from organising an expedition oversea. It was led by
the Army's first Commissioner, George Railton, with whom
were seven young women officers. The meeting of farewell to
the old country was characterised by a touch of legality, not
without significance in view of what was to come* For the
Army's solicitor read a document in which Railton pledged
himself in these words:
I I will continue to be, and act

hereby agree that
altogether at all times, under the command of the said
William Booth, and to carry out in spirit and to the
letter theOrders and Regulations of the Salvation Army,
and General Orders issued from time to time from
all
the application of which it is not expressly declared that
America shall be exempt.
For Evangeline Booth the ceremonies had a personal in

terest. For among the gallant little company was to be seen none
other than the staunch friend of her childhood, the red-headed
cook. There she was, Emma Westbrook, singing, smiling
through her tears, an instance of the social and spiritual trans
formation of the individual under the roof of the still un
divided Booth family of which, as we have seen, "Polly" was
another example. She had been classified with other domestic
servants as humble within the community. But an atmosphere
not of the world had breathed over her spirit of daily duty,
and hers was now a missionary fervour, genuine as St. Ursula's,
which enabled her to confront a new and quite unfamiliar
world with the claim of Christ's Cross. She had something to
say to others and she said it so that they heeded her words. In
1924 many years later she was promoted to Field Major, and
officers present when Evangeline Booth announced the distinc
tion "nearly pulled the room down" with their cheers. Not
until 1833 did Emma Westbrook end her earthly life at the
age of eighty-five. She had been held in highest esteem at
Syracuse, New York, a city that must have seemed to her to
be
strangely remote from the scenes of
her young womanhood.
On February 14, 1880 the little party set sail for the
United States in the steamship Australia, and at Tilbury there
was an immense crowd to see them off. Three of the sisters car
ried the Flag of the Pennsylvania Corps. The other four carried
the Flag of the New York Corps. William Booth blessed the
latest of Pilgrims and the multitude on the mooring cried,
"America for Jesus."
Railton stood by the bulwark of the vessel and started the
hymn,
Fearless of hell and ghastly death,
I'llbreak through every foe,
The wings of love and arms of faith
Will bear me conqueror through.
weather was atrocious but the crowd lingered. They

The
announced that the Salvation Army had married the Stars and
Stripes and the Union Jack. "Our prayer is," they said, "that
the flags of all nations may soon be gloriously incorporated
with the Blood and Fire/' Brave and reckless words, it may be
said, yet not so far from the facts after alL Where are the flags
of all nations today without what is signified by the Blood and
Fire Flag of the Salvation Army?
For three weejcs they were on the ocean, and a cylinder
burst in the engine room. Some of the passengers devised a
"morality play" in which Railton was presented as "a Jesuit in
disguise/' He took it all in good part. On arrival in New
York
with the seven sisters he knelt at the Battery in New York and
the crowd assumed that a troupe of comedians had landed. The
Salvationists proceeded to the barber shops and asked the
customers if they were saved. Asaloon keeper caught sight of
them. She was a German widow and she cried,
"Salvation! My God! Hans, lock the door/'
From the first it was thus made clear to the world that the
Salvation Army in the United States was to be within an inter
national fellowship beyond itself, inclusive of all countries, all
religions and all races, of which comprehensive movement
William Booth as Founder and General was the challenging
symbol, and that has been the basic principle from which,
during her many years in this important and difficult arena,
SORROWS 115
Evangellne Booth was never for one single instant to swerve by

a hairsbreadth.
Immediately after his marriage Ballington Booth was, as
we have seen, assigned to the American command, and high
were the expectations that his departure from England aroused.
For the United States emerged from the west as an Eldorado
of unimaginable wealth, and the Astors, the Vanderbilts, the
Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Mellons, appeared in a dazzling
procession that outshone the Medicis, the Fuggers and the
Rothschilds. To William Booth, unashamed as a most persist
ent claimant of money for purposes designed to benefit others,
here was a new Field of the Cloth of Gold. What might not the
privately controlled resources of the mighty plutocracy have
achieved for humanity if made available for a trusteeship that
asked nothing for itself save the opportunity to be of service
where service was most desperately neededl Confronted by
human sin and suffering and want William Booth could not
have thought otherwise.
What Ballington had to face, was the whole attitude of
groups in the United States towards Great Britain, her Empire,
her institutions and her memories. There was the twisting of
the lion's tail of which President Cleveland's message on Vene
zuela in 1895 was an illustration. There was the teaching in
schools based on no taxation without representation. As the
man on the spot Ballington was also entitled to his point of
view, and over the increasing range of the Orders and Regula
tions he was worried. Things were happening in London while
he was thousands of miles away.
With his usual jvisdom William Booth decided that he
would himself visit the United States and see for himself how
things were going on. Americans love a great man and know
one when they see him. The Founder's tours, which included
opening Congress with prayer, were a triumphant success and
he left behind him an impression of inspired audacity. But over
his son and daughter-in-law he was, somehow or other, uneasy,
and when he bade them goodbye it was a real separation.
John Wesley had said that nobody has more than one
hundred and fifty good sermons in him. The Methodists thus
had a three year plan according to which their ministers moved
around from place to place, and in the Salvation Army the
General, whoever he may be, had vested in him the authority
to move officers from one command to another throughout the
7 *
world, and officers obtaining orders to "farewell obeyed.

As the year 1895 drew to a close William Booth was abroad
on tour. His Chief of Staff, Bramwell, acting for him in Lon
don, applied the above rule to members of the Booth Family.
There was what has been called a game of musical chairs,
and into Canada,
Evangeline Booth was ordered out of England
a change that affected her whole life for forty years to come.
Herbert Booth was ordered out of Canada and into Australia,
The Booth-Clibborns were ordered out of France and into
were ordered out
Belgium and Holland. The Booth-Hellbergs
of India and into France and Switzerland. Ballington Booth was
ordered out of the United States, and many leading Salva
tionists have held that the order should have been obeyed.
Other views prevailed, however, and on February 29, 1896
Ballington handed in his resignation. With
his wife, Maud,
he left the Army.
The news fell as a blow on the Founder. It was not only a
break in the family round table. It was the first of such breaks,
and William Booth, absent in India, cabled his wishes. They
may be summed up in two now familiar words, "Send Eva/*
instructions that suggest his confidence in a daughter who had
handled more than one difficult situation. For the first time,
therefore, Evangeline Booth endured a voyage across the At-
lantic> always an ordeal with her. For the first time^she set eyes
on the new world and entered a sphere of service widely in
contrast with anything of which, up to that moment,' she had
had experience.
"So they've sent the pet of the family to convince me/'
was the not entirely uncomplimentary remark of a brother to
whom Evangeline had always been a favourite sister, and Evan
geline on her side made no secret of her expectation that the
breach would be healed. Ballington might be assured that a
fine opportunity of service to the Army would be his if he
would stay by the Flag. It was, alas, too late. Ballington was
already organising an alternative body, the Volunteers of Amer
ica, into which Salvationists were invited.
The choice that faced Evangeline Booth was simple and
painful. To whom did she owe allegianceto her heart that
SORROWS 117
loved Ballington or to her duty that
lay with the Army? There
could be but one answer to that
question nor did Evangeline
ever hesitate when the issue was
plain.
The Headquarters of the Army in New York were situ
ated, then as now, on Fourteenth Street, where years later the
present building was to rise in its dignity. Within the old
building Salvationists had gathered at Ballington's invitation
and he held the platform. The hope was that they would
secede from the Army and form a nucleus for the Volunteers.
Evangeline Booth decided to be present at that meeting but
when she walked along Fourteenth Street she found that the
front doors were closed against her. She was in a
quandary, but
not for long. Losing no time she hurried around the block to
Thirteenth Street where, grim and inhospitable, the back of
the building rose above her.
In the manner of a melodrama she ran up the
fire-escape
and, reaching an upper window, she managed to climb through
it.
Suddenly she appeared on the platform and demanded the
right to be heard. Unprepared she spoke as seldom has she
spoken before or since and the crowd of Salvationists, seeing
and hearing her for the first time, listened in wondering amaze
ment. She won them and Ballington left Headquarters never
to return.
That Ballington and his wife, Maud, should have seceded
from the Army in this public manner, caused deep grief within
their family. The founding of the Volunteers of America with.
Ballington as General seemed to be a disaster of the first magni
tude. William Booth returned from his world tour and in the
Crystal Palace a vast audience welcomed him home. Bereaved
by the death of his wife the old man was now stricken by a new
and scarcely less personal misery. He spoke of "darkness and
sorrow." But volleys of enthusiasm, renewed again and again,
broke forth when he added: "My American Army has been
true and loyal."
Not without reason had a father entrusted the fate of
what he held so dear to the courage and wisdom of his
daughter.
As Chief of Staff Bramwell Booth wrote letter after letter,
filled with "eternal love," calling for "three cheers" and de
scribing his sister as "a brick," "a heroine," "a veteran," "a
warrior," and one who would receive her "reward." Only over
one incident was there criticism.
Many were they in New York who sympathised with the
Ballington Booths and, at the moment, were not sorry to be
anti-British. When the Army gathered a crowd at the Cooper
Union, Evangeline Booth, appearing on the platform, was
greeted with a storm o hisses. Denied a hearing, she left the
platform, apparently defeated, but in a minute she was back
again. The objectors were dumbfounded at seeing this erect
young woman, a British subject, carrying on its staff the Flag
of the United States. Allowing its folds to drape themselves
around her uniform, she said to herself in the excitement,
"Hiss that, if you darel"
Then, accompanying herself on the concertina she sang:
Live or die, just as. He pleases,

Where He is I mean to be;
Ifdeath could not frighten Jesus,
Then why should death frighten me?
Over Jordan without fearing,
He will leave me not alone;
On His breast so strong and tender,
He will bear me safely home.
The people were silenced, they listened and they were

won over. The gesture turned the scale.
Evangeline Booth has always shuddered over this incident,
different, as it was, from her idea of dignity on the
platform.
Her brother pointed out that the Flag of the Salvation Army
is not national but international, on which basic
principle
she also has ever insisted. What one does notice in Bramwell's
letters is an excess of language in allusion to the United States
that revealed a somewhat insular attitude.
Evangeline Booth
was thus faced by a problem to which, more than any other
person, she contributed the solution. How was the Salvationist
Movement, orginating in Great Britain, to be spread undivided
and indivisiblethroughout the world and, especially, the
English-speaking world? Every Protestant Church, Anglican,
Methodist, Baptist and the others had passed out of organic
unity to autonomous administration when it went oversea. So
SORROWS 119
had it been with the Bible So was it to be with the
Societies.
Young Men's and Women's Christian Associations, the Boy
Scouts, the Girl Guides and other organisations. It is the pride
of the Salvation Army that it has been the exception to so
general a rule.
For the time being Evangeline Booth, as the "man on
the spot/* was entrusted with plenary powers. But she was
replaced by a Territorial Commander, Booth-Tucker, with his
wife, Emma, of whom we shall hear more in due course.
Sentiment in the United States was now confronted by
a clear cut issue. The Salvationist crusade was held to be justi
fied at once by the need of the individual and society and by
the bold efficiency that offered the remedy for the need. But
was the country to have the crusade run internationally from
London or nationally from New York? Which manner of
evangelism was to be preferred? The Army or the Volunteers?
The issue was keenly debated, not in the council chamber
alone but on the pavement. Army and Volunteers marched the
same routes in the streets, competed for the use of the same
stands and halls, dispensed the same charities and collected
money from the same sympathisers. Feelings on both sides
were often bitterly aroused, these being men and women of
like passions with the rest of us and with each other. But
amid it all the work went on and the public had no reason
to be other than grateful for an exceptional service. What has
here to be stated is time's verdict. The main stream of Salva
tionist effort flowed in ever increasing abundance within the
Army's broadening channel.
6
CANADA
THE year 1896 when Ballington Booth left the Salvation

IN Army, Evangeline Booth had just entered on her thirties*
Into her British career had been crowded a lifetime of effort,
emotion, controversy of every kind, even within her own eager,
insistent yet disciplined self. She had seen her brothers, Bram-
well, Ballington and Herbert, her sisters Emma, Kate and
Lucy, successively married, yet she had remained single. Asked
by the reporters for the reason why, she would say in later
years that she referred all offers to her mother who gave the
answers. But whatever her gaiety, it had cost something. Hers
was not a secluded life nor was she bound by vows of celibacy.
On the contrary, opportunity was ever at the door. Here then
was a perpetual, conscious and deliberate abstention, the full
cost of which was only realised with the passage of time.
One of the Queen's physicians it may have been Sir
James Paget who had pronounced the verdict on her mother-
took a somewhat serious view of her health. He prescribed an
immediate change of scene, the open air treatment as a cor
rective to consumptive tendencies and a
special measure to
counteract weakness of the spine. "If you want to keep her,"
he said, "there is just one thing you can do. Put her on the
back of a horse for an hour or two every day." And William
Booth obeyed orders.
Evangeline was relieved of her British responsibilities,
and that chapter in her life, long, exciting and
picturesque,
was brought to a dose. Her brother, Herbert, had been whisked
off to Australia leaving Canada vacant. It was in the Dominion
that Evangeline Booth started afresh as Field Commissioner.
120
CANADA 121
A picture by Ford Madox Brown, painted in the pre-
Raphaelite manner, reveals the chill at the heart of emigrants
on the wind swept deck of their ship as they watch the skyline
of the mother country fade away in the cold wet mist. There
was nothing of this in the farewell of the Army in London
to Evangeline Booth. In the midst of the
bright lights stood
Regent's Hall which had been her headquarters as Field Com
missioner of "the metropolitan area. Here they had hung her
portrait on the wall, here were the bandsmen whose music
she had selected for four years. Also, in the familiar Congress
Hall during a long evening, prayers and praise and smiles
and tears were showered on one who still looked "the White
Angel of the Slums/' still younger than her years. To her
"precious comrades" she wrote "a few parting words which
you may have to keep, and perhaps sometimes to look at, after
I am gone." It was the letter of "your
God-given leader," and
it overflowed with
proud gratitude for those who had "un
hesitatingly striven to execute my smallest wish in the interests
of the Kingdom." In a communication to be read after her
departure she said:
"Canada is a long way off, but there is no parting in the
Salvation Army. It may be long before you see my face again
but my spirit will be with you, my prayers will ever be around
you, for I shall always plead with God on your behalf,"
On reaching her destination she received a letter signed
by her former bandsmen in which were the words: "You
trusted us."
In train and ship what the Founder called "one of those
ancient steam tubs" they said it with flowers. Many a Salva
tionist, waving good wishes, had the feeling that things would
never be quite the same again, and they were right. For
Evangeline Booth had symbolised the first fine rapture of the
revival as a youth movement, and her departure meant that
the era of resolute maturity had arrived.
The story of the Salvation Army in Canada, as elsewhere,
had been a romance of spontaneous revival. In 1882 two young
men, converted in England under the Flag, had found them
selves, unknown to one another, in London, Ontario. Each of
them supposed that he was the only Salvationist in the Do
minion of Canada. It happened that one evening they attended
a prayer meeting in the same church where they became
acquainted. There and then they decided to start activities
on the lines with which they had been familiar in the old
country, and when in due course they were visited by an
interested commissioner, "Jack" and "Joe" greeted this officer
with a hundred converts. The pioneers proceeded to serve the
Army in other fields but in Canada the work developed until
the number of stations when Evangeline Booth arrived ran
well above three hundred. It was no small enterprise for which
this young Field Commissioner became responsible.
On June llth, 1896 the mission boat William Booth on
Lake Ontario was seen to approach Toronto, the citadel of
Canadian Protestantism. Crowds were awaiting her arrival
and among them was a carriage with white horses. It was
decided that the horses were superfluous and twenty staff of
ficers drew the carriage to the Pavilion, with the new Field
Commissioner standing as "a splendid specimen of sanctified
womanhood." She spoke and what she said was followed by
scenes of reconsecration.
She had little time for the nostalgia that afflicts exiles from
the homeland, and her first occupation was househunting. For
she wrote in one of her letters that she had with her two of
her favourite dogs but apparently this was a picturesque over
statement. Still she and her dogs needed a roof over their heads
and in seeking for it there was that in her which scented a bar
gain from afar. The house must be a mile or two from head
quarters which would allow for daily rides on horseback, in
accordance with the doctor's express orders, it must accom
modate the horse and, other things being equal, the dogs.
No such residence would have been within her slender means,
had it not been for one providential circumstance. A house
had long lain empty. For it was haunted by a, ghost.
Evangeline Booth was not nervous over ghosts and she
offered to rent the house for ten dollars a month. "For how
long?" she was asked. "A year?" She froze. Was the Salvation
Army to pay ten dollars a month and after restoring the good
name of the house in addition give it back in a mere twelve
jnonths? No, no, they must try to do better than that. So the
lease was, for five years.
The Army moved in, and the ghost did not like it. The
dogs started barking in the middle of the night and weird
shadows appeared on the landing o the stairs. However, the
officers on the Field Commissioner's staff subjected the phenom
ena to what scholars in universities call higher criticism and
the ghost became a memory. The house regained its good name
and, when the Salvation Army had done with it, the place
became part of a civic improvement.
It was not a very commodious residence. The building was
old and difficult to heat. There were no proper sanitary arrange
ments, and communications were non-existent. The Field Com
missioner could not afford a telephone and the village near by
could not afford a telegraph office. "I have been sensitive over
spending money on myself," she wrote, and it was with an
apology that, when the time came for leaving Canada, she
handed over what furniture she had to her successor, keeping
''not so much as a chair or a counterpane" only the family
photographs on the walls.

She had already learned to ride, jumping her first hurdles
in the Royal Stables at Buckingham Palace, and as Field Com
missioner in a Dominion where the horsemanship of the
Mounted Police is regarded as a national achievement, she was
noted daily as she appeared in uniform, proceeding back and
forth between her home and Territorial Headquarters at James
and Albeit Streets. She breathed in the fresh air that her lungs
needed* At night she slept in the garden under canvas, so
justifying the wisdom of the medical advice on which her father
had acted.
She was putting in three times the work expected of an
average woman, and by the inexorable law of cause and effect
she had to be assured of those small creature comforts without
which such effort cannot be long maintained. That she was
taken care of by others is the fact. It is also the fact that
the Salvation Army would not be what it is today if she had
not been taken care of. It had to be a rested woman, a self-
prepared woman, a woman dwelling amid the dignities, who
could go forth to meet all the varied prestiges of public life,
dramatic, ecclesiastical, on
political, scientific, literary, artistic,
equal terms, who could hold her own for the Army she repre
sented in a prolific and competitive era.
At the outset the Dominion was startled by an announce-
ment. This still-young Englishwoman who had recently arrived,
was, of course, already interesting. But it was surely courageous
of her to engage the Massey Hall in Toronto the largest
auditorium in the country for an address to the people. Here,
indeed, was a challenge, and Canada liked it. Every seat in the
Massey Hall was filled, and could have been filled twice over.
The Field Commissioner was given the hearing of a lifetime.
About the eloquence of Salvationists there is a quality that
transcends the person speaking. Even the humblest of officers
or soldiers utters a message not his own. He or she stands by
the Flag and the Drum as the envoy plenipotentiary of God in
Christ, the Redeemer of mankind. Such speaking is not rhetor
ical alone. Among the uneducated, it may have been uncouth.
But it has always been sacramental, and the speaker, however
humble, is a priest of the Gospel, upheld by the prayers and
hopes of his comradesstirred to the very depths of his being
by the sure and certain knowledge that his words are given
him to utter as the Bread of Life for the hungry who starve
unless they are fed. Imagine then the abounding sense of op
portunity and responsibility that filled the whole being of
Evangeline Booth to overflowing as she stood in strange soli
tude on the platform of Massey Hall and contemplated the
multitudinous faces around and above and below her. All were
expectant some, of the blessing they needed so desperately
for themselves then, the sprinkling of Salvationists, of the
blessing they sought so earnestly for others. Was it not Carlyle
who somewhere said of Napoleon that his words were half
battles? Words in the Salvation Army have won whole battles
between life and the sin that destroys life.
That speech in the Massey Hall was an occasion when
tvangeline Booth to use one ol her favourite phrases was
"granted liberty." It was not only a success. It was a victory.
From coast to coast of the Dominion the news went forth
that here was one to whom it was a privilege to listen.
Massey
Hall became the centre of crowds that sometimes shut the
Field Commissioner out of her own meetings. The Governor
General of Canada was the Earl of Aberdeen who, with the
redoubtable Lady Aberdeen, was a leader in all Christian enter
prises. Nothing would satisfy them except hearing Evangeline
Booth. They drove in their carriage to find themselves blocked
CANADA 125
by a crowd from the Hall in the distance. A young Canadian

was clinging to the top of a lamppost enjoying the situation.
"Look, mister/' cried this ragged urchin, "it's Miss Booth
in there, and it don't matter who you be, sir, and she says we
must all be saved."
On July 17th, 1900, she wrote to Emma:
. . . about our . we had regular old
late trip . .
Salvation times the chief object of the campaign

. . .
was to visit some very small and hard places where the
getting of a crowd at all implies that you have the best
part of the population out to see you. The people drove
in for miles around to attend the meetings, and what
with the immense audiences, sometimes stretching out
side the canvas, and the almost suffocating heat, the ef
fort was terribly exhausting. We
had souls in nearly
every meeting, though it almost killed us to get them
... I lived those few weeks between the platform and
the roads ...
In the train she was treated as a privileged passenger. She
could not visit the dining car for a cup of coffee without re
ceiving special dishes from the manager free of charge. The
conductor took care of her eye-glasses and other gentlemen
sharpened her pencils, bought her papers and fastened and
unfastened her box. The birth of a puppy en route was among
the auspicious occasions. Over buying a horse she found herself
in some difficulty, the seller knowing that she could not bring
him into court over that kind of a deal. One of her complaints
was the respectability of the crowds that thronged to hear her.
She longed for "some poor old darkened scallywags to talk to
about their sins and give a chance of heaven." At the Massey
Hall, tickets were sold at five and ten cents and the ten-cent
tickets went faster than the five.
One minor worry always annoyed her, There would be a
great meeting and she would have put her whole heart into
pleading with the people, only to find that some chairman-
even a Salvationist officer dismissed the audience without final
appeals to the unsaved. She liked to be assured that souls had
been brought to the penitent form and straightly dealt with.
During her command it seemed as if there was never a
dull moment. It happened that in 1896 the Armenian people
were suffering the massacre which was systematic under the
orders of a Sultan who, moody and suspicious, was denounced
at the time by his generation as Abdul the Damned. Indigna
tion drew an aged Gladstone out of his retirement to deliver
in Liverpool one final blast of his oratory against the perpe
trators and tolerators of such atrocities, and William Booth
as we shall see, in touch with Gladstone over another matter-
ordered a Salvationist Red Cross to provide relief. Into this
mission of mercy Evangeline Booth summoned all in Canada
whom she could reach, so setting forth her never ceasing belief
that the Love of God, revealed in Christ crucified, is interna
tional. Another of her enterprises was the Bureau for Missing
Persons, now familiar in the Army but not so well known in
those days. Attention was given to Indians in Canada and the
inspiration of the Army was felt in the most ancient of British
colonies, Newfoundland, where schools for fisher folk were
started. There were hospitals for women and children, indus-
'
trial homes and immigrant aid stations.

In August 1896 gold was discovered in quantity along
Bonanza Creek in the Yukon and a wild stampede of over-
eager prospectors released the pent-up avarice of mankind. On
April 12th, 1898, Evangeline Booth as Field Commissioner
wrote to her sister, Katie, the Marchale:
\
I cannot tell you what

Klondyke rush has meant
this
to me. The opportunitysuch a tremendous one the
is
chance of a lifetime and we are straining every nerve
to seize it in the full. . . The teeming multitudes
.
mad for gold whom I saw on my recent tour, all heading

for Alaska they are indelibly branded in all their
unsatisfied craving on ray very soul. There are most
awful descriptions of the Godlessness and
desperate
wickedness of Dawson City.
The
expedition of the Salvationists to Dawson City was
arduous indeed. The officers rowed nearly five hundred miles in
boats and their hands became so blistered that
they could
hardly hold the oars. They had to carry loads on their backs.
They arrived on a scene that has often been shown by Holly
wood. One saloon-keeper on Front Street in Dawson
City had
just paid $1,000 in gold dust for a fine Holstein cow to provide
CANADA 127
him with milk. On

a single evening two thousand prospectors
stampeded to Dominion Creek to stake their claims and later
stood in a cue outside the Recorder's office, awaiting the doors
to open in the morning. Amid the turmoil the Salvationists
had fine audiences and when it came to be time for the collec
tion the people poured gold dust into the plate. They cut logs
and rip-sawed the timber with which to build their quarters on
a site which was granted to them free of charge. Their first
convert was a backslider who had gambled and drunk away
about $7,000 during his stay in the Yukon. He enrolled as a
soldier. Through streets clamorous with ribald music floating
out of saloons and boarding houses from mechanical pianos,
marched the little group belonging to the Army, singing songs
of home.
The mind of her brother Bramwell as chief of staff was
negative when she proposed adventures but her father, William
Booth, on hearing about Alaska, said in effect, "Let her go," and
away she went, once, twice, thrice, up rivers where the boat fell
apart, over passes and through forests. At one time the little
party carried arms but they never used them. They were given
special protection by the Dominion's famous police.
On June 1898 she wrote a long letter about Alaska to
1st,
her brother-in-law, Booth-Tucker. She had proceeded to Skag-
way on a steamer called the Tees. The passengers included 200
sheep, with 15 horses and donkeys, but the voyage was delight
ful, for the Pacific Ocean was as quiet as its name suggested,
and the world's worst sailor, much to her own surprise, was able
to pace the deck in comfort. She was attended by whales, seals,
sea-fowl and many kinds of fish while white-headed eagles
swarmed over the rocks and cliffs. The glaciers were intense in
their loveliness and the icebergs were formed for beauty. In the
moonlight it seemed as if the ice breaking from the glaciers
shone on the waters like white angels.
The captain put his vessel under orders from the Field
Commissioner and she was able to visit the Indians in their
own villages. Among them were no fewer than three hundred
Salvationists along the seaboard of British Columbia, many of
whom spoke English while others had to be approached
through an interpreter. She addressed these Indians on the
wharves of canneries where they worked, in barracks that they
had built for themselves with graceful architecture and work
manship, and in the homes of white people. She was much
impressed by their sincerity, intelligence and willingness to
come under the Army's discipline. They wore uniforms that
in many instances they had made for themselves, and the whites
testified to the change wrought in them by conversion, espe
cially in respect of drink. They pleaded for officers to be sent

them and for a life under the Flag.
Evangeline was deeply moved. "When I listened/' she
wrote, "to their hearty singing, 'His blood can make the vilest
clean/ ringing through the woods where I conducted a mid
night meeting in their little barracks, while the Captain held
the boat, I found it difficult to see why we should hold back
any longer from making them our own soldiers/*
Skagway beggared her powers of description. Houses of
rough timber were set amid trees and logs, and with a cosmo
politan population, the town had neither police nor military.
The people were hospitality itself. Two log cabins were pro
vided for the visitors and all kinds of old friends greeted "Miss
Eva." The Salvationists marched to a corner between the Pack
Train Saloon and "Soapy Smith's Place/^ two notorious resorts.
The crowd blocked the streets, climbing onto planks and even
the counter of the bar to catch a glimpse of the Field Com
missioner. She wrote:
Sinners they were the old and hardened the young

tenderfeet just from home and plunging into degrada
tionthe once well-to-do but now debased the once
poor but now rich the intelligent, the sharp and the
brutal there they all were, in western clothes with
big
hats men on horseback boys standing on their
cayuse
a most striking crowd.
They clapped their hands as she started her address and

it ended with them on their knees singing "Home Sweet
Home/' At half-past ten it was still light. "For," she wrote,
"the sun scarcely set behind the mountain at the
right of the
Chikoot Pass when it seemed to rise at the left over the White
Pass Mountain, and the glow of sunset merged into
glorious
and golden
CANADA 129
Soapy Smith, who owned the saloon, was quite a celebrity.

He got his name in Denver where he sold soap at the street
corners. Within certain of the packages were wrapped one, five
and ten dollar bills, and with this inducement he did a roaring
trade. The loaded packages, however, were handed to pur
chasers who were confederates, and with Soapy Smith they
were hunted out of Denver, finding their way to Skagway
.
where, by fair means or foul, they lured prospectors with money

on them into a condition where they could be robbed. Soapy
and his gang numbering some sixty adherents were a terror to
the town. He was a tall dour man and Evangeline watched him
during one of her meetings as he stood listening intently to
what she was saying.
One evening in their camp among the trees the Salvation
istparty was warned that Soapy Smith with five of his body
guard was approaching. It was a case of firearms on both sides.
"Leave him to me," said Evangeline Booth, and she met the
party. Supper was over, she said, but
she would be happy to
give them cups of cocoa. They sat and drank the cocoa and the
Field Commissioner took Soapy Smith aside. "Why don't you
give up this kind of life?" she asked him, and apparently he was
impressed. He said that if he surrendered to the authorities it
would be death, and she spoke to him of a salvation that means
victory over death. Amid the shadows of the forest they prayed
together and Soapy Smith departed.
A citizens* meeting was held on a long wharf at Skagway.
It was decided to clean out Soapy Smith and his gang. Soapy
appeared in force and there was shooting on both sides. The

town surveyor, Frank Reid, standing to guard the entrance to
the wharf, was killed, which was murder, and Soapy was badly
wounded. He was operated on by the surgeon in hope that he
might live to be hung. But he cheated the gallows. Five years
later someone happened to visit his grave. It was fragrant with
fresh flowers. A strange man, he had been, and loved, it would
seem, by somebody. For the Salvation Army he always had had
a fondness. He told Evangeline Booth that his mother had
taken him to its meetings as a little boy, and he had been
eager to go because they allowed him to clap his hands.
The Field Commissioner wrote:
It has meant a heap of heavenly ingenuity to get
money and men for the expedition sufficient of the
one and suitable people for the other. But God has
helped us, and the little party which bade farewell at
the Massey Hall on Thursday night are, I think, equal
to their task, and well equipped for their mission. Six
men officers and two nurses make up the pioneers. I go
with them as far as Vancouver.
Dawson City swelled like a mushroom and like a mush
room collapsed. To plunge into the maelstrom of vice and
debauchery was not a mere adventure into the spectacular. It
was answering a claim of honour. Along streets deep in mud
and swept by the roar of voices were heard songs of sanity
the music of homes on earth and heaven ahead lilting melodies
that recalled the long forgotten days when a mother, a father
meant something to restless sons and daughters. It was a witness
to the world that over the ever changing kaleidoscope of hu
man affairs the Cross of Christ throws its inescapable shadow.
In 1902 Evangeline Booth devoted ten weeks to a western
tout of the Dominion. She was accompanied by a bodyguard
consisting of "Knights of the Red Cross" and they travelled
more than 8,000 miles. The attendance at ninety indoor meet
ings exceeded 30,000 this in sparsely populated regions and
the number of those who knelt at the penitent form was three
hundred and fifty.
There were three railway accidents, the first of them dan
gerous. The Salvationist train crashed clean through a freight
train standing athwart the track, the slow
speed of the locomo
tive saving the cars from in
telescoping."Gipsy," Evangeline's
separable companion for over sixty years, was in charge of the
commissariat and she supplied nice meals at small
expense.
Several of the Red Knights put on ten to fifteen
pounds weight
-during the tour! In a contemporary account of the Field Com
missioner we read that "she was certainly at her best":
Earnest in her pleadings and eloquent in

delivery,
Miss Booth throws her whole soul into her work. With
a charming presence and a
personality almost inde
scribable, she holds her hearers spellbound, and at the
close of her remarks there exists a
feeling of regret that
she has finished.
CANADA 131
The music was much appreciated and, not least, Evan-

geline Booth's playing on the harp. This time the voyage from
Vancouver to Skagway was on the S. S. Princess Mary, a much
more commodious vessel than the S. S. Tees of four years
earlier. The trip took three days instead of six and the party
visited the grave of Soapy Smith and also the monument
erected to Reid "who gave his life for the honour of Skagway/'
as the epitaph has it.
There were found to be many converted Salvationists
among the Alaskan Indians. They wore the uniform and they
lived the life. At Skagway a man called Jim Hansen was saved
and immediately he confessed to a double murder which had
baffled the police. Nearly a hundred Indians of the Thlinget
tribe were in the Army, and one of them owned the famous
Stah-Wahn Knife which, for two hundred years, had been kept
in the family for lethal purposes. It had been sold as a curiosity.
Indian women gave the Field Commissioner one of their much
admired spruce-root baskets which are the result of weeks of
patient weaving.
It was decided not to proceed to Dawson City, and perhaps
it was as well. For, as subsequent reports showed, the party
would have included a case of smallpox and the Field Com
missioner would have found herself in quarantine. Great cour
tesy was shown to the party by -the Governor whose car with
mounted escort, like his residence, was at Evangeline Booth's
service. One little compliment was the gift of a gold nugget for
the Army. She sent such a little memento to one of her nephews
in London,
It was from her nearest and, perhaps, the dearest of her
-bxojthers, Herbert, that Evangeline Booth took over

the Ca
nadian Command. About the splendid aplomb of Herbert
Booth as a spiritual leader there has never been any doubt.
He preached the Gospel with his whole heart and soul. He
composed music. He overflowed with ideas and coined phrases.
He was electric with initiative.
But he sometimes upset people and in Canada he had had
his tiffs and his tantrums. His successor had not been at her
desk a day before it was apparent that under her leadership
nothing of this kind would be allowed to happen. Happy, we
are told, is the country that has no history, and this was the
good fortune of Canada under Evangeline Booth. There were
sensations that got into the press. There was plenty of publicity.
But it was backed up by solid, smooth and successful adminis
tration. Local corps were started. Older corps were built up.
Mortgages were reduced. When the Dominion was visited by
the Founder, William Booth, the occasion was triumphal.
With disciplined regularity the Field Commissioner re
ported to International Headquarters in London, and in 1902
her account of things included her tours in the west. As Chief
of Staff, Bramwell Booth acknowledged this information in a
letter dated December 22nd of that year. He wrote:
I note you say with reference

all to Officers Coun
cils- How good God has been to you! How
mighty are
the results of these gatherings we shall never know. I
hope the Staff will follow them up.
I am more and more convinced that the greatest
possible benefactor ... is the firm and patient District

Officer who goes round steadily, like the seasons, and
inexorably insists upon certain things being systemat
ically carried out, who takes no excuse, who knows no
man after the flesh, who though he has a heart as tender
as a mother's, has a will like iron, and a hand that can
strike hard when it ought to strike, and a tongue given
to reproof as well as praise. This is the man who is the
real blessing and the true friend and the genuine
leader. You and I make great impressions, no doubt, in
our special gatherings, but then ours is a sort of trop
ical rain which pours down floods
upon the thirsty
ground, and while it is very valuable and very useful,
it is nothing Hke so
important as the frequent and con
stant shower which comes again and again and makes
the harvest really possible.
He continues:
I am very much exercised

upon the whole question
of the Field Officer's religion. I am
persuaded that many
of the Officers are trying to do the Salvation
Army with
out salvation at any rate, with very little;
trying to
exemplify the principles of the most wonderful re-
CANADA 133
ligious organisation that the world has ever seen with

a formal or a legal
ve^JitdfijcsHgon. They get into
way of doingTEmgs and go on doing them without any
results or with very little results because the life and
heat, and fire and passion are burned out or almost out.
The District Officers, I am afraid, in many cases
go round and do everything for them except light the
fire; they inspect and explore and advise, cheer them
up, galvanise the thing, but what they do not do is to
sit down with the officer and clear
away his troubles,
ferret out his backslidings and kindle again the holy
zeal.
Now I am speaking, of course,generally, and I have
no doubt that of your Officers are very much more
many
religious than those in the United States and than many
in England; but this is a very real danger, and I am sure
you will look out for it.
It was with exemplary patience that, on the whole, Evan-

geline Booth read the letters of this kind which she received.
Her confidence was that the officers of the Army, though occa
sionally needing what she called a "jack up," did not deserve
the sweeping condemnations bestowed upon them, and forty-
five years of heroic piety throughout the world has justified
her more sympathetic point of view. "Who is he that condemn-
eth? It is God
that justifies."
The Field Commissioner, when leaving the Dominion,
reduced her farewells to an absolute minimum. So self-effacing
was her attitude that, in writing to International Headquarters
in London, she went so far as to apologise for references in the
press which, a contrast to the "nasty cuts and cruel criticisms'*
of other years, approved of her Field Commissionship. Any
thing of that kind in the newspapers was, so she pleaded, "one
for the Army."
The aftermath to her Canadian command was something
of a sorrow to her sensitive spirit, and in a letter dated August
14th, 1928, many years later, she disclosed a somewhat surpris
ing sitxiation:
Although I spent nine years in Canada nine years
of the most arduous toils in my experience not in twen-
134 GENERAL EVANGELJNE BOOTH
ty-four years have I been permitted to cross the bor
der to visit my command, although repeated re
old
quests from different Commissioners and leading officers
have been made for me. I visited Toronto for one
Sunday and that solely upon my own account.
It was, perhaps, unfortunate that she should have been
treated in this way. Her obedient loyalty to International Head
quarters did not waver for an instant but it was no assistance
to her legitimate peace of mind that she should be put on the
defensive.
7
CRISIS
all," wrote Thomas

a Kempis in his Imitation
KNOW of Christ, "and you will
pardon all/* Nobody, I think,
could read the private correspondence of the Booths and
escape
from a sense of profound sympathy with all of these devoted
people who, highly strung in their nervous temperament and
by no means robust in health, were straining resources of
energy to the limit. "The great friend of the Booth family is
sleep," wrote Bramwell to Evangeline. But they allowed them
selves little rest or time to think.
A
fact has now to be mentioned that has been too little
noticed. The Booths played their part in an era of revival. An
evangelist as impressive in his day as William Booth was
Dwight L. Moody of New England to whose worldwide min
istry was attributed the ingathering of a million souls. He was
accompanied by Ira D. Sankey, the singer, whose melodies
were for a time as popular as the songs of Stephen Collins
Foster himself. One of Evangeline Booth's treasures has been
the American organ or harmonium which accompanied Moody
and Sankey on their tours. There it has stood for many years
in her home at Hartsdale, New York, and one thinks of
Sankey's fingers touching the keys at that memorable moment
when, called on for a solo, he improvised a setting of the great
est of those gospel hymns:
There were ninety and nine that safely lay

In the shelter of the fold
135
Curious that his fingerprints should have been mingled
with Evangeline Booth's as she composed her hymns at that
instrument, and especially The World for God, with its 1
give my heart, I'll do my part which chorus has been sung in
palaces and by lepers and criminal tribesmen of tropical India
and throughout the world.
The distinction between Dwight L. Moody and William
Booth, therefore, was no matter of rivalry. They were comrades
in the same struggle. But they had diverse views of what they
considered to be God's will for them to obey. Moody held him
self to be an evangelist and nothing more than that. He left
the convert to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the fellow
ship of his Church, whatever it might be. Booth, on the other
hand, was convinced that he must follow up the conversion
with a fellowship into which the convert might be welcomed
and set to work. The problems that Booth had to face were
thus far more complex and continuous than any that were rec
ognised by Moody. Moody did not attempt to found a Salva
tion Army.
The influence of Moody in the universities and among the
governing classes of England was, despite his pronounced
Yankee accent, remarkable, and two notable men illustrate
this whole situation. One of them bore the name of the Devon
ian seadog, Sir Richard Grenville to give the old spelling
whose on The Revenge was celebrated by Tennyson in
fight
a stirring poem, Grenfell dropped into one of Moody *s meet
ings and came out of it a changed man. He is honoured as
Grenfell of Labrador. The second man was also born into
England's bureaucratic purple. His grandfather had been a
chairman of the East India Company and, like Grenfell, he
surrendered to the call under Moody. Frederick St. George
da Latour Tucker joined the Salvation Army.
Tucker of India Saint and Sadhu, as F. E. McKenzie
called him wasa man of classical scholarship. Like Lawrence
of Arabia he could read Greek and write it as his mother
tongue. It was by these attainments, to which law must be
added, that he won a place in the Indian Civil Service where
he was appointed Judge. The Government of India did not
like him preaching the Gospel from a soapbox and he resigned
his career. Barefoot, he married Emma in London and re-
CRISIS 137
turned to India to wear native clothes, eat native food and live
in native quarters. The Government was no better pleased but
Tucker went ahead with his absurd little processions, as they
seemed to be, and one day the authorities met him in the
street "in the name of Her Majesty, the Queen of England and
Empress of India." Tucker replied "in the name of the King
of Kings and Lord of Lords/* He was arrested and, versed in
the law, he defended himself. His plea in court was unanswer
able, for he appealed to Queen Victoria herself. What was it
that she had proclaimed to the Princes and Peoples of India
when she annexed the country after the Mutiny? Tucker
recited the words:
We declare it to be our Royal Will and Pleasure

that none be in any wise favoured, none molested, or
disquieted, by reason of their religious faith or ob
servances, but that all alike enjoy the equal and impar
tial protection of the Law; and we do strictly charge
and enjoin all those who may be in authority under
us, that they abstain from all interference with the re
ligious belief or worship of any of our subjects, on
pain of our highest displeasure.
If that applied to Sikhs and Moslems and Hindus parading

the streets, why did it not apply to the Salvation Army? The
Indian Peoples backed up the plea and the Salvation Army
was placed in the position of a religion persecuted by the
British Raj. In later years Evangeline Booth visited the enter
prise and with eloquent appreciation told the western world
of what was going on.
For thirty years after her appointment as Field Commis
sioner of Canada she was a close friend of Booth-Tucker. On
all the major issues that arose the two of them both among the
founders under William Booth of the Army saw eye to eye.
In the critical year, 1902, as it opened, William Booth
could survey with satisfaction the progress of the great move
ment which was developing throughout the world. All of his
children and those they had married were engaged in making
known the love of God in Christ; all save Ballington and Maud
were following up their evangelism within the Salvation Army,
and even the Volunteers of America, started by Ballington,,
was tributary by imitation to the father's audacious conception
of a militant order of married and unmarried men and woiften
pledged to win a sinful world for God. The troubles within the
Salvationist movement were a difficulty but they were the
agonies of men and women who were winning not losing the
battle.
Over the evangelism of Herbert Booth there have never
been two opinions. The man was afire for souls- It was over
organisation only that he became restive. His father wrote to
him at great length and with great ability. The whole influence
of his sister, Evangeline, was on the side of patience sticking
it outand deep was her sorrow when impatience got the better
of him. For in 1902 Herbert Booth seceded from the Army
and went forth on his own. A second of the Founder's sons
was "estranged/* and there was worse to be faced. Kate Booth,
the Marechale, with her record of daring in France, was among
the heroines of the cause. She was married to a man of great
physical stature, Arthur Sydney Booth-Clibborn, whose posi
tion in the Army was so completely accepted that he was among
those selected to speak at the funeral of Evangeline's mother.
Booth-Clibborn had Quaker blood in his veins and during
the South African War he became an ardent pacifist. His wife
the Marechale, with her large family and her environment in
Belgium and Holland, wrote as a critic of Great Britain and
was known as a "pro-Boer." Thus did the Booth-Clibborns
drift from the obedience required in the Army. Booth-Glibborn
himself demanded tfre right to proclaim a "larger gospel" that
included divine healing on which subject William Booth
wrote an able pronouncement and the immediate coming of
Christ in person. One thing led to another and Booth-Clibborn
was drawn under the spell of a prophet of Scottish origin,
Dowie, who posed as a second John the Baptist, reincarnation
of Elijah. The "weathercock" as Booth-Tucker
incisively de
scribed his brother-in-law, wrote a letter to Dowie,
professing
fealty to the latest forerunner, and Dowie gleefully published
the communication in his paper. It cannot be said of Head
quarters in London that they were harsh in their attitude
towards their wayward mystic. For six months they tried to
save^things. But without success. The wife in Catherine
Booth-'Clibborn with her exuberant and characteristic hand-
CRISIS 139
writing overcame the eldest daughter and sister. She followed

her adored husband "a mighty man of God specially called
and ably qualified" as she described him out of the Army.
To Bramwell Booth the whole of this was sheer agony.
On August 16th, 1902 he wrote to his sister, Evangeline:
It is awful, and so intensely do I feel the wick-
edness of it and the ruin it will bring to souls what
do you think of the ex-lieutenant in Paris who joined
them and then fell into lying and stealing and hanged
himself that I have no longer any softness towards
them.
It was this intensity of zeal that explained his appearance

of severity.
Surges of rumour swept over the troubled scene and as to
one fairy tale Evangeline Booth was emphatic. On August 4th,
1902, she wrote to her sister, Emma, as follows:
I do not know how Ballington came to think I

was in great sorrow and leaving the Army. I am not
in any sorrow, and I never more believed in the Army
than today. I am not in it because I think it is the
easiest place for serving God and iny fellows. I do not
expect there will not be any trials or uphill climbing.
But I am in the Army because I believe it is the greatest
movement in the world for lifting men and women
out of their sorrows and sin, and seeing how it is doing
this in greater numbers every day, love it better every
day.
The verdict of William Booth as Founder of the Army was

massive and final. He wrote:
The Salvation Army does not belong to the Booth

family. It belongs to the Salvation Army. S6 long as
the Booth family are good Salvationists^ and worthy of
commands, they shall have them, but only if they are.
I am not the General of a family. I am the General of
the Salvation Army.
In North America the full force of the troubles was felt

at hand. In New York alone Herbert Booth addressed a
first
number of audiences totalling 40,000. Much to Evangeline
Booth's indignation, the Volunteers of America on the side
walks fought the Salvationists, chorus to chorus and kettle to
kettle. And there were domestic trials. Lucy was a mother
mourning the loss of two young children and in desperate
anxiety over her husband, Booth-Hellberg, a slowly dying man.
Emma's little baby was called after her aunt, Evangeline, and
to the anguish of the sisters the infant faded put. We see
Evangeline in New York conducting a funeral service over the
open coffin of her peacefully sleeping namesake.
Within the scene brooded a strange apprehension that
nobody could explain. On September 25, 1903, William Booth
wrote from England to his daughter, Emma. "I cannot help
an awkward feeling," he said, "that you are not well, or that
there is something unpleasant happening at (American) Head
quarters." A month later Evangeline wrote to her sister,
Emma:
Toronto Headquarters,
October 20, 1903.
Precious Sister,
Since writing you last, I have dreamed of you
every night. Night before last I had a most dreadful
nightmare, and screamed your name at the top of my
voice, several times. I could not stop my heart from
beating furiously for an hour. I thought I was calling
to you to come and rescue me from a terrible trouble,
and could not make you hear. Do take care of yourself.
I know you are working too hard and it would be a
great disappointment and calamity for you to go down

illfor the winter. Do be careful, darling.
Yours in everlasting affection,
Eva.
Ona morning one week later Booth-Tucker went to the

Pennsylvania Station, Chicago where he was to meet his wife
due from the West. Two Salvationist officers hurried him into
a cab and at headquarters he learned that Emma was dead. He
was prostrated by the shock.
About the story of what had happened there is a kind of
CRISIS 141
fatalism. Emma had arranged to reach

Chicago by way of St.
Louis but at the last moment
the plan was changed and she
came from Amity direct by the night train from Santa F6. A
little group of Salvationists saw her onto the train with fervent
gratitude and goodwill, and it was past midnighL She had to
face conferences for which she wished to be prepared, and it
was recalled how she would begin such proceedings by asking,
"Now who is going to empty their bucket first?" Hence, despite
programme with Colonel Hol
the late hour, she talked over her
land who was attending her. There was the engine pulling
the train, then a baggage car, and afterwards a "dead-head"
tourist sleeping car which was unoccupied by passengers. Here
the Consul and Holland found a quiet nook for their talk.
The porter seemed to be uneasy and twice he told the
Consul that her berth had been made up, but she was apt to
be a law unto herself and went on discussing the papers. Rum
bling below them was a faulty axle which, at a wayside station,
jumped the facing points, derailed the car and threw it against
a water-tank. Holland was picked up unconscious and badly
injured. The Consul received a blow on the head which she
only survived for a couple of hours.
Death Army is "promotion to Glory," and
in the Salvation
a funeral celebration of victory. Salvationists gather as a
is
family, sing,, pray and praise God for His goodness to man.
Tears are freely shed, hearts are sad with sorrow, but the note
is a triumphant Hallelujah* It was the Salvation Army in New
York that, acting for Booth-Tucker, arranged such a funeral
for his Emma, and Evangeline Booth, arrived from Canada,
approved the order of service.
There was, however, a tragedy of pathos in the ceremony.
The Founder and father of the Booths in London was a man
well on in his seventies and a widower, who, to use Booth-
Tucker's word, was "withered" by his latest bereavement, and
with him were the Bramwell Booths scarcely less stricken. In
the United States the family was split asunder. Evangeline, her
sister Marian and Booth-Tucker were within the Army. Bal-
lington, Herbert and Kate, the Marechale, were outside, and

the bitterness of the schism bitterness rather than enmity the
tearing asunder of heart strings involved all of them in the
pain of wounded affection.
Every seat in the Carnegie Hall was taken. The procession
was forming. Outside had gathered a crowd of many thousands
seeking admittance. The flowers and the ribands and the ban
ners wre over-shadowing the open casket where lay the Consul
in uniform, a worn Bible at her side. It had been her mother's
Bible and it had escaped injury during the accident. In the
ante-room were gathered the leaders who were to conduct the
service.
Into their midst stepped a man hardly able to control his
emotions. It was Evangeline's favourite brother, Herbert. With
in a few hours he was to print his grievance for all to read.
Why had he and Ballington received no invitation to a speaking
part in the promotion to Glory? Did not their father, the
Founder, himself take pride in the fact that they were preach
ing the Gospel? Booth-Tucker, expecting a gesture of con
dolence was overcome by surprise. He replied that not one word
should be said by Herbert over his wife's beloved remains, and
then it was that Evangeline Booth rose to the occasion.
"But, Herbert/* she asked quietly, "what do you intend to
say?"
He was taken aback, but Evangeline was not to be denied.
What did he intend to say? The answer, though reluctant, was
explicit when it came. He would represent the estranged mem
bers of the family. What Evangeline suffered at that moment,
need not be emphasised this dearest of brothers in such un
controllable distress, the Army to be exhibited before the
world. With an authority that even Herbert had to recognise
she declined to allow the differences to be -mentioned across
their sister's peaceful countenance, and she led Herbert onto
the platform, seating him at her side. He pleaded with her to
let him utter a few words of prayer. She restrained him from
any such idea. That she loved him through it all, that he loved
her, was apparent when years later his turn came to be pro
moted to Glory. HertTert died in Evangeline's arms.
Seventy-five thousand persons passed the open casket in
the Hall. The New York Daily News had this:
It is said that the funeralwas the largest held in
the city for a woman, and that the crowd which fol-
lowed her to the grave was the largest which ever at
tended any public funeral except that of General Grant.
CRISIS 143
The bands played a inarch composed by Booth-Tucker,

and perhaps the most appealing figure on that day was a child
of twelve years old. She faced the crowds and in her light clear
voice she said:
OLord, we thank Thee that our mother died upon
the battlefield. She did not die at home. But there upon
the prairie she left her sword. O
Lord, don't allow us
to let it lie there, but help us to pick it up and go for
ward, so that when we die, You may say to us, "Well
done!" Don't let us live so that You will have to say
we have just done ordinarily, or middling, but let us
live so that you will say, "Well done! You have done
the best that could be done! "as you said to our precious
Mama.
Itwas little Motee, daughter of Emma, who said those
simple words Motee who was to be the wife of Commissioner
Hugh Sladen.
On the way to Woodlawn Cemetery, Evangeline Booth
had a touch of brain fever. It was, perhaps, no wonder. For the
consummation of Emma's life was the inaugural of her own,
thirty years of service as Commander in the United States. The
death of one sister meant a new life of vast opportunity for
the other.
Out of the numerous letters that Emma wrote to her sister
one passage of overflowing affection canj.e as a draught of
encouragement:
Eva, Eva, best treasure and tender guardian,
my
don't, oh don't lose heart. Beautiful service behind you
rises to bless you now and to assure of greater blessing
to come! Not only London but the whole world is to be
your field, and your chastened spirit, taught and bap
tised in the furnace of affliction, is to come forth for
the inspiring and blessing of tens of thousands.
Life isn't all dark and strange and graceless! Days
aren't all long and lonely. God is a father with a tenderer
heart than any who follow Him! And it arranges
Canaans as well as wildernesses, and thinks of birds and
flowers and sunshine as well as greater things. You are
consecrated to Him, seeking life only for His glory,
and He will therefore walk it with you, bringing all His
richest graces and joy to make you glad!
8
UNITED STATES
story of Evangeline Booth up to the day she left

THE
States,
Canada has been simple. With her arrival in the United
she had, however, to face a sequence of concurrent per
plexities, and how to tell the tale is something of a problem.
We proceed on three parallel lines, each of which
shall
continuities, it will be realised, affected the others. First, there
will be her thirty years of Command in the United States,
embracing one half of her active service in the Army. Sec

ondly; there will be the work of the Salvation Army during
World War I among the United States armed forces, especially
in France. Thirdly, there will be the
long crisis that led up to
the calling of the High Council and a change in the General
ship.
Topresent a blow by blow account of the years, 1904-
1934, when Evangeline Booth was Commander in New York, is
impossible. The drives and the motorcades, the openings and
enlargements of institutions 1500 in the first 20 years the
gifts and bequests that helped to finance them, the changes in
personnel, the cases of discipline that once or twice arose, over
flow the archives with a flood of detail. What here is
attempted,
will be an over-all survey of what in
retrospect is seen to have
been a great achievement.
Evangeline Booth succeeded Booth-Tucker, too stricken
by sorrow to continue his command, and, in effect, his beloved
wife, Emma. It was from "Fritz" that she received her title,
Commander, and during the months of "farewell" and "wel
come" the brother and sister-in-law were drawn close into
144
UNITED STATES 145
mutual sympathy. Throughout the long difficult years that lay

ahead Booth-Tucker stood like a rock behind Evangeline. In
deed, of the two, she was on the whole the restraining influence
on opinion and emotion.
That Evangeline Booth won and enjoyed acclaim in her
handling of ever-increasing responsibilities is quite true. But
hers was no bed of roses and from the outset she realised the
need for farsighted wisdom. The enthusiastic champion of an
inspiring cause, as she had been, was still enthusiastic, still
inspired. But there was revealed in her a statesmanship, a cau
tion, a persistence, that some of her admirers had not fully
appreciated.
In 1904 the Army held one of those periodic International
Congresses which were made possible by the long peace of the
world since Waterloo, and were attended by Salvationists in
Great Britain and from overseas. There were meetings, confer
ences, parades, interviews, and one detail of the business, as it
was regarded, does not seem to appear in the correspondence
here reviewed. It was the signature in 1904 of the Deed Poll
providing for the removal of an unsuitable General, of which
document we shall hear more in due course. Few officers gave
that matter a second thought.
In 1904 William Booth was seventy-five years old. Every
where he was wanted for public appearances. His eldest son,
Bramwell, therefore, became more than a Chief of Staff to his
father. His was the position of Acting-General, with executive
powers not easy to dispute, and it was his desire to save his
father from ,over-exertion. When, therefore, Evangeline was at
the International Congress it was her wish to join Booth-
Tucker in a day or two of quiet discussion with Bramwell
Booth over the whole question of the Army's position in the
United States. It happened that the health of Lucy's husband,
Booth-Hellberg, was giving great anxiety to a devoted wife,
and what with one thing and another, the time was not found
for a conference obviously of vital importance. Bramwell in his
letter was quite frank about it and accepted the responsibility.
He would try to do better next time.
As she was leaving England for the United States an
incident occurred which in itself was of no great importance.
There had been some change in the personnel serving William
Booth in his home, and while she was driving in a cab with
Bramwell to the railway station, Evangeline asked her usual
question "Why?" The sequel to this hurried and incidental
good-bye was a long letter from the Chief of Staff raising the
issue of "confidence." Could it be called confidence if one of
the "parties wanted to have reasons for the decisions of the
other? The task thathad been laid on Evangeline Booth was
arduous and she felt thatshe was being put on her guard. Not
that all the letters were of this kind. Much that Bramwell as an
older brother said to one whom he dearly loved, was good sound
sense. She should look over the ground before arriving at
decisions. She should be more than careful of her health. And
so on.
From her father she received many letters abounding in
solicitude and encouragement. For her first eight years in the
United States correspondence continued and it was full of
this
humour. He would chaff her on the magnificence of her sta
tionery and ask her humbly to forgive his own modest note-
paper. He would report on the behaviour of his stylographic
pens and he would ordain diets for his daughter which, he
was sure, would ameliorate her ailments. Always her Hather
made her feel that he was whole-heartedly on her side. One
day she was astonished to see a primitive automobile parked
at her door step. For years she had been a strap-hanger and she
needed easier transportation. But she felt that she must refer
the matter to the Chief of Staff who answered with a quick no.
Automobile forbidden. She put the case to her father who said
at once, "Accept it and don't break your neck." After all, it
was equipment for work that had to be done.
On the possibilities of the Salvation Army in the United
States William Booth had based high hopes. For in his advanc
ing years he was seeing visions and dreaming dreams. Why not
an international university? Why not worldwide emigration
of Salvationists to lands of opportunity and especially Rhodesia?
FOJ- all of this money was neededbig money and in the
United States it seemed as if the big money was available. What
an outlet for surplus millions an outlet where the wealth
would be so administered as to do nothing but good. But
unfortunately it did not always work out that way. Great foun
dations were inaugurated that were independent of the Salva-
UNITED STATES 147
tlon Army and its projects, to which situation the minds of
eager crusaders had to be adjusted.

There was also the inescapable bitterness and sorrow
within the Founder's family itself. In one way or another,
Ballington, Emma, Kate and Herbert were lost to the Army,
whether by death or secession, and in every case the United
States was involved. Ballington was there with his Volunteers.
Emma lay there in her grave. Kate had surrendered to a trans-
Atlantic Dr. Dowie. Herbert was a trans-Atlantic evangelist
outside the Army. None of all this made things any easier for
Evangeline Booth, either in her command or in her relations
with International Headquarters.
On October 22nd, 1904, a lengthy letter was signed by her
father. Comparison with his other letters indicates that his
signature was in a measure formal. The letter with its thirty-
one numbered paragraphs was a considered memorandum
drafted by International Headquarters and in terms of the
utmost emphasis. The letter opened:
I cannot but feel intensely anxious with respect to

your proposed appointment to the United States. The
strain imposed upon you physically and mentally by
such a responsibility, and the heavy labour connected
therewith, will be enormous; and when I remember the
trying afflictions through which you have been
called
to pass during the last two years, I am instinctively led
to fear the possibility of this great undertaking proving
beyond the capacity of your natural powers, in which
case, I should be open to the painful reproach of hav
ing laid upon you more than you were able to bear.
"Even hour" he was hesitating over "the wis

at this late
dom of the present proposal." He was encouraged by her
record in "Canada and elsewhere." "You have striven," he
said, "to make a real Blood and Fire Salvation Army to my
in a very wonderful
very heart's satisfaction and content, and
manner you have succeeded." Evangeline Booth accepted the
and admonition with exemplary obedi
praise with all modesty,
ence, only suggesting that her record in Canada had not been
oratorical alone. Her activities at the desk should not be over
looked.
Her answer was achievement. When she arrived in New
York the Army was gallantly fighting the good fight but amid
much contention and criticism and under severe limitations of
finance, the property of the Army being valued at $1,500,000.
The work was carried on as a rule in rented buildings which
drained resources, then collected with great difficulty. People
smiled at her when she announced an appeal for $100,000. The
smiles were no longer sceptical when the public gave many
times such an amount. After thirty years of her stewardship
she handed over to her successors a capital account of $35,000,-
000 and property valued at $48,000,000 on which loans and
mortgages stood at $ 12,500,000. The Salvation Army in the
United States had an equipment and resources exceeding any
to be found in an Army's territory elsewhere. In 1904, the
Army in the United States had 696 stations. In 1934, the num
ber o stations exceeded 1600, and the officers alone exceeded
4,500.
The Founder soon got over the misgivings of International
Headquarters. On December 16th, 1904, he wrote a truly
prophetic letter to his daughter:
Your career has been a remarkableone, but destiny, .
unless I am
mistaken, has something in store for you
more wonderful still. Anyway I pour out my father's
love for you without measure or end, and thank God
for the comfort you have been to me in the past and
the stay and assurance you promise to be in the future
indeed, for the strength you bring to my soul when I
ask the momentous questions as to what is going to be
the mysterious tomorrow which so surely hides itself
fromôur scrutiny.
Herfirst Christmas in New York was a revelation of
pov
erty amid wealth. Even in London she did not think it could
be worse. There were 70,000 children going to school without
breakfast and the Salvation Army started relief somewhat on
the lines of the "farthing breakfasts" in the old
country. Thirty
.thousand fed by the Army on Christmas Day were in
many
cases pitiable. Later, this form of
hospitality the bread line-
was changed to baskets of food that the people could enjoy in
their own homes, 650,000 in 1933.
During her first summer her
UNITED STATES 149
concern was the heat and the horses wearing straw hats. She was
amused to hear how a horse standing beside another horse ate
its hat with relish.
At International Headquarters things did not always ap
pear in this light. The idea among some people was that every
body in the United States had "money to burn" and the cost
of overhead in the Army was described as ''appalling." Should
there not be economies? The Commander was quite ready for
economy as a prevention of waste. But she also believed in
expenditure as an assurance of the future. A advancing
rapidly
movement could not be supported on a shoestring. She could
see no justification for using the time and energy of carefully
trained and wholly dedicated officers as collectors of money
for the Army in the street, and the entire system of gathering
revenues was put upon a basis according with the importance of
the purposes for which the funds were needed. The music of
the tambourine faded away into the past.
In 1911 an international officer examined the financial
situation of the Army in the United States and with some
severity pointed out instances where the accountancy could be
rectified. Considering the rapid extension of the work the sug
gestions, even when well taken, were of minor substance. But

the reply on behalf of the Commander was. as always, exem
plary in its respect for the strictest correctitude, and adjust
ments where needed were made. It was to be regretted that the
report included the grave charge that in the United States
"nothing is done for either love or fear there is no compulsion
from any source, or for any other reason than self-interest." The
passage is instructive because it illustrates how much harder
on each other Salvationists sometimes are moved to be than
any judgement by those who watch their witness and their work
from the outside. National Headquarters in. New York branded
the accusation as "a libel on the devotion, and zeal and loyalty
of the American field/' The remark might "apply here and
there, but to make this assertion to encircle the whole of our
American work is grossly unjust and cannot be
supported by
evidence." On behalf of the many Godly, devoted, loyal, self-
sacrificing, pureminded, wholehearted, consecrated men and
women in the American field we protest. ..."
After twenty years of Commandership, Evangeline Booth's
administration was put to the test, and the test could scarcely
have been more searching. Under the influence of John D.
Rockefeller, Junior, an agency known as the National Informa
tion Bureau of New York was investigating societies that de
pended on the use of public money. Mr. Porter R. Lee and
Mr. Walter W. Pettit of the New York School of Social Work
were thus appointed to scrutinise the Salvation Army. The
Commander welcomed these emissaries and gave orders that
they were to have the fullest facilities to look into whatever
interested their minds.
In 1924 there appeared the report and conclusions which
they had drawn up. It was entitled Social Salvage: A Study of
the Central Organisation and Administration of the Salvation
A rmy meaning, of course, the Army in the United States. The
finances of the Army were set forth in appendices for all to see
for themselves, and the verdict of the investigators, despite
criticisms of detail, was outspoken.
The Army was declared to be "fundamentally spiritual in
its aim." and all the time for the purpose of
It "exists first, last
putting men into a relationship with God and keeping them

there." That is its "sole purpose/* We read:
The Army through its magnification of the evan

gelisation of men and its detailed regulation of many
activities of its officers and soldiers, has developed a
self-contained brotherhood which has an enormous
spiritual driving-power. Among both officers and soldiers
there a remarkable spirit of devotion to the Army's
is
programme, and the morale which has been developed

could well furnish material for study to other social and
religious organisations.
This was the independent tribute by experts whose train

ing and outlook were distinct from the Army's beliefs and
point
of view.
Yet the impression in some quarters that the
Army was
becoming a social agency among other and secular agencies
sometimes lingers on, and on May 18th, 1931, Evangeline Booth
^repudiated such ideas. Her brief statement repeats in effect the
verdict of the Rockefeller
Enquiry. She wrote:
UNITED STATES 151
There are no men and women in any part of the

world with a more devoted and self-abandoned spirit
or who are more loyal to the teachings and traditions
of the Flag. They are engaged in many social tasks
and have to face difficulties of diverse race and religion
of which Great Britain knows nothing. But the sugges
tion that their interest in the Army is other than spir
itual is entirely without foundation. They are
express
ing their loyalty to Christ in preaching the Gospel as
well as in the terms which Our Saviour Himself em
ployed, by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visit
ing the sick and bringing hope to the hopeless in prisons
and in the darkest places of the earth.
By every means of expression, whether from the pulpit,

in newspapers or by mail, public opinion in the United States
endorsed a favourable estimate of what the Army was doing.
Towards Commander Evangeline Booth there was shown an
especial respect* She was received by successive Presidents, and
on one occasion when she was speaking in Washington Mr.
Taft slipped from the White House and appeared unannounced
in a box among her audience.
She always attributed some of her success as a speaker to
advice given to her when first she took up her command in
New York. She lost no time in consulting John Wanamaker
over the line that she should pursue, and that shrewd adviser
warned her against wasting her gifts on small and unimportant
engagements. She should reserve her eloquence for invitations
that made her presence worth while. It should always be re
garded as a privilege to hear her.
The known fact that it was hard to get Evangeline Booth
to a meeting had something to do with the great receptions
which acclaimed her appearance. Phenomenal were the crowds
that, year after year, gathered to listen when she spoke and
many times she was urged to repeat an address. It is no exag
geration to say that in city after city a royal hospitality was
showered on her, and it was difficult for her in many places to
pay a hotel bill. Indeed, she would refuse the offer of special
suites in fashionable resorts because she did not want it to be
thought that she was on a luxury tourespecially by those who,
unaware of the gratuitous accommodation, might suppose that
Salvationist money was involved.
Some of the dates that she filled became truly memorable.
Whether in Hawaii or in the Hollywood Bowl an amazing
landscape of packed humanity stretched from the rostrum as
far as the eye could reach. History may declare that the great
est of such moments was in Chicago where in 1932 she pro
nounced the invocation at the opening of the Democratic
Convention. For a few unforgettable minutes politics were for
gotten. The voice, the words, the uniform solemnised that vast
and powerful gathering. It happened that her personal friend
ship lay with Herbert Hoover for whose way of looking at
things she had a profound respect. It was thus by one of those
ironies which transcend partialities that the wisdom sought for
the delegates in her prayer led them to nominate Franklin
Delano Roosevelt for the first of four momentous terms of
office. The prayer was this:
Almighty God, Wonderful Counselor, Everlasting

Father, The Prince of Peace, the Government is upon
Thy shoulders. It is in Thy name we gather here to-day
and in reverence and humility acknowledge Thee King
of Eternity, Measurer of Time. The years but
perish,
Thy Throne endureth forever.
We plead for Thy blessing upon these Thy servants
assembled in this Convention, representing all states
and territories within this great Republic, which, in
Thy gracious providence, THou hast committed to her
citizens as a most solemn and
abiding heritage of re
sponsibility.
In this tragichour of the world's history we won
der there is an interpretation of
if
Thy will, written
upon the walls of the natiofts^ in letters of want and
sorrow, which we have not ^caught.
,
OGod of all good, has the dark mantle which has
enwrapped us been of Thy permitting? Has the swift
drive of commerce, the
on-rushing tide of unequalled
progress, the ever-increasing resources of our country's
wealth, been broken in upon by the call of sacrifice,
suffering and want, LEST WE
FORGET?
Forget: that ^ nation's power is not alone to be
found in its material advantages?
Forget that the great-
UNITED STATES 153
ness of its fleets, its armies, the wealth of the treasury

and the extent of its territories are not alone the meas
ure of its strength?
But that Thou in the majesty of Thy unerring
wisdom has decreed that a nation's power shall rather be
found in its moral influences, in the authority of its
enlightened teaching, in the righteousness of its pol
icies, and in its ascendency in goodness and truth. O
Thou Conquering Jehovah, grant that these may be the
forces which shall wave their invincible banners over
the hearts and lives of mankind.
Dear Heavenly Father, Father of us all, we plead
with Thee; give us light that will show the way; give
to us courage that will overcome the seemingly impos
sible; give us wisdom that will unravel the tangled
threads of national problems; so that by Thy divine
guidance we may reach a realisation of Thy will, which
will bring us out of the maze of distresses, losses, pains
and tears, into a loftier understanding and a deeper
insight of Thy divine truth.
Dear Lord, upon this stupendous occasion fraught
with such far-reaching possibilities, give to our mor
tal eyesight immortal vision. Grant that we may hear
new sounds, feel new sympathies, thrill with new love;
lead us into a more vivid consciousness that Thou art
in Thy world; that Thy presence is round about us as
a healing breath; and at this grave moment in the- an
nals of mankind, when the foundations of orderly com
monwealths and assured faith are so deeply disturbed,
O Rock of Ages, may our anchorage be in Thee.
Dear Crucified Lord, in the shadow of Thy Cross,
may we receive that sacrificial fortitude which will en
able us to combat the evils of selfishness, greed, indul
gence and all unworthiness that would prevent our de
liberations leading us to decisions for the highest good
of the little village as well as of the great city; for the
poor as well as for those who have plenty; for the
places of hard toil as well as for the places in affluence;
for those who are weak in the face of temptation, as
well as for those who can stand strong,
Help us, dear Saviour, to remember that 'in this
great throng this morning we appear before Thee as
individuals, separate, and alone. Be Thou the Captain
of our souls.Then if poverty comes we shall not be so
poor, and sorrow comes we shall not be so sad, and
if
if death comes we shall not be afraid.
O Thou God of all nations, Jesus Christ the
World's Redeemer, hear us we pray, for Thy dear
Name's sake.
Amen
That Evangeline Booth was compelled by circumstances,
including ill-health, sometimes to cancel engagements is quite
true. Her worst disappointment, perhaps, was the peremptory
veto of her doctors in 1934 on a carefully planned visit to
Australia, and among the counsels of her brother, Bramwell,
was a warning against filling up the schedule of her activities
until no margin of time was left for uncertainties. But, barring
accidents, she was adamant for the observance of that punctual
ity which has been called the courtesy of kings. At Hackney it
had been said of her that she was first to reach the office in the
morning and last to leave the office at night. So was it with her
meetings. "If the people are good enough to hear me/' she
would say, "they won't want to wait ten minutes/' On one
occasion, she was told that the Governor of a State would arrive
at 5:15 p.m. for a meeting announced for three o'clock. *If I
can't begin on time/' she replied, "I'm not coming."
In 1930 the appeal of the Salvation Army to the man in
the street was demonstrated by an incident, at once dramatic
and with a touch of humour. For some time the relations be
tween West Point and Annapolis had been under a strain. The
Array and Navy saluted the Flag of the United States but they
were less inclined to play football with each other. How to
resume the great game of the year was a matter of serious inter-
service diplomacy, and the Mayor of New York appealed to
Evangeline Booth as intermediary. Deep as were the differ
ences over the gridiron, the Grays and the Blues were found to
be united over the Salvation Army. They would hand over the
proceeds of their contest to Evangeline Booth, as Gommander-
in-Chief: The price of tickets ranged from $5.00 to $50.00, and
one up-to-date bank put in its application for the deposit. For
the first time in her life, Evangeline Booth in the New York
Stadium found herself amid the music and the marching and
the other etiquette of a great football match in the United
UNITED STATES 155
States. Everybody who was anybody was seated in the vast
arena, andit meant that, once more, the Salvation
Army had
been taken by the people to their hearts. The proceeds of the
game, handed to the Salvation Army, ran into no less than six
figures, and the whole affair was one of many instances where
the Commander's capacity for smoothing out differences was
effective.
Her office at headquarters was immaculate. Not a speck of
dust was to be seen, not a pen was ever out of position, the
portraits of her parents hung on the wall straight as a spirit
level. And woe betide the officer who entered her presence with
uniform in any kind of disarray. He had to be spic and span
as the Commander herself, to the last button and thread on his
braid. Salvationists working with armies and navies and police
needed to learn nothing of the salute and of the way that under
a flag things should be done. It meant method and it meant
morale.
There is a humorous variety in the details that had to be
dealt with. Should a girl in the Army be allowed to cut her
front hair into a 'bang"? What about a design for a hot weather
uniform? What about an allowance during furlough? And
here was a question that gave food for thought. A woman was
showing herself to be a wholly valuable Salvationist and in
every way suitable for a course as cadet in a training college.
But she had been divorced. Again, there were numerous men
who had been won for the Army and even held commissions.
But they had always been masons and membership of secret
societies was held to be contrary to the tradition of the Army,
partly on the ground that it was too expensive in time and
money. In all of this there was a field for wise discretion and
in all of this the wishes of International Headquarters had to
be respected.
Specific cases can only be mentioned
out of their setting.
Two of them may or may not have occurred within the United
States but it was Evangeline Booth who dealt with them.
A high official appeared to have allowed himself to in
in pleasures which were hardly in keeping
with his
dulge,
profession as a Salvationist. Evangdine Booth saw him in
would seem, to pass with some
private and he tried, it
it off
thing of a threat unless she desisted. What he had to face was a

flame of indignation from eyes directed to his own, and words
that shook his complacence. The honour of the Army was safe
in the hands of her father's daughter and the officer left the
Flag. But the Salvationist in him arose to a great height during
the blitzkrieg over London when the heroic courage of this man
won a recognition that public opinion applauded.
Two young and popular Salvationists so far forgot them
selves as to fall into an uncommendable error. There were
those who held that they should be required to leave the Army.
They were met by a negative. "We save people outside the
Army," said Evangeline Booth, "and we save people inside the
Army as well when they need saving," She sent for the officers.
She talked to them. She remembered that they were still inex
perienced in life. They were given new work to do and in
doing that work they made good. May I say that of all the in
cidents in Evangeline Booth's life, none made quite the im
pression on me when I came across it that this did. Her whole
attitude was firm, broad and constructive. How tactfully to
intimate to boys in the camps that they must refrain from
stealing cherries was another of the questions on which the
Commander was kept informed and her advice sought.
The Founder's appraisal of his daughter's value to the
Army grew year by year. He would say that she was "psychic"
and could "see through a stone wall." And he liked the initia
tive in the United States:
The remarkable procession of drunkards (on

Boozers* Day) has been reported not only in the British
press but on the Continent. I told the story in my
speeches in Germany, and although they flatter them
selves that they are saints
alongside the Anglo-Saxon
sinners with regard to alcohol, still, drunkenness is there,
and the story was interesting. I should very much like
to know how far the
thing was a permanent benefit.
Our people in other parts of the world will be wanting
to do something like it if it
proved productive of good;
Over the from her father in those
letters that she received
earlier days of her
commandership there spread a shadow of
deepening pathos. His eyes, he would say, were beginning to
worry him and like Paul under similar circumstances his hand-
UNITED STATES 157
writing showed what he meant. It became big and bold with

sometimes a blot or two. This man of inexhaustible energy was
becoming blind.
"I am going into drydock for repairs/* he would say with
the humour that never failed him, as he faced the surgeon, but
the day canie when he had tried to write a last letter but in
vain. It was for his daughter, Evangeline, and no more than a
pencilled scrawl. She stood with him by a window and told him
of the sunset, glorious in its radiance. "I cannot see it," he said,
"but I shall see the dawn."
May I be allowed a personal word? For I have seen Wil
liam Booth. There he stood in his carriage, a strong yet stricken
man, as he passed through our little town of Kendal in West
moreland on his way north during a motorcade. Then, the
Albert Hall, and what, I gather, was his last public appearance
at any rate, it was near the end. As a reporter I had to cover
the occasion. It was hard believe that the white-haired
to
prophet who paced up and down the platform as he poured
forth his warnings and appeals could not see a face in the front
row. The voice, however husky, was the authentic voice of an
apostle.
On August 20th, 1912, he lay in his bed silent and still.
"This death?" asked BramwelL "This is death," answered the
is
doctor. Bramwell leaned over and kissed the white brow. He
placed in the hand Evangeline's final cable "Kiss him for me."
Lucy said to Bramwell, "Kiss him for Eva," and Bramwell again
kissed his father on behalf of the distant daughter.
I had to cover the funeral. Never before had I seen the
Salvation Army at close quarters, and it was strange to me. The
Congress Hall at Clapton was decorated with colours as for a
triumph. Officers were hurrying hither and thither on business
that had to be transacted. In th midst of it all lay the open
coffin and, unaccustomed to the ceremonial and a little es
tranged by it, I looked on a face that had been moulded afresh
by the Great Sculptor. :
The obsequies astonished the world. The streets of London

were thronged by crowds outnumbering the million. The Lord
Mayor and Corporation of the City stood within the facade of
the Mansion House, gravely watching the procession as it
swept by. Then there was Olympia holding its 24,000 people
and dim as one gazed on Its shadowy distances. I sat through
the long service but did not happen to notice amid the per
spectives that one chair was vacant. Where was Evangeline
Booth?
According to the press the date of the funeral had been
advanced and this meant that the Commander was prevented
from attending the great service at Olympia. But in New York
she had bought her passage, she had packed her portmanteau
and she had boarded a liner. She arrived for the final scene at
the Abney Park Cemetery where, for the first time, I saw her,
with her father's open grave between us. She prayed, and this
was the first time that I heard the rich mellow tones of her
voice. I marvelled at her control of her emotions and at the
resonance of her eloquent language.
William Bramwell Booth was now the second General of

the Salvation Army. It was with him direct that Evangeline had
to deal. Under her resolute guidance and with the support of
her father, the Army in the United States had emerged out of
the troubles of earlier years. The Commander was in a position
to envisage the future and set her course.
Many commands in the Army had been changed every five
years. In special cases so brief a term of office was inconvenient.
For eight years Booth-Tucker had served as Commander in the
United States, and for the same period Evangeline had served
in Canada. Now that she was in New York, it was not only what
the Army was at the moment that interested her. Her outlook
included what the Army would be ten, twenty, thirty years
hence.
She took a step, therefore, that cost much in terms of
sentiment. Nobody could have been more closely identified
than she with the people of England few had been more, be
loved than she in the old country. Yet she ceased to be a sub
ject of the King and became a citizen of the land of her adop
tion. The change of secular allegiance meant nothing to so
internationally minded a body as the Salvation Army, where
there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor
free, since all are one in Christ Jesus. But it did mean that she
had burned her boats. She had come to America to win.
UNITED STATES 159
There was no doubt as to the value of the Army to the

community. To quote from A Catholic Dictionary, edited by
Donald Attwater and published under the imprimatur of
Cardinal Hayes of New York, the Salvation Army has "a mode
of evangelisation admirably calculated to appeal to the common
people." Also we read:
The great achievements of the Army are a notable
success in raising the standard of personal behaviour,
and numerous benevolent works of great efficiency and
worth throughout the world.
Take the handling of a new generation. There was the

Cradle Roll in which was inscribed the name of a babe at birth
in hope that the growing child would enter a re-born life with
God. The Sunday School, at one time something of a Cinder
ella among Salvationists, was dramatised into a Band of Love
associated with two groups, Chums for boys and Sunbeams for
girls. What in many Churches had been known
as the Epworth
League or Christian Endeavour became the Young People's

Legion, with Life-Saving Scouts and Guards. Brighter Day
has been the Army's name for groups of converts in prison. In
all of this the aim was hope for the hopeless and service for
the spiritually and socially unemployed. Fill life with good
and leave no room for evil.
It remained true, however, that narrow is the gate and
strait the way that lead to so disciplined a self-surrender as life
in the Salvation Array. When men like Cadman and Railtori
were saved, and a woman like Happy 'Liza, they could see
was
nothing ahead of them save marching with the Flag, But it
not thus in the United States. South of the Mason and Dixon
Line, for instance, many a "trophy" rose from the penitent
form to be a different person. But when the convert was asked
to join the local corps of the Army, he would answer, "I am a
baptised Methodist or Presbyterian or Baptist I do not need to
cities further north. The
join anything." So with the great
Roman Catholic and the Jew frequently came under the spell
of the Army, yet remained within his former affiliation. The
work of the Army was not prosyletism. It was Salvation.
There grew up in the country, therefore, a definite and
unusual attitude on the part of the public towards the Army
which may be described as approval without affiliation, and
Evangeline Booth made it her business to see to it that this
broadening and deepening goodwill was mobilised behind the
ever more arduous efforts which were put forth by the Army
as the needs of the individual became more fully known. She
invited men and women of experience and position who be
lieved in the Army but did not feel the call to come under the
Flag to join Advisory Boards which brought the Army into
touch with the best and most responsible elements in the
community. Salvationists were thus assured, not only of effec
tive assistance in their work, but of wise advice from those who
knew what they were talking about. The Commander set her
self, moreover, to win and retain the confidence of leaders in
every walk of life from coast to coast. Statesmen, lawyers, cap

tains of commerce anyone and everyone who made a difference
to a neighbourhood and a right difference found themselves
among her friends. Through this policy of co-operation with
the community a multitude of people of every faith, race and
colour, have been enabled to feel that they can be helpers in an
excellent and honourable labour of love. As years passed, they
who sought help from the Army began to be of a different
class. Two out of three of them did not need or ask for money.
They wanted what money does not buy.

As she felt her need and saw the broadening scope of the
Army's activities in the United States, she sought a home for
herself and her immediate staff. In due course she found what
she wanted and, as usual, it was a bargain. In Canada the house
that she occupied had been cheap because it was haunted. Near
New York was a property that could be had for a modest sum
because it lay next door to a dog's cemetery. The house is
small but it looks quite large owing to a turret that is no more
inside than a circular staircase, and an inside garage which takes
up the space. So with the rich foliage of the trees that impressed
people in later years. They were chosen by Evangeline Booth
for planting, and at little expense well chosen. She called the
house Acadia after the village where dwelt her namesake Evan
geline of the poem, and in Hartsdale it became quite a land
mark. Passengers in the 'buses along Central Avenue below
were shown where the Commander lived and on the sidewalk
people would stand for a while in hope of catching a glimpse
UNITED STATES 161
of her as she passed in and out of her door. By a coincidence
that was fortuitous the grounds of Felix Warburg's great estate
adjoined her own garden, and they were ever open to Evan-
geline Booth and her horse.
For the summer she built a two room bungalow for her
self on the shores of Lake
George, where AdolphOchs of the
New York Times was among her neighbours and personal
friends. There was a house, known as
Camp Cory, where her
staff could be accommodated and also the succession of officers
in the Army who visited her and discussed affairs in hand.
Over Lake George there were crises, and she wrote to her
friend, Commissioner William Peart:
go to Lake George and try to settle

I feel that to
down work in the midst of the noise and laughter
to
and swimming and diving and tennis-playing of that
small camp-ground, is folly. The height of folly! I
couldn't do it. I am tired to death, and to find myself
chained, as it were, to the galleys and compelled to look
out on others who have not begun to work as hard as I,
having the time of their lives, enjoying just what I
should love to be enjoying, would be too much for my
mortal strength. It would be like putting a saucer of
cream before a kitten and saying she should not drink it.
Therefore! Therefore! Therefore! ... I have
bought a houseboat! A houseboat! A comical looking
thing, old, well-tried, absolutely seaworthy, that with a
littlefixing up, will make a very attractive study-
hermit's lodge for yours truly. I shall be surrounded
with water . with
. . as much water as I like, can be
as near to or as far from the rest of the camp as I like.
. . Do you remember ever seeing a peculiar looking
.
contraption on the water called It Suits Me. Well, this

is what I have bought. .. .
Thehouseboat was thirty-four feet long, it included a

cabin, a kitchenette and a back deck under an awning. Its
speed was eight miles an hour and it was renamed The Ark
according to Scripture.
At Lake George it could be seen that Evangeline Booth
was a natural athlete. For she added swimming to her riding,
and the aquatics included the diving board. Of her plain
and fancy diving there is a photographic record, all of which
helped the Army. For it made the Commander known, not

only as a spiritual teacher of the stern realities of sin and
its effects, but as a wholehearted advocate of the health and
happiness that are possible when sin is overcome. She did not
endorse all that was held to be allowable by boys and girls-
all the things that they 'did and all their failure sometimes to
do what they ought to have done. But at heart she was on their
side, and they knew it. Physically and mentally she was what
they wanted to be. And she was tolerant, "Don't judge her by
a little bit of lipstick or the colour of her nails/' she would say.
"There's good stuff in the girl,"
Her eager, adventurous way of living was not without its
dangers, and the diving board nearly cost her the rest of her life
on earth. Every precaution seemed to have been taken against
undue risk. The plunge was made into a deep cove where there
was plenty of water for the recovery. But one day the Com
mander did not rise as usual to the surface. Happily it was
realised that something was amiss and a rescuer dived to investi
gate. It was with the utmost difficulty that he brought her strug
gling back to fresh air and she was cut in places to the bone.
What had happened, was for the moment a mystery. There were
no alligators in that pool not one single octopus. But it seemed
that a simple wire fence between properties had been sub
merged and into its coils the Commander had swum. It was a
perfect death trap and the escape was providential.
Her vitality carried all before it, and one enthusiastic
reporter accused her of having "the most expressive eyebrows
in the world." Wrote he: "Those two thin ink-black lines are
capable of running the whole gamut of human emotion. They
expostulate, condone, command. ..."
The truth is, I fear, that there are no such- thin ink-black
lines above Evangeline Booth's eyes. On the contrary her eye
brows are light in colour and inconspicuous. But the eyes that
is something else. They do tell a
story. I hardly know how to
put it on paper. For they are never the same from moment to
moment. They flicker. It may be amusement. It may be sym
pathy. It may be flaming anger. It may be sorrow. However it
be, ii is the soul that escapes
through those eyes.
In 1925 she was questioned by Mr. Bernarr Macfadden,
UNITED STATES 163
tne apostle of physical culture, about health o which, despite
her numerous ailments, she had become an exemplar. Her
letter is something of a pronouncement on the subject:
do agree with you that physical fit

Yes, indeed, I
ness not only a great asset but a matter of primary
is
importance, for it is the foundation upon which tbe

superstructure of our lives is built. With regard, how
ever, to my own particular methods of 'keeping fit' I am
afraid that my example is of doubtful worth owing to
the enforced irregularity of my daily living.
With a position calling for much travel, together
with very heavy executive responsibility, any system of
exercise is out of the question. However, the importance
of keeping my body fit for the strain imposed on it is
ever somewhere in the back of my mind, and I find
myself, almost without thought, turning to some form
of physical recreation in whatever spare moments fall
to my share. It may only be the tossing of a ball, a brisk
walk, or a run in winter an hour's skating but this one
thing is certain, whatever means of exercise may be at
my disposal I seize with avidity. I suppose I have a
natural bent for athletic sports.
The secret of keeping physically fit is exercise-
muscular activity adapted to one's constitution and
strength. We must keep our muscles in constant train
ing if they are to be strong, flexible and responsive. . . .
My own theory isthat as soon as one can perform one

feat well, it is advisable to take up another, and so on,
not confining oneself to any particular sport, but , . .
looking around for other worlds to conquer.
She did not close this interesting letter without aligning

her zest for exercise with the deeper purpose which governed
her whole life:
If physical culture is to bring to men and women

the very best results, it must be regarded as a means
to an end and never confused with the end itself. For
important and beautiful as the human body is, we must
all admit that it is but the highest servant (a) of the
mind, and (b) of the soul, neither of which can func
tion without it. It should therefore receive every care
that can possibly increase its efficiency, but always with
the view of the service to be rendered humanity, and
as the medium through which is being worked out in
the world the destiny of a soul.
", . . the medium through which is being worked out

in the world the destiny of a soul" in those words you have
Evangeline Booth at her best.
We have seen that it was over alcoholic liquor that William
Booth differed from a majority on his original "conference"
which managed the Christian Mission, the preliminary to the
Salvation Army. Throughout her long and active career his
daughter resolutely observed the rule of abstinence from alco
hol and tobacco. With her experience of conditions among the
failures in life she had no choice but to be no less resolutely
opposed to the manufacture, distribution and sale of intoxicat
ing beverages. In the United States she found herself, there
fore, among the leaders of two associated movements. On the
one hand, she was an outstanding exemplar of the womanhood
that was growing into a fuller and a freer citizenship. No mili
tant, she claimed and she used the franchise. On the other
hand, she stood for Prohibition and rejoiced when this measure
of national wellbeing, as she regarded it, was incorporated in
the Eighteenth Amendment. Of the benefits resultant from that
policy she was an outspoken exponent, nor has her testimony
been seriously challenged. The Boozers' Day when "drunks'*
were gathered in the streets and brought under a liberating
and encouraging Gospel ceased to be worth while when the
supply of boozers was dried up. There was substituted for it
a festival for children. She could see nothing amiss with the
new law save a reluctance in certain quarters to enforce it, and
even with imperfect enforcement she asked, "Shall America
go back?"
The nation decided against Prohibition and in the fury of
the reaction the Army had to face some delicate situations. For
on the Advisory Boards and elsewhere were stout supporters
who agreed with the Army one hundred per cent save on this
one issue. Typical of them were several in New York, crusaders
for the Army, but out for Repeal. When James Speyer desisted
from leading a drive, it got into the newspapers, and the
UNITED STATES 165
reporters gathered outside a closed door. Evangeline Booth and

Mr. Speyer appeared in due course, and the latter said, "You
see she smiles."
"Two important smiles/' added the Commander, and
someone remarked that the sun was shining on both sides of
the street. "The incompatibility of belief," said the New York
Timesy "evidently is irremediable, but it is not often that two
people with opinions so unlike agree so amicably to disagree."
The Wets defeated the Drys but this did not mean a blow
to the Salvation Army. On the contrary, casualties from over
indulgence in liquor became again what they always have
been, and this meant more work for the agency that has special
ised on such individual and domestic disasters,
At International Headquarters in London the phenom
enal growth of the Salvation Army in the United States was
watched with a wondering astonishment. To General Bramwell
Booth it came as a problem to be strongly handled, and ha the
later chapter on the High Council we shall see that he was
somewhat disturbed. There is a record of what he considered
to be the wise policy to pursue. The arrangements of the Army
in America when the Commander assumed control in 1904
were two territories, eastern and western, with some American-
Canadian corps along the border. For fairly obvious reasons,
the Army in Canada became Canadian and the Army in the
United States became American. A third or southern territory
was delimited afterwards a fourth, over all of which adjust
ments there was merely the usual administrative discussion.
What did arouse comment was the further proposal by
General Bramwell that Evangeline Booth be recalled from the
United States and that .each territory be made independently
answerable to International Headquarters in London. It is
enough here to say that this did not come about,
9
FRANCE
as it was for those who saw her to believe it, the
HARD year, 1914, as it
geiine Booth, youthful as

unfolded surprises, meant that Evan-
its
ever in spirit and purpose, was
passing out of her forties. It was a year that, in ways of funda
mental destiny, was significant for mankind, and with a signifi
cance of which the Salvation Army, regarded by society as a
mere detail in the panorama of civilisation, was in reality a
central symbol.
For this was the year, 1914, that completed a century since
Napoleon was sent, defeated, to Elba, there to await his escape
and coup de grace at the Battle of Waterloo. During this hun
dred years, roughly described as Victorian", many battlefields,
Gettysburg and Sedan among were drenched with blood,
them,,
but the conflicts, though desperately fought and decisive of
far-reaching issues, were no more than regional in their range
of destruction of spiritual, social and material values. It was
a long and general peace that the world as a whole enjoyed.
The peace was accompanied by a progress and an enrich
ment of which there was no previous record in history. Steam
ships crossed the ocean with a speed and a safety unimaginable
whether to the Negroes borne earlier from Africa or to emi
grants from Europe. Cables were laid across the deeps of the
ocean and trains ran on ribands of rail where no carts had ever
before rumbled their muddy wheels. Little was it to be won
dered at that society was lulled into what, in retrospect, is seen
to have been a deadly complacence.
166
FRANCE 167
Voices were raised in warning. The Mendelssohns of lit
erature were Tennyson in the old world and Longfellow in the
new, whose popularity with the people evoked the sneers of
envious but nonproductive intelligentsia. Tennyson talked oi
"heavens filled with shouting while there rained a ghastly dew
from the nations* airy navies grappling with the central blue,"
and it seemed to be no more than one of his prettily polished
phrases. Longfellow bluntly spouted Nordic, declaring that,
Force rules the world still,

Has ruled it, shall rule it,
Meekness is weakness,
Strength is triumphant,
Over the whole earth,
Still is it Thor's day.
To most of us it was no more than another of his Tales

of a Wayside Inn. Wars were wearing themselves out. Look
at the international exhibitions!
Founded in 1865, once more the year of Evangeline
Booth's birth, the Salvationist Movement, by a coincidence,
had been at work in 1914 for exactly fifty of those hundred
years since Waterloo. During one half of the great peace,
therefore, there was a concentrated witness within the com
munity to the principle that such tranquillity is more than
a time for pleasure, art, wealth, power, science, to spread
from pole to pole. It is an urgent and spiritual opportunity to
be seized at all costs lest worse befall and dedicated to imme
diate and intensive repentance. Now, cried the Salvationists,
is the
accepted time, now is the day of Salvation, and their
message was proclaimed also by men and women of goodwill
in the Churches who did not accept allegiance to their Flag.
Had it been more generally heeded how elementary it sounds
there would have been no World Wars.
For the Army was everywhere advancing, and 1914 came,
therefore, as an annus mirabilis, a year of wonder, when brave
men and women throughout the world cried out their Ebene-
zers Hitherto hath the Lord helped us. Evangeline Booth
was at the peak of her victorious gaiety. "Optimism/* said she
to the reporters, when they put her through her paces, "was
pinned on me as a badge from the moment I knew anything.
I cannot concede the tragic conclusion of any situation. My
Father used to say that my name should have been Hope. I am
that, and I am merry too."
Merry? What did she mean by being merry?
"After we've had a very successful meeting sometimes, I
feel downright merry just as if I had been on a regular
spree."
'Tm man who, after we picked him up from
for the
the gutter, again and again. God help him, he is only
falls
weak and very human. After many struggles he may finally
win. They are only preliminary engagements to the final bat
tle when he conquers himself. Oh, the task that is set for us,
and the ways, through God, in which we can help!" And a
favourite phrase of hers was "a man is down but never out."
Did she dance?
"No, I don't go in for dancing. Time can be much better
employed. Besides it leads to bad associations for young girls."
Tobacco?
"Wedon't wish to rob a man of his pipe altogether, but
at the same time we tend to teach that smoking is unnecessary.
There are enough chimneys in the world without human
beings making one of themselves."
She believed in militant Salvation and she was an Eng
lishwoman by birth. Then did she approve, of militant women's
suffrage, such as was upsetting things abroad?
"I do not no politics. That matter will be fought outside
the Salvation Army and the Army's aims and pursuits. Women
of England who burn and destroy property to gain their ends
only thwart their object. I am a suffragist I made that known
long ago men have not made such a good fist of it with the
ballot that women would do any worse. But J believe that
women's strongest influence is in the home. The Englishman
much more than the American is convinced of that. The home
principle is greatly revered over there. In the United States
men treat women more liberally along many lines."
Religion?
"No, I do not take a gloomy view of the Churches in the
United States. Religion was never more popular. The masses
are hungering for religion in its pure, undiluted, uncorroded
FRANCE 169
state, dissociatedfrom extraneous matters that have tended to

confuse and confound the popular mind concerning it. This
is a supreme moment in the
history of the Christian Church."
What did she mean by Church?
"The Church is God's people organised. That takes in all
Christian people. The Salvation Army is a part of this Church,
and our responsibility is as great as that imposed on any other
branch of the Church of God." She quoted Joseph Cook of
Boston who had said that the nineteenth century had seen the
world as a great neighbourhood and that the twentieth century
would witness a great and worldwide brotherhood.
"Empty pews," she went on, "indifferent church members,
unconsecrated officials and yawning audiences do not appal
me. The Day of Pentecost followed a time of indifference to
religion that has hardly a parallel in history. It occurred a
few days after Peter had denied Christ and Judas had be
trayed Him, and fear was scattering the disciples far and
wide."
The revival that she foresaw was "coming from below."
People were "craving for something better than ragtime in
literature, ragtime in music and ragtime in conduct/' Officers
in the Army were reporting spendid prospects. Look at the
problem of vice. The evil used to be regarded as indispensable
and the Church wouldn't touch it. Medicine merely glanced
at it. The law confessed itself powerless to repress it. But the
problem was now being tackled. The felon used to be hope-,
lessly lost. The man was clothed in loathsome stripes. He was
a doomed man. Not now!
"It is not necessary for Christian tenets to be 'restated/
Higher criticism has had its day and accomplished nothing
more than the solidifying of the forces who believe in the
divinity of Christ and the inspiration of the Scriptures. Chris
tianity is more popular in the world to-day than in any age
since Jesus walked the seas of Galilee. To reach any other
conclusion would be to close my mind to the evidence that
is piling up every day."
In such terms was Evangeline Booth thinking as she ad
ministered the affairs of the Salvation Army in the United
States, and in London her brother, General Bramwell Booth,
was filled with the same sense of a confident advance toward
the Kingdom of God. For had not Longfellow himself added
a stanza to the defiance of the Nordic Thor?
Thou art a God, too,

O Galilean!
And thus single-handed
Unto the combat,
Gauntlet or Gospel,
Here I defy Thee!
Gauntlet or Gospel, that was the issue in 1914, and,

amid the rumblings and grumblings of approaching Armaged
don, Salvationists, led by Bramwell and Evangeline Booth,
let the world know what was involved in the alternative thus
fundamental to civilisation. London watched a spectacle never
before presented to that metropolis. Greater in rich magnifi
cence had been, of course, the Golden and Diamond Jubilees
of Queen Victoria the glittering coronations of King Edward
VII and King George V. But in the International Congress
of the Salvation Army, there was a meaning nearer to essen
tials than monarchy and empire. For it was a display of the
people themselves, those common people who, as Lincoln had

said,must be loved of God or He would not have made so
many of them, those mothers and fathers of children whose
births had shown that God, the Author of Life to quote
Rabindranath Tagore had not lost faith in mankind.
Included in the Congress were 40,000 Salvationists. Half
of them were British of the Homeland. The other half had
come to those shores oversea. Their dwellings in cottages, tents
and kraals lay within over fifty of the world's four-score
sovereignties, and to reach London they had crossed all
frontiers, eradicated all prides and prejudices, obliterated all
distinctions of race, religion and nation, shared the same re
pentance and redemption at the foot of the one Cross. Here
were they gathered together, an apocalyptic multitude Irish
and English, Jew and Arab, Hindu and Moslem all one in
Christ Jesus, with His new song in their mouths.
Out of the slummeries of old London, picturesque but
noisome, progress had cleared an area for the civic improve
ment known as Kingsway and Aldwych, connecting the great
FRANCE 171
arteries of the metropolis, east and west, Holborn and the

Strand, Adjoining the Strand lay a temporary vacancy o land
that awaited the tardy attentions of the architect and builder.
The Salvation acquired the use of this site and built
Army
on it a that impressed the passer-by. Even
wooden auditorium
so, it only accommodated a quarter of the delegates to the
International Congress let alone visitors. It was decided, there
fore, to commandeer the Crystal Palace on the ridge of Syden-
ham Hill and on the Fourth of July a gracious compliment
to the Salvation Army in the United States there was a grand
parade, led by five thousand bandsmen. The United
States
had sent over seven hundred of their people, of whom one
hundred were children, and they swung along in their cowboy
hats. Canada sent six hundred comrades.
Over the Canadians there was a wave of sympathy. For
at the end of May one hundred sixty-five officers from the
Dominion had set sail on the Canadian Pacific Steamship
Empress of Ireland. The vessel sank in collision with the Danish

collier Storstad and 1024 persons were drowned. Only twenty
of the Salvationists were saved. The news came just as Evange-
line Booth herself was setting sail and she cabled John Wana-
maker: "Awful blow for Canada but the God of our past is
the God of our present and future." The Canadians who
reached England were in the march of the nations.
Conspicuous at the head of these great contingents rode
one who looked like a girl, so erect and slim was she, every
inch an command, Evangeline Booth, proud o some
officer in
thing that she had a reason to be proud of, with no apologies

in her bearing for the Gospel that is the power of God unto
Salvation, and as she advanced there were touches of pathos.
For in the street arose voices. "Miss Eval Miss Eva!" called
humble folk, "Do you remember me?"
was a pleasant month that Julyand the weather for
It
multitudes at the seaside was perfect. Not an untoward cir
cumstance of any kind marred the spectacular success of the
International Congress of the Salvation Army. Distinguished
indeed was the patronage that lent a certain secular distinction
to the proceedings the gracious notice of King George V and
and of
Queen Mary, the presence of Prime Minister Asquith
Walter Hines Page, Ambassador from the United States. All
that the Army had to do was to go ahead-ahead-ahead-
from there.
of Europe -was there a cer
Only within the chancelleries
tain subdued uneasiness. For by one of those accidents that
families the Archduke Franz
happen iu the best regulated
had been done to death at Serajevo
Ferdinand and his wife
with the obvious connivance of mischief makers in high places.
to be rumoured, was not to
The Prince of Peace, so it began
have all His own way. The God of
War was awaking
things
as they
from his lengthy slumbers. In the face of the Gospel,
the
used to say in the Wayside Inn, was clenched again
were getting
Gauntlet, and aeroplanes, foreseen by Tennyson,
the Steam
Under darkening Evangeline Booth, in
skies,
o Gettnan register, and her American Salva
ship Vaterland
boomed forth the thunder.
tionists steamed west, and suddenly
stood for had
It seemed as i everything for which the Army
been laid prostrate in the dust for all the cynics and all the
sceptics and all
the scoundrels to trample on at their will.
And why? A brilliant writer of that day was Augustine Birrell
-one of the few persons who added a word, birrelhng, to the
wit. At Bristol he was beaten
dictionary, suet was his peculiar
in a by-electioti and the reporters asked him why.
"There were
not enough of us/' he replied with a dry smile. When the long
it was because there were not enough of
peace broke down,
those who were making the right use of it.
On grounds of what she considered to be elemental jus

tice, the whole soul of the Commander
was with the Allies
and against the military autocracies of Central Europe. But
was neutral and divided over the
the United States sharply
Salvationists of German origin were
policy to pursue. Many
held deservedly in the highest honour. Not for an instant
had
been responsible for a crime committed by a poisonous
they
medievalism rotting to its ruin in the modern world. It
seemed, then, that there was little for an impatient Evangelme

Booth to do about it. But she did inspire a gesture.
Mountains of munitions were borne over land and sea-
guns, shells and the rest
and what could Salvationists in the
States do to rival this avalanche of offensive? There happened
to be just one thing that was needed and the
Salvationists
FRANCE 173
trained in human necessities set to work on supply. They

collected old linen that could be certified as clean. They
stripped it into bandages of regulation size. Enjoying their
up-to-date equipment, they sterilised the bandages and packed
them in bales. They shipped the bales masses of them over
sea, and the Old Linen Campaign, a minor matter in itself,
revealed the Army once more as a community that was ready
to do anything anything to help the human race along. It
was help at long distance nothing more than this was pos
sible but it was help.
The Army in Great Britain was,
record of the Salvation
for the moment, more For the British were belligerents,
direct.
Salvationists among them, and they went into France for
military, spiritual and social service with intrepid courage.
Mary Booth, daughter of Bramwell, was in the forefront of
the hottest battle, leading others who were doing their brave
bit at a terrible time a very brave bit.
Late in 1917 it became the turn of the United States to
plunge into the fray, and this startling involvement upset the
mind of the nation. Everything that had been attributed to
the grave prudence of George Washington, that had been tradi
tional in the lessons learned by children at school, that was
instinctive in pioneers who had left the East behind them
and, following the sun, gone West, cried out for independence
of European quarrels and against sending the boys from the
Mississippi to fight over people's battles on the banks of the
Rhine. There were empty homes in America. There was a
corresponding homesickness among drafted soldiers at the
front.
Under Newton D. Baker as Secretary for War, one thing
was made plain. The boys would be exposed to hardship, peril,
death that was a stern necessity but not as mere cannon
fodder. They had become soldiers but they had not ceased
to be citizens. Every Church sent out chaplains and organisa
tions like the Red Cross. The Young Men's and Women's
Christian Associations, the Knights of Columbus, were com
mandeered for improvised assistance a compulsion that critics
sometimes overlook. Amid an emotional turmoil scarcely con
ceivable to those who did not live through it, Commander
Evangeline Booth sat at her desk in Headquarters, curiously
174 GENERAL EVAN CELINE BOOTH
calm. She was under no illusions as to the magnitude of the
disaster. "I think of England/' she wrote, "where almost every
man you meet is but a piece of a man." But she had no inten
tion of sacrificing one least essential of the Salvation Army and
its principles even to this supreme emergency.
That American Salvationists must go wherever American
soldiers were ordered to go, face whatever American soldiers
had to face, was obvious to her mind. Quite apart from special
contingents, 80,000 Salvationists with not one shirker among
them were in the draft. Proudly she remembered that so it had
been during the South African War where Salvationists were
to be seen within the sieges of Ladysmith and Mafeking.
"Your men," wrote Kitchener to William Booth, "have given
us an example how to live as good soldiers and how to die as
heroes." Even so Evangeline Booth held her hand. She set
aside the idea of sending into France en masse all of the excited
women who volunteered to join the Salvationist colours. She
would limit her contingent to the best only the best the very
best that could be selected after full enquiry and searching
test. Later she wrote:
We were not many, I admit. In France our num

bers have been regrettably few. But this is because I
have felt it was better to fall short in quantity than to
run the risk of falling short in quality. Quality is its
own multiplication table. Quality without quantity will
spread, whereas quantity without quality will shrink.
Therefore I would not send any officer to France ex
cept such as had been fully equipped in our training
schools. . . ,
a training that included the Red Cross Diploma.

Against Evangeline Booth in later years the whisperers,
who always sneer serpentlike against outstanding success, in
dulged in the ungenerous suggestion that she did not herself
cross the ocean and share the exploits of the girls under her
command. The answer is that, quite apart from the consent
of General Bramwell Booth which was withheld, she could
not have left her responsibilities in the United States to take
care of themselves. In June 1918, she made all arrangements
FRANCE 175
United
to visit the scenes of battle with the full approval of the
States Government. But at International Headquarters in
London there was clamped down an absolute veto to which,
as a loyal soldier under the Flag, she submitted. That is the
answer, and in any event she was not exactly idle while she
looked after things behind the lines, where her sagacious
guidance was invaluable to the Army, at home and abroad.
Nor was her position wholly devoid of danger. On the con
trary.
Those were the days when the meaning of total war was
slowly made clear to public opinion. As early as July 1916,
when the United States was supposed to be at peace, the
explosion of munitions at the Black Tom Dock in New Jersey
had shaken a wide area. Over the influence and activities of
Evangeline Booth, the Fifth Column in the country was much
disturbed, and she was offered, but declined, special protec
tion. There were incidents.
On Fourteenth Street stood one of the Army's Training
Schools where girls bound for France were accommodated. It
Was a tall building of early design and without some of the
latest safeguards against fire, Within a few minutes one night
it broke into a sea of flame and lives were lost. The evidence
of arson seemed to be clear, and very clever arson. For a
staircase had been smeared with oil to lure the conflagration
upwards, and one of the objects seems to have been to destroy

the National Headquarters of the Army that adjoined the
School.
For a few days was taking lunch at a
later a detective
small German restaurant in a side street, and there was talk
at an adjoining table.
"Well," said a voice, "if we can't burn them out, well
"
blow up the building, and get that damn Commander anyhow!
It was a threat and not entirely without substance. At
Headquarters one night the Commander was in her office

working late. Word came from the elevator man that three
ladies charged with a large gift for the Army were waiting
and the gift would be lost unless they saw
downstairs, the
Commander without delay. The suspicions of the elevator man
were aroused by the big feet of the visitors and although they
were allowed an interview, Evangeline Booth finally yielded
to the advice of her secretary that they be told
to call again
in the morning, at which decision they displayed anger.

The
the money they had to offer.
Army, they said, did not deserve
veils and long
They were wearing close caps with large
the automobile, but it was noted as they
cloaks, all suggesting
were ushered from the building that no automobile was
await
ing their convenience. Striding

down the street they made no
their disguise, and their heavy boots,
attempt to maintain
their trousers, showed that they were men. An alarm
was given
and the kind ladies with their falsetto voices found themselves
in custody they and the weapons they were carrying.
"I'm sorry I didn't see them," said Evangeline Booth
coolly, "I'm sure they
would have done me no harm and I
might have done them some good."
At Washington the doorman at her hotel was all courtesy
and consideration and full of sympathy for the Salvationist
Lassies oversea. "Where are your workers now
in France?"
he asked casually one day, and the Commander answered, "Oh,
wherever they are wanted," and she reported him as a spy. It
seemed absurd, for he had been at the revolving door for years.
But that night, with five others, he was arrested, and he didn't
get the information about the whereabouts of the American
forces at the front.
handful of workers
Evangeline Booth gathered her first
into a room apart from the turmoil around them and there
she administered to them their instructions. Before the Most
High God she called upon them to tell her if any of them
had in the heart motive
any in leaving the country other than
to serve Christ. She looked on the girls in the party and bade
them to put away from themselves the arts and coquetries of
love the souls of men as God
youth. They were sent forth to
loved them. Unless self be forgotten, their work would be in
vain. If, at this final hour of parting, any faltered or felt unfit
for the God-given task, let him let her speak before it was too
late. For they held in their hands the honour of the Salvation
Army and the glory of Jesus Christ, and they were to be ex

their lives, if need
amples of His love, willing to lay down
be, for His sake. They knelt and, heads bowed and hands
clasped, they sang:
FRANCE 177
Oh, for a heart whiter than snow!

Saviour Divine, to whom else can I go?
Thou Who hast died, loving me so,
Give me a heart that is whiter than snow!
Wrote Commander Booth:
I would tell them that while I was unable to arm

them with many of the advantages of the more wealthy
denominations that while I could give them only a
very few assistants owing to the great demand upon our
forces^that while I could promise them nothing beyond
their bare expenses, yet I knew without fear I could
rely upon them for an unsurpassed devotion to the
God-inspired standards of the emblem of this, the
world's greatest Republic, the Stars and Stripes, now in
the van of the peoples of the earth that I could rely on
them for unsurpassed devotion to the brave men who
laid their lives upon the altar of their country's protec
tion, and that I could also rely upon them for an un
surpassed devotion to that other banner, the Banner of
Calvary, the significance of which has not changed in
nineteen centuries, and by the standards of which, alone,
all the world's wrongs can be redressed, and by the
standards of which alone men can be liberated from all
their bondage.
It was an assertion of what may be called Christian effi
ciencythe value even of secular service to be measured by

the willingness of the servant to sacrifice self to the Gospel.
In the choice of men able to carry out assigned tasks,
Evangeline Booth has always been uncannily guided. It was
Lieutenant-Colonel William S. Barker whom she selected to
lead the Salvationists in France. "If," she would say, "you
want to see Barker at his best, you must put him face to face
with a stone wall and tell him to get through it. No matter
what the cost or toil, hated or loved, he'd get there." And
in mud that the French used, like Portland cement, for
mortar, Barker, with but a single motorcar for kitchen, sleep
ing and headquarters, went at -it. The farms around him had
been there, little changed for centuries, and one styled "the
new house" was two hundred and fifty years old.
The girls when they landed in France were greeted with
garlands, and so steeped in crass ignorance is our western
civilisation, that when War Crys in the French language were
distributed the were astounded at the mention therein
people
of the Christ Crucified Whom
they worshipped in their shell-
ridden cAurches. That was, indeed, a surprise, and the Amer
ican boys also had it coming to them. For the Salvationists
did not butter them up with flattery that they were great heroes
and all that kind of thing. They told them the truth that
they were sinners in the sight of God and were facing
death
and judgement that they needed Salvation that the Redeemer
of mankind had died on the Cross to win for them that Salva
tion. Hundreds of those boys knelt at the penitent form,
cleared the score against their consciences and rose to their
feet humbler, and braver fellows than they had been.
happier
While governments were shattering institutions and homes and
families, the Salvationists were winning souls, speaking and
singing to thousands at a time.
Salvationists when on the warpath are a Scripture-quoting
people and some of their favourite texts sound to outsiders
with
a pietistic ring. But there in France the familiar words were
welded on the anvil of experience into the steel of realism.
All things did actually work together for good to them who
loved God and were called according to His purpose. Who
would have thought it possible that a sentence of William
Booth in the Foundation Deed of the Salvationist Movement
dated 1878 would have been a factor nearly forty years later
in saving young Americans serving their country in France
from folly and vice? Yet so it was. The rule of strict accountancy
imposed by the Founder on the Army meant that the organisa
tion throughout the world was a sensitive instrument of finance
available for immediate use just when it was wanted. There
was no delay, no muddling, an instant and much needed
service.
Here were these boys, most of them oversea for the first
time, lonely, excited and reckless in their ideas. Into their
hands a generous government thrust payments in dollars that
meant wealth in France and the French were quite ready to
help the boys to spend the money. There was French wine
offered as a more hygienic beverage than unfiltered water, and
FRANCE 179
there were French women, practised in their fascinations. The

Salvationists also put in a bid for those dollars and once
handed over to the Army, often without receipt, they were
entered on account in New York, and through a thousand
outposts from coast to coast of theUnited States they were
distributed to the boys' families, their parents, their wives,
their personal credit as savings. It was a system afterwards ex
tended far beyond the Army's activities, but the gesture of the
Army coming at the outset was constructive. Not only did it
save the cash, it saved character.
Confidence in the Army's financial rectitude became what
might almost be called a fetish among the troops. Here were
huts where they did not try to sell you cigarettes and chocolate
at a profit, and while you were expected to pay at cost for
what you bought, there was a generous allowance for "jaw
bone" or credit. "Jawbone" was not without limit and the
boys were asked to clear up their debts, not as a matter of
pressure but of honour, and with few exceptions they did
it.
One hut would receive sums of money on account of obliga

tions incurred in other huts, and with an apparently easy-going
goodwill the Army's funds were respected.
A personal anecdote may be pardoned that illustrates the
effect of this. I was discussing literary business with a well-
known Roman Catholic layman and I told him frankly that I
was not of his Church. 'Tve always believed in the Salvation
Army," was his somewhat unexpected reply, and I asked him
why. "The war," he answered and he told me the story. He
was in the south of France and had been granted a fortnight's
furlough. But his pay had not come and he wanted the money
to pay for a trip to the Riviera. He went to organisations
much larger than the Army and with far greater resources
but one by one they turned him down. So disconsolate he
wandered into an Army hut and drank coffee. A man was
serving and he said: "Son, what's the trouble? Has your girl
thrown you over?"
He said there was no use talking about it nothing could
be done anyway. However, the Salvationist managed to get at
the business the boy wanted a hundred dollars and nobody
would advance it to him.fWithin a minute the money was in
his hands and pulling out his wallet, he wanted to give his
identifications. No, that was not required. Just return the
hundred any Army hut when the pay arrives. Go
dollars to
to the Riviera and have a good
time.^
A week or two later the soldier handed over one hundred
and twenty dollars to the friend behind the counter. "What's
this?" he was asked. "You owe us a hundred and that's all you're
going to pay."
"When I'm back home/' said that boy, "you'll get it in
your kettles."
This was by no means an isolated incident. Wrote Colonel
Barker from France on May 13th, 1918:
One thing we did recently will interest you. Major

Roosevelt's Battalion had not been paid for a long time
and there was a prospect of their not getting any money
until after their turn in the trenches. The men had no
money and felt pretty badly when they could not se
cure anything from a nearby canteen. The Major pre
sented the situation to me and I consented to send up
several thousand francs worth of supplies which the
Major sold to them on credit. This was a very unusual
proceeding and they had not heard of anyone doing it
before. The impression made was, of course, very favour
able. Later on when they did get their pay they re
funded the money but you may be sure that they will
not get over talking of the Army's generosity for a long
time to come.
In London it was very astonishing. They were quite sure

that the American Salvationists would never be permitted by
the military authorities to erect a hut. But somehow or other
Colonel Barker obtained an interview with General Pershing
and the necessary facilities were granted. Evangeline Booth
would not have been her own human self if she had not been
pleased about it. It should be made clear that Salvationists of
military age were drafted like other men into the United
States forces and sought no immunity. It was only when the
work in France had proved its value that some Salvationists
were released by the military authorities themselves to under
take this special and often dangerous service.
During World War I the Red Cross and the YJVLC.A.
FRANCE 181
made appeals for money In the United States to which the

response of the public was overwhelming. But the Salvation
Army as the Cinderella of the helpful agencies had to be
cautious in its advertising of what was going on lest the military
authorities should block the work. It was only after President
Wilson, Secretary Baker and other authorities had written
endorsements of the enterprise that the newspapers began to
comment on the matter, and the real recognition came with
the return of the "boys" themselves.
Any prejudice th^re may have been against the Army
at the outset was allayed somewhat when General Pershing con
ferred on the Salvationists a military uniform, with epaulettes
plainly declaring who they were, and their readiness to share
the worst with the boys was unanswerable. Officers would
suggest that the hard-pressed Salvationists should take some
ease in more comfortable quarters but it was no use. Their
place was with the private soldier and as one of the girls put
it, **We can die with the boys but we cannot leave them." On
one desperate occasion their unit was ordered ahead and no

permits were available for the Salvationists. The girls hid
themselves in a covered supply wagon and were unseen until
it reached the firing line. Said one of the boys, "They'll be wait
ing for us when we get to hell to try and save us."

Quarters were so scarce in one place that the girls had
to take their meals at the soldiers' mess. The boys laid the
table for them as well as they could and served them with
the best of everything provided in their rations. Nothing was
said about it but 'cuss words were taboo. One fellow, not
knowing of the situation, blew in with the usual vocabulary
on his lips. He received a blow on the jaw that felled him to>
the ground. It was not long before the boys began to take over
chores associated with the Army's huts. Wood was delivered
ready chopped and so on. The whole enterprise became co
operative, at any rate, in spirit.
There was the tale of the silver ring, and it also was true.
A boy could not break from drink and one of the girls prayed
with him until it seemed to be no use to pray any longer. At
last, he drew from his chest a silver ring, worth possibly thirty
cents, and cut it from the cord by which it hung. "It belonged
to my mother," he said, "and you must wear it for me." The
girl demurred but he insisted only the thought of the
Salva
tion Lassie wearing his mother's ring would keep him straight
when tempted. She warned him that at the first hint of his
drinking again the ring would be returned to him. But it was
never returned. And by that strange reverence for a good and
unapproachable woman the man was restored to his true self,
and incidentally to a grateful wife who was glad to have him
back.
It was no exaggeration to say that the work of the Army
proceeded to the very gates of hell. The perpetrator of

an
atrocious murder was sentenced to be hung because shooting
was too good for him. His violence was such that he had to
be chained hand and foot. Chaplains visited him but he would
have nothing to do with them. On the morning of his execu
tion he asked for anyone from the Salvation Army who might
be around. One called the Little Major came to the crouching
figure and said, "You must be in great trouble, brother."
"You know what I'm here for and you call me brother,"
snarled the fellow, "why?"
"Because I know a great deal about the suffering of Christ
on the Cross all because He loved you so. Why shouldn't I
call you brother?"
The man broke down and was reconciled to God. "Christ
has pardoned me," he said. "Now I can die like a man."
j
With a smile on his face he went to his doom, thanking
the military authorities for the way they had treated him and
also thanking the Salvation Army. Major Roosevelt, who had
watched the case, also paid tribute to the Little Major for the
change wrought in an apparently hopeless reprobate.
Evangeline Booth explains all this in one word, training.
Salvationist officers are trained to hardship and trained to
suffering. They are trained in "those (Expert measures which
enable them to handle satisfactorily those who cannot handle
themselves, those who have lost their grip on things, who if
unaided will go down under the high rough tides." On the
one hand, they are trained "to obey orders willingly, and
gladly, and wholly not in part." On the other hand they are
"
trained to meet emergencies of every character to leap into
the breach, to span the gulf, and to do it without waiting to
be told how." There is discipline and there is initiative. Salva-
FRANCE 183
tionists are under rule and they are a rule unto themselves.
Their's is "the finest and most Intricate of all the arts, the art
of dealing ably with human life/'
The finest and most intricate of all the arts as practised
by the trained Salvationist was not without its humour. General
Pershing was suddenly seized by thoughts of his home-town
and he called for an apple pie. His chef from Paris took the
order and, skilled in cuisine, produced a masterpiece which
was everything that cookery should be except that of apple pie.
However there were Salvation Lassies in the neighbourhood and
the commander-in-chief was presented with an apple pie that
he could recognise as such.
Then came that discouraging day when the girls found
that they had nothing to offer the boys but coffee and chocolate.
The weather was wretched and wood for the fire was damp-
But an empty bottle served as a rolling pin, an empty can cut
circles, and a coffee percolator out of commission cut holes
within the circles. Thus was produced the first of the famous
doughnuts, and when flour was needed to meet the demand,
the finest and most intricate of all the arts was again called
into play. Personally, a Salvationist handed in to the com
manding officer a hamper with cake and doughnuts a very
elaborate cake, by the way and there were no more shortages
of supply.
It is all very nice to read about but the cost in sacrifice
of youth, good looks, health will never be appraised. Here
is what one of the girls wrote home:
I must tell you how the days are spent.

Well, We
open the hut at 7. It is cleaned by some of the boys.
Then at 9 we commence to serve cocoa and coffee and
make pies and doughnuts, cup cakes and fry eggs and
make all kinds of eats until it is all you see. Well, you
can think of two women cooking in one day 2500
doughnuts, 8 dozen cup cakes, 50 pies, 800 pancakes
and 225 gallons of cocoa, and one other girl serving it.
That is a day's work in my last hut. Then meeting at
night, and it lasts two hours.
As the fighting became fiercer the girls were there under

fire. Commanding officers laid it down that here was no place
for women to be exposed to sights and sounds of deadly import
and orders were given that the girls must retire. The girls
became mutinous and the word went forth, "Then let them
stay/* and in dugouts and caves where first aid was given to
the wounded, boys, half mad with pain and shock, were tended
and soothed. Many were killed, and there were women who
laid flowers on their graves, who wrote about it to the be
reaved families back home. Over Quentin Roosevelt's resting
place they had a simple ceremony, Commander Evangeline's
wreath being laid by Colonel Barker. At many a mound that
meant so much to those left behind, the singing and pray
ing of the Salvation Army were heard, mingling with music
from the military band, and wherever an enemy German had
been buried near by, the Salvationists walked over to his grave
also and there knelt in prayer for his kith and kin.
Wrote the Commander:
The Salvation Army has no closing hours. "Taps"

sound for us when the need is relieved.
Withthe signing of the Armistice, there was manifest a

feeling that the services and behaviour of Salvationists in
France had been something new in the record of war, that it
should be recognised as such. Messages of appreciation were re
ceived by Evangeline Booth from President Woodrow Wilson,
from Prime Minister Lloyd George, from General Pershing,
from Marshal Joffire, Marshal Foch, ex-President Theodore
Roosevelt, General Leonard Wood and many others who had
seen things at first hand. Marshal Haig's testimony, addressed
to General Bramwell Booth,
put the case thus:
The Salvation Army workers have shown them
selves to be of the right sort and I value their presence
here as being one of the best influences on the moral
and spiritual welfare of the troops at the bases. The in
estimable value of these influences is realised when the
morale of the troops is afterwards put to the test at the
front.
One old officer of the United States Army a hardbitten

regular wrote:
FRANCE 185
I wish every American who stood on street corners
in America and sneered at the work of the Salvation
Army could see what they are doing for the boys in
France.
They do not proclaim that they are here for in
vestigation or for getting atmosphere for War romances.
They have not come to furnish material for Broadway
press agents. They do not wear, 'Oh such becoming
uniforms/ white shoes, dainty blue capes and bonnets,
nor do they frequent Paris tea-rooms where the swanky
British and American officers put up what I like
. . .
about the Salvation Army is that it doesn't cater to

officers. It is for the doughboys first, last and all the
time. The Salvation Army men do not wear Sam Brown
belts; they do as little handshaking with officers as pos
sible.
Whatever the origin of the term, doughboy, it has been

associated in the public mind with Salvationist hospitality.
"I sympathise," said someone of a good cause.
"How nmch do you sympathise?" was the answer. grate A
ful nation decided that sympathy with the Salvation Army
should cost something. For instance, Will Rogers gave a nice
little cut from his radio receipts.
There was received among many letters the following:
Cardinal's Residence,
408 Charles Street, Baltimore.
April 16, 1919

Hon. Charles S. Whitman, New York City.
Honourable and Dear Sir:
I have been asked by the local Commander of the
Salvation Army to address a word to you as the Na
tional Chairman of the Campaign about to be launched
in behalf of the above named organisation. This I am
happy to do, and for the reason that, along with my
fellow American citizens, I rejoice in the splendid service
which the Salvation Army rendered our Soldier and
Sailor Boys during the war. Every returning trooper is
a willing witness to the efficient and generous work of
the Salvation Army both at the front and in the camps
at home. I am also the more happy to commend this
organisation because it is free from sectarian bias. The
man in need of help is the object of their effort, with
never a question of his creed or colour.
I trust, therefore, your efforts to raise $ 13,000,000
for the Salvation Army will meet with a hearty re
sponse from our generous American public.
Faithfully yours,
James Cardinal Gibbons.
"You have mortgages," they said to Evangeline Booth.
She admitted that the Salvation Army had borrowed money on
mortgage.
"How much?" they asked. She mentioned a few millions.
"You have plans for extending the work," they suggested.
Yes, she conceded. They had such plans.
"How much?" She hinted at a few more millions.
"All right," they said, "leave it to us."
Governors issued proclamations, mailmen were authorised
to act as collectors, and there were
special parades. theOn
steps of the Treasury by Wall Street, a stove was set andup
Evangeline Booth cooked a doughnut which was sold by
auction for $5,000 amid cheers and laughter. Then
began a
parade along Fifth Avenue led by the Commander and Gen
eral Vanderbilt, holding between them a clothes basket into
which were thrown bills and checks the only ticker
tape
allowed on a lucrative occasion. The estimate had been a drive
for the $13,000,000 mentioned by Cardinal Gibbons. But the
nation added a few dollars for good measure and the sum
actually received ran around $15,000,000.
Gratifying incidents followed the Army's record in France.
At the banquet in New York to King Albert of Belgium on his
visit to the United
States, Evangeline Booth was the only
woman present and the King thanked her with special em
phasis. On the Red Cross Column in Washington appeared
this:
To Commander Evangeline Booth and the Women of

the Salvation Army
They went where they were needed,
They did what they could,
They gave what they had,
And of such is the Kingdom of Heaven,
A grateful Tribute from John Barton Payne.
FRANCE 187
At Madison Square Garden there was the horse-show and
it happened that the Prince of Wales was the guest of the na
tion. The interest of Evangeline Booth In horses was widely
known and she was invited to receive the Prince on his arrival
at the great building. The entrance was lined with Salvation
Army girls in bonnets and uniforms between whose ranks the
Prince walked with the Commander at his side. On reaching
the royal box Edward, by one of those gestures of which he was
a master, brought forth thunders of cheers by himself setting
a chair for Evangeline Booth, who remained at his side during
his presence at the performance.
In October 1919, Evangeline Booth was awarded the Dis
tinguished Service Medal by President Wilson. The citation
was as follows:
For exceptionally meritorious and distinguished

service as Commander of the Salvation Army in the
United States. She has been tireless in her devotion to*
her manifold duties. The contribution of the Salvation
Army toward winning the war is conspicuous, and the
results obtained were due in a marked degree to the
great executive ability of its Commander.
In 1927 the tenth anniversary of the entrance of the

United States into World WarI the American Legion de
cided to celebrate in Paris. Thousands of veterans crossed the
ocean and they carried with them Evangeline Booth as their
orator and their emblem. To the French she was already
known. There was the other day when she visited the tomb
of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe. She had
been warned that religious rites at the national shrine were
forbidden but there was an awkward silence when it seemed
as if somebody ought to say something. With the gendarmes
at attention Evangeline Booth stepped forward and they won
dered what would happen. She said that she would like to
follow the custom of the organisation to which she belonged
and from a full heart she poured forth a prayer. The gendarmes
treated her as i she were a creature from another world. Even
Clemenceau, the old Tiger of France, was visited in his lair by
Evangeline Booth and talked with her of goodness in the
world, sheathing his claws of cynicism in the velvet o courtesy
a sceptic but a gentleman.
The great thanksgiving was held in the Cathedral of
Notre Dame and Evangeline Booth was invited to attend. She
arrived at the church and was drawn aside by officers into
a side room. There she was welcomed by Foch and Pershing
who greeted her with a surprising suggestion. They would like
her to march between them up the central aisle towards the
high altar. Many had been the historic scenes enacted in that
ancient edifice the Feast of Reason, the marriage of one
Napoleon and the coronation of another but here was some
thing new to history. The Salvationist leader, clad not in her
bonnet but in the hat and "very very warm" uniform designed
for Salvationists in France by General Pershing, marched be
tween a marshal of France and a four-star general of the
United States. And she bore herself bravely.
Few who watched her had the least idea that this day
of splendour was as sad a day as she had ever spent in her
strangely unaccountable career. For she was to cross from
France to England where she was to be greeted by cold dis
approval. That she and her brother Bramwell should gather
the Army's stalwarts into the Albert Hall was not to be thought
of, and an occasion of legitimate Hallelujah was allowed to pass
by in ominous silence. What did happen, though few were

aware of it at the time, was a heart to heart talk between
Evangeline and the General at Headquarters on which more
will have to be said. With distress for her companion she re-
crossed the ocean to the United States.
There was an unexpected sequel to all this which indi
cates what the name of the Salvation Army has come to mean
in France. From the year 1928 onwards the Salvation Army
advocated the abolition of the dreaded penal colony on Devil's
Island. In 1933 the Army was authorised by the French Gov
ernment to undertake a programme of rehabilitation on the
island a work which happened to synchronise with the Gen
eralship of Evangeline Booth to be dealt with later. In 1938
shipment of convicts to the island was discontinued, and by
August, 1947, no fewer than 2386 of the prisoners had been
returned by the Army to their families and friends. Out of
2000 of the repatriated after an interval, only three had com-
FRANCE 189
mitted a further crime. Some twenty others had been arrested
but only on a technical offence namely, in most cases, return
ing to the scene of their original crime which is forbidden by
a regulation for the ending of which the Salvationists were
asking. For victims of Devil's Island who were too far gone
to be brought home, the Army
organised institutions where a
merciful care was substituted for the former regime.
1O
HIGH COUNCIL
day will come," said Pierpont Morgan,

"when
bankers will live in glass houses/' For the best part of a
Whatever
century that has been the fate of the Salvation Army*
befalls the organisation, however trivial, has been worth a
paragraph in the press, and

if the paragraph suggested trouble,
headlines were a certainty. Especially has that been the destiny

of the Booths, and an impression has been created that they
are a sensitive and quarrelsome family, always in some kind
of a dissension, whatever might be the larger interests of the
Salvationist Movement. The fact is, of course, that they have
worn themselves out, day after day, serving the public, and
tha& their occasional differences of opinion, however acute,
have not destroyed their contribution as a whole to the com
munity. They may not always have worked together
in the
same organisation but this does not mean that they stopped
working.
The crowds that gathered to see and hear Evangeline
Booth on public occasions saw a trim alert figure, sensitive to
impressions, even restless at times
when waiting her turn to
speak, but filled with an inspired eloquence as she set forth
the Gospel of which she was an accredited ambassador. Little
did they imagine that behind this honour and glory, as some
of them considered it to be, lay a hinterland of incessant re
sponsibility through which the Commander

had to make her
way with a mingled courage and caution that tested her highly
strung and impatient temper to the uttermost. Deeply dis

turbed by perplexities and distressed by pain on account of
190
HIGH COUNCIL 191
others, she wrestled with problems, personal, legal and ecclesi
astical, on which depended the future of the Salvation Army as
an international organisation.
This is a rough and tumble world, and the Salvation
Army, a religion of the people, by the people, for the people,
has always had to stand, chin up, on the pavement where men
and women say what they think, however it sounds. Evangeline
Booth was exposed to a peculiarly brusque insinuation that
she was making trouble for her brother, Bramwell, because she
wanted herself to hold his high office of General. This kind
of talk is reflected in certain letters and it even
got into print.
It was ignored by Evangeline Booth under severe criticism
accompanied by whispering campaigns she remained silent, and

nor until these pages were written has there been any state
ment of the facts. Even so, only those facts are stated that are
clear within the record and essential to a reasonable view of
what happened.
When
*........
General Superintendent of the Christian Mission,
William Booth was obsessed by the desperate emergencies of
an unredeemed mankind. England was in sore need of what
he had to offer, and his eager spirit rebelled against delays
arising out of discussions with others. "Fancy the Russians
having a committee to carry on their war!" he wrote in 1877
when Czar and Sultan were fighting it out.
As a former Methodist he had been brought up in the
tradition of John Wesley's Legal Hundred on which model
he had based a "Conference" for the mission. But in the
Conference he was sometimes outvoted. He even lost a motion
that members of the movement must refrain from the use
of alcoholic liquors save under doctor's orders. "I am deter
mined," he wrote, "that evangelists in the Mission must hold
my views and work on my lines," He abolished the Confer
ence, therefore, and assumed sole personal control of the
spiritual and social enterprise.
Strong action, you say. Yes,
but without it would have been no Salvation Army. It
there
occurred when Evangeline Booth was in her twelfth year and
quite too young to be consulted over the situation.
The Army as it developed did not any longer consist
alone of evangelism at the street corner. It received gifts of
money. It acquired property. It had to render unto Caesar the
things that are Caesar's as well as rendering to God the things

that are God's. It became imperative that the position of
William Booth, actual and prospective, should be put upon
a permanent legal foundation, and thus was initiated a course
of events which brought the Army into touch with a Master
of the Rolls, a Lord Justice, various judges of the High Court,
two Lord Chancellors, two Prime Ministers, a Viceroy of
India and other dignitaries, with the Imperial Parliament say
ing the final word. About simple people praising God for
salvation in Christ, there was found to be an importance that
the highest in the land could not overlook.
We see the General Superintendent of the Christian Mis
sion making his way across the quiet squares of the Inns of
Court in the City of London. He was accompanied by a
young man, his son and successor as General of the Salvation
Army, William Bramwell Booth. They found themselves in
the chambers of a lawyer, still in private practice, who later
as Lord Cozens-Hardy was to be a Master of the Rolls and,
as it was affectionately remarked, the ugliest little judge on
the bench. There sat Cozens-Hardy behind a table piled with
papers, and having just come in from court, still wearing a
wig grey with dust. About this sudden contact between Law
and Gospel there was thus a touch of the picturesque.
The Founder expressed his wishes and there was a careful
conversation in the course of which Cozens-Hardy became in
creasingly restive. At length, he blurted out witfi. some acerbity,
"Mr. Booth, you want me to make you a Pope, and I do
not think it can be done."
Never at a loss for humour, the Founder retorted,
"Well, Mr. Cozens-Hardy, I am sure that you will get as
near to it as you can."
The outcome of this interview was the Foundation Deed
of the Christian Mission or Salvation Army dated 1878. Gen
eral Booth was to hold his office for life. He was to be sole
custodian and administrative trustee of all
properties owned
by the Army in Great Britain. One condition to this trust was
added at William Booth's suggestion. He must present regular
and certified accounts of the money for which he was respon
sible, and at the very outset of the Army's existence there was
HIGH COUNCIL 193
thus ordained the strict audit which is a rule and a tradition
of the Army throughout the world.
In the quaint legalities of the Foundation Deed of 1878
we catch a glimpse of the Army's obscure but interesting
origin, a disused Quaker graveyard we see how amid the
smoke and shadows of that Whitechapel that had long ceased
to be either white or a
chapel but had become with the
progress of civilisation the scene of exploits by Jack the Ripper
with his knife for murdering women how the tent was raised
by the said William Booth how "a number of people were
formed into a community for the purpose of enjoying religious
fellowship, and in order to continue and multiply such efforts
as had been made in the tent to
bring under the Gospel those
who were not in the habit of attending any place of worship
by preaching in the open air, in tents, theatres, music halls
and other and by holding other religious services and
places,
meetings," There was also a statement of the Army's beliefs,
bold, clear and dogmatic as any creed or confession then in
existence, which, unchanged, is in force to this day, no em
barrassment to anyone whether in or out of the Army, and
for a simple reason. The crew of a lifeboat on its mission of
rescue has no time or inclination to wrangle over rules of
navigation. Those ,rules have become instinct, and nothing
matters save pulling for the shore.
Over one detail, as it seemed time to be, there was
at the
a certain curious and academic interest. How
was the General
to appoint his successor? Something had to be done about that
and William Booth's method of getting rid of the embarrass
ment was as masterly as it was ingenious. A General, as soon
as possible after assuming office, was to take a piece of paper.
On this paper he was to write one of two things. Either he was
to write the name of his successor or he was to write "the
means which are to be taken for the appointment of a suc
This paper was to be enclosed in a sealed envelope
cessor."
and handed to the Army's solicitor. It was to be opened on the
death of the General "or upon his ceasing to perform the duties
of the office."
A careful reading of the Foundation Deed thus establishes
two facts which, amazing to relate, have been largely over
looked. First, there never was the idea that a General should
hold office of necessity until death. He could "cease to perform
the duties of the office" during his lifetime. Secondly, there
never was the idea that of necessity he must name his succes
sor. He could indicate "means" of making that appointment
other than such nomination. Under the Foundation Deed a
General might refer the choice of his successor to the Privy
Council or to a plebiscite of Salvationists throughout the
world. For that Queen's Counsel, Cozens-Hardy, when at
work, was no fool, nor was William Booth without his full
share of foresight and discernment. What was made clear,
was that the decision to retire, to name a successor or to
indicate means of appointing that successor lay within the
discretion of the General in office. In any of these ways he
was free to act and the duty of action was thus laid on him.
That William Booth intended his dictatorship to last for
all time is hardly borne out by the record. Repeatedly he
would say, "What I have done, I can undo/' and he said these
words, among others, to his daughter, Evangeline Booth. Not
that it was she who raised any of the questions involved. She
was, when that happened, thousands of miles away from Inter
national Headquarters first, in Canada and afterwards, in the
United States. The person who suddenly stepped into the
picture was s William Ewart Gladstone, the most impressive
statesman of his- day, four times Prime Minister under Queen
Victoria, a scholar of Oxford and leading churchman, who, in
dignified retirement, was awaiting his resting place in West
minster Abbey.
In December, 1896, William Booth was the guest of Glad
stone at his country seat, Hawarden in North Wales. One of
these great men was in his eighty-eighth yearthe other was
twenty years his junior and they met in Gladstone's library,
known as the Temple of Peace, where they were surrounded
by the many thousands of carefully selected books which, no
less carefully annotated, embodied the experience of mankind.
By a coincidence, as we have seen, the General strongly sup

ported Gladstone over the Armenian atrocities.
In the deep clear voice that had swayed cabinets and
parliaments for half a century, and with the grave old world
courtesy which was at once reassuring and difficult to resist,
Gladstone confessed to amazement over the farflung organisa-
HIGH COUNCIL 195
tion of the Salvation Army. How, he asked, did the General
maintain so strong a hold over free men and women working
1
at points so distant as the Antipodes?

William Booth explained the system under which the
Army was operated, the annual budgets, the visits of his per
sonal representatives to remote stations and the policy of
terminable appointments extending as a rule for no more
than five years. That, of course, was the item of policy which,
as we have seen, proved too hard for the acquiescence of the
Ballington Booths.
Gladstone was much impressed. With gracious tact and in
a casual manner he enquired of the General how his successor
would be appointed, and William Booth told him about the
procedure o the sealed envelope which has been made clear,
A very unusual arrangement, was Gladstone's comment. Even
the Pope had no such power to determine the succession to
the Pontificate. For each succeeding Pope was chosen by the
College of Cardinals summoned for that purpose. And Glad
stone asked a further question.
What would be the position if a General, let us say, lost
his faith and became a heretic? Was there any provision for
removing an unworthy or inactive General? The Founder
had been quite too busy and sure of himself to spare a thought
for possibilities so remote from the work in hand. He ad
mitted that the point had been overlooked, and with some
insistence Gladstone mentioned warning examples of the kind
of thing that had occurred during the progress of Christendom.
The General had his answer. He was a trustee and so
would be his successors. If a trustee fails in his trust, he can
be removed by the courts. A very cumbrous method of pro
ceeding, was Gladstone's comment, and it was based on cases
in ecclesiastical courts that had been protracted and expensive.
Surely there should be some less difficult way of dealing with
such a contingency than resource to civil law. He referred
again to tbe College of Cardinals in Rome and suggested that
within the Salvation Army some such body might be found
useful*
The Founder was quite too big a man to resent construc
a manner so respectful and sympathetic,
tive advice offered in
and backed by so large a weight of knowledge and experience.
He sought the assistance of three constitutional lawyers. They
were Asquith, afterwards Prime Minister, Haldane, afterwards
Lord Chancellor, and Sargent, afterwards a Lord Justice. They
had to break the news to him that what a man has done, for
instance, marriage he may not be able to undo. The Founda
tion Deed of 1878, drafted by Cozens-Hardy and signed by a
stroke of William Booth's pen, was law until changed by a
higher authority than the Founder, that is, Parliament. The
only question was whether any point had been overlooked in
the Deed which might be filled in without altering its other
provisions. Such a supplementary deed, therefore, was drafted,
and a word must be said as to its terms.
Two clauses dealt with a number of contingencies un-
soundness of mind, mental or physical infirmity, bankruptcy
or insolvency, dereliction of duty, notorious misconduct or
"other circumstances/* but neither of these clauses concerns
this outline. For neither clause was ever invoked. There was,
however, a third provision according to which the Chief of
Staff with four other Commissioners or seven Commissioners
without the Chief of Staff might call together a High Council
consisting of the whole body of Commissioners and Territorial
Commanders. By a majority of three-fourths this High Council
was empowered to adjudicate a General "unfit*' and remove
him from office. A General so removed by .a High Council
could not resume office or appoint his successor. The sealed
envelope cqntaining his signed wishes would become null and
void and it would be for the High Council itself to elect a
new General, -afterwards dissolving its own existence.
Two further provisions were included in the supplemen
tary deed as drafted. First, a new General must sign the deed
within forty-eight hours after taking office. Secondly, a Gen
eral in office could only change the terms of the deed with the
consent of two out of three of the Army's Commissioners and,
even so, the change, so proposed, must not infringe on the
provisions of the original Foundation Deed of 1878.
For seven years or more William Booth carried the above
draft deed around with him, showing it during his travels to
responsible officers whom he met in various parts of the world.
Finally, the Deed Poll of 1904 as it came to be known, was
HIGH COUNCIL 197
signed with the utmost solemnity and approved by an Interna

tional Congress meeting in London
already described. That
Congress was attended by Evangeline Booth. Otherwise she
had no personal part in these legalities, except as a high officer
of the Army among other high officers. The whole
proceeding
was so unanimous as to be regarded almost as a matter of form,
nor in available correspondence did Evangeline appear to
allude to it. She was occupied with other matters.
During his lifetime the Founder, William Booth, had
addressed "counsels" to his son, Bramwell. The wording to
those "counsels" indicates that the idea was for him to "name
his successor" nor does there
appear to be any direct allusion
to the alternative provision in the Foundation Deed of 1878
enabling a General to indicate "means" of choosing his succes
sor, and so avoiding a direct nomination. It will come as a
surprise to many Salvationists that in these "personal counsels"
the Founder wrote, "So far as I at present know the Army, I
think in the first instance your choice should fall on Her
bert . . ." words, of course, that antedated Herbert's leaving
the Army in 1902. Also, we have this paragraph:
Now it will be good if these qualities (of a suitable

General) or any considerable number of them, meet in
the direct heir of the General for the time being. That
is, if the best man for the position happens to be the
son or daughter of the General himself, or should they
meet in any prominent member of the family. But the
General in making his choice of any member of his own
family, must beware of passing over any other Officer,
who, he has reason to believe, would be more suitable
for the position and more acceptable to the holiest, the
wisest and the most energetic Officers and Soldiers in
the Army. He must be impartial. A woman if otherwise
qualified is equally eligible with a man.
The italics are the Founder's.
In 1912, as we have seen, William Booth, Founder of the

Salvation Army, was "promoted to glory" amid the grateful
sorrow of millions. After his obsequies there was enacted one
of those solemnities in which the Army expresses its sense of
responsibility to God and man. Grave and correct, the Army's
which there had
Solicitor produced the sealed envelope about
been so much discussion. He opened this envelope, and drew
forth a paper endorsed:
Appointment of my Successor. William Booth. 21st Au
gust, 1890.
It that the nomination had been made exactly
meant
twenty-two years before. It also meant that it had
been made
during the dying days of Catherine Booth, the Mother of the
Army.
The Solicitor read out a name. It was William Bramwell
Booth, hitherto Chief of Staff who said a few words. "I take
my stand upon the living God," he declared, adding, "my
father's God/' In accordance with the law he signed his accept
ance of the Deed Poll of 1904 providing for his deposition from
the Generalship by a High Council, should circumstances arise
that appeared to necessitate such a proceeding.
The choice of Bramwell was regarded as a foregone con
clusion. "If the entire Army were polled/* the Founder had
written in his "counsel/' "his selection would be unanimously
approved" and there were those who went so far as to suggest
that Bramwell had been the real genius behind the growth of
the Army. That he was a man of the very greatest executive
ability and judgment and deepest consecration is undisputable.
The "counsels" of the Founder included words addressed
to membersof his family. He held that they should "cordially
second the the new General." In a document appar
efforts of
ently undated but echoing the solicitudes of the dying Mother,

we read,,
They (the proceedings of the second General still

to be) will not all meet with your highest approval. They
may not always be such as you would put in action if
you were in his place. Nevertheless you must give him
credit for the best motives and support him with your
influence and co-operation. Have patience with him
he will be sensitive to your criticisms therefore, don't
make unfavourable remarks on his actions, or exag
gerated repetitions may reach his ears, signifying far
more than you intended, thereby not only inflicting
pain on him, but leading to other mischief.
HIGH COUNCIL 199
In such terms did the Founder address his "very dear

children," adding that in case of "serious revolt" within the
Army, they were to be a kind of bodyguard my own para
phrasearound the second General.
When the year 1912 came, it had not worked out that way.
Of the eight children, Emma had been killed in a railway
accident. Ballington, Herbert and Kate had left the Army.
Marian was relieved of responsibility owing to her weak health,
and only three were left. Bramwell himself, Lucy and Evan
geline. It meant that the duty of supporting Bramwell fell in
the main on Evangeline with her worldwide prestige and un
rivalled record of constructive achievement within the Army.
Her correspondence shows that she fulfilled her Father's "coun
sels" with her whole heart and soul. As the Founder had fore
told, some things that General Bramwell did failed to win her
"highest approval." But not a hint of this was allowed to appear
in the press and for years any differences of opinion that arose,
were little suspected, if at all, within the Army itself. From
public discussions Evangeline Booth refrained. Her entire
influence and authority was against them. But as a sister in
affectionate relation with a brother of the same aims and activi
ties she held that it was her duty to say to him from time to
time what the interests of the Army, as she conceived of them,
required to be said what could not conveniently
be said to
the General by anyone else.
The second General's immediate duty was to provide the
Army with a successor in the event of his retirement or death,
and here the narrator, who relies on admitted facts and avoids
is in some difficulty. That he deposited a sealed
speculation,
envelope or several of them in succession with the Army's
Solicitors may be taken for granted. But what the sealed en
velope or envelopes contained, was not disclosed.

The course of
events, however, is inexplicable unless we make three assump
he named an individual. Secondly, that individual

tions. First,
was within his immediate family, wife, son or daughter.
Thirdly, he rejected the provision in the
Foundation Deed of
1878 enabling and, indeed, inviting him to authorise "means"
to be employed after his death whereby what his Father had
called the holiest, the wisest and the most energetic Officers
and Soldiers in the Army "might be associated in the choice of
a third General."
At the conclusion of the First World War Evangeline
Booth had held her command in the United States for fourteen
years. This was about to be three times the term of five years
usual in the case of the Army's Territorial appointments, and
General Bramwell Booth held, therefore, that he was enti
tled to bring her services in America to an end. With this
object in view he visited her in the United States, saying to
her quite bluntly, "You cannot expect to remain at the head
of the organisation (in the United States) all the rest of your
life."
Knowing of his attitude she arranged for him a tour

throughout the country with receptions in which Salvationists
and the public paid him the honours due to his high position.
Under circumstances fairly to be described as exacting, her
behaviour as an officer under the Flag was admittedly irre
proachable. Before the brother and sister parted they spent a
day together at the Algonquin Hotel. It was known in the
inner circles as Black Friday and for twelve hours they talked
it out on tea, toast and boiled rice. The result of the discussion
was inconclusive but it is agreed that a respite for two years
was conceded by General Bramwell.
In 1922 Evangeline Booth went through a severe operation
on her throat. Her tonsils were removed and there was natural
anxiety over the effects on a voice which was a part of her
equipment for service. She was finishing her recuperation
when, on September 15th, the telephone rang and the reporters
arrived. She was informed that the New 'York World had
pub
lished a cable from its correspondent in London announcing
the removal of the Commander from her appointment without
indicating any later sphere of service within the Army. The
information so communicated to her was authentic and con
firmed by International Headquarters where it was thus ad
mitted that one of the Army's leading officers, a daughter of
the Founder, had been in effect asked to "farewell" in a
press
release.
The reporters found Evangeline Booth in great agitation.
She stated that she had received a cable from her brother in
which "no reason for deposing her was given and she knew of
HIGH COUNCIL 201
none." But, she said, "I shall obey the order when the date is
set for me to go," and she had cabled the General for further
information. To her officials she said,
An order has come to me to prepare for my final

farewell to you, to the organisation and to America,
whose people have been so good to me, giving me aid
and encouragement during the eighteen years I have
given my best to the work.
General Bramwell Booth's statement was:
The farewell of Commander Evangeline Booth

from the United States of America had been under
consideration for a number of years, and in the ordinary
course would have taken place some years back. The
war, however, made the change, as it did others, impos
sible. No date has yet been fixed for the Commander's
farewell nor has any arrangement been made for a
successor as head of the business corporation. shallWe
in the latter be guided by the Commander's recom
mendation.
It is not General Booth's intention to redistribute
the United States. Should the future extension of our
work in the vast areas of the United States make it neces
sary, other commands will no doubt be created. The
three Commissioners will be responsible direct to the
General in the same way as Commander Evangeline
Booth has hitherto been, and as are all Commissioners
in all parts of the world.
There began to be. protests against the Commander's dis

"To remove Miss 'Booth/' wrote Myron T. Herrick, the
missal.
war ambassador of the United States in Paris, "would be as
disastrous to the people of the country as to the Salvation Army
in America." This removal, declared the Elks in Chicago, will
"directly offend the intelligence of our more than 800,000
membership, as it will, I am sure, every friend of the Salvation
Army in the United States of America/' Vice-President Mar
with President Wilson, wrote a grave letter
shall, lately in office
of protest. On the one hand, the Commander was trying to
pour oil on the troubled waters by writing:
A Proclamation to her officers,
I stand by our present General. . . . Do not feel
uneasy. Be restful. Let me remind you the General's
statement said there is no date fixed for my leaving
America.
So they were to go on with their work. On the other hand,

a cable was signed by supporters of the Army and sent to
Bramwell who was left in no doubt that if Miss Booth were to
be succeeded by three officers with limited powers responsible
directly to Headquarters in England, "there would result a
diminution in the popular interest for the Salvation Army
and its work." This message was signed* by:
Allison V. Armour Helen Gould Shepard
Joseph W, Harriman John Wanamaker
Otto H. Kahn Felix M. Warburg
George Gordon Battle Edwin Gould
FinleyJ. Shepard Herbert Hoover
.
Henry W. Taft Thomas R. Marshall
John H. Finley Adolph Ochs
Myron T. Herrick Frank L. Polk
Bishop W. T. Manning Rabbi Joseph Silverman
William G. McAdoo Samuel Untermeyer
"I am taking no part," wrote Evangeline Booth on Octo

ber 31, "in any statement or protest that may be sent to General
Booth."
It was not with ease or
promptitude that her brother,
Bramwell receded from a position that had become impossible.
On December 3, 1922, he cabled:
I have been informed by my
representatives in the
United States of America that the statement in the New
York World on September 15 has been interpreted by a
number of people as being an official intimation for my
sister, Commander Evangeline Booth to farewell from
her present command. Those, however, who
carefully
read that statement will remember that it did not con
tain such intimation, but referred to the
programme for
future developements in the United States
upon which
I had fully conferred with the Commander two
years
ago.
HIGH COUNCIL 203
Certainly such information as deciding definitely

upon the Commander's removal would not have been
conveyed to her through the medium of the public
press. As, however, I am given to understand some un
certainty still exists upon this matter, I deem it advise-
able to say that I have had no thought of an immediate
farewell. The Fall of 1925 was the earliest
contemplated
by me but nothing definite has been decided nor will
be until I return from my campaign in India, for which
country I embark today.
So ended an upset that ought not to have happened.

The prestige of General Bramwell Booth was shaken. The
challenging obedience of Evangeline Booth under sudden prov
ocation raised her still higher in the esteem of the Army. And
amid it all it was regrettable that her natural feelings should
have been so deeply stirred, for wounds are wounds, and scars
are scars.
The crisis of 1922 was followed by a period of subdued
unrest in the Salvation Army. A
firm friend of the Army and
one who knew its affairs from A to Z was Fred A. Mackenzie,
the war correspondent on The Daily News in London who for
many years had been as it happens my friend and colleague.
When the revolt broke forth he wrote a little book called The
Clash of the Cymbals in which he put the situation thus:
a regiment rises against its Colonel, the Colonel

If
is "There are no bad soldiers, only bad of
to blame,
ficers," is an accepted axiom in military rule. ... I
worked under one of the biggest and most successful
executives in the world . .one of the departmental
.
chiefs who had brought his division of the undertaking

to a high degree of success never went further . . and
.
finallyhe disappeared. Someone asked the man at the

head the reason. "So-and-so/* said he, "had the most
discontented staff of any in my employ. They were un
happy, and he had frequent changes. Such a man is no
good to me, even if he does double his output in a
couple of years/*
The Army does not consist of pious milksops. It is a

virile, courageous, outspoken comradeship of men and women
in touch with the grim realities of life, death and judgement.
Free and sincere was the conversation of these soldiers of the
Cross, and they did not mind who heard them. Hence, the
coining of the word, "freezer," which was suggested in the case.
If an officer criticised the General or his family he was sent to
the "freezer" and left there to cool his tongue.
It is no part of this task to examine the evidence for and
against the things that were said about the General and his
immediate family. enough that they who said them risked
It is
their position in the Army, nor was it in the United States
where Evangeline Booth was in command that the test case
arose, but at International Headquarters in London. The
literary secretary of Bramwell Booth was George Carpenter,
a colonel by rank whose fidelity to his chief was such that for
years he never left the office until he was sure of the General
having departed for the day. Colonel Carpenter was known as
the very incarnation of administrative rectitude.
In 1927 he was deeply disturbed by some of the complaints
circulated about Bramwell Booth and his household. In the
most respectful manner he sought an opportunity of speaking to
the General and bringing the gossip to his attention. Carpenter
lost his appointment and was sent back to Australia where he
was given the position that he had held twenty-two years be
fore. He w^s put into the "freezer" and there is no doubt over
what was thought about it in Great Britain. A
crowd of officers
gathered at St. Pancras Station in London to give the Colonel
a send-off, They signed their names in a book of friendship
which was handed to him. In later years the demoted officer
was elected to be the fifth General of the Salvation Army.
Evangeline Booth was, of course, in New York, not Lon
don. But she was well aware of what was going on in the Army
throughout the world. Like others she received and read the
pamphlets.
They stirred within her a special sense of obligation, and
it is best that this should be defined in her own words. St. John
Ervine, the author, was at the time writing a life of William
Booth, God's Soldier^ which contains much interesting material
laboriously collected. When the book appeared, however, it
was found that he had added an "Epilogue" which included
criticisms of Evangeline Booth. Following her usual policy of
HIGH COUNCIL 205
letting things pass, she made no But she did consult her
reply.
legal adviser, Samuel Untermeyer, among the most distin
guished attorneys of his day, to whom on June 2nd, 1933, she
wrote a definitive statement of her
position during the crisis
that was arising.
She acted, when at long length she did act, under a sense
^
of "obligation." It was not
only that she was "appealed to from
all over the world to
bring about a change" in the Army's
system of government. A personal responsibility had been laid
on her by her father, William Booth, the Founder of the Salva
tion Army:
Then, too, my father had talked to me as he had
talked to no other concerning dangers involved in the
position of my brother and his family, although of
these I could never speak except to my brother himself,
which I did.
loved Bramwell dearly and he loved me, as proved
I
by volumes of affectionate letters between us which are
in my possession. Repeatedly he told me that I both
spoke and wrote too highly of him.
What happened "more and more as the years went by"

was that Bramwell was "encouraged ... to look upon the
Army as a dynasty which was to descend to his children; and
more and more the Army all around the world sensed this,
with all its tragic dangers/*
This, in part, was Evangeline Booth's statement of the
position as she saw it, and repeatedly in conversation she has
expressed her sense of duty to her father's anxieties. But, dur
ing most of the year, 1927, she maintained her prolonged
silence. Not by a syllable did she intimate to the Army and the
public whatever it was that she was thinking, and any sugges
tion against the prestige of her brother as General was at once
discouraged. It was not until October 11, that she made her
first move and even then it was strictly confidential.
She had attended the post-war celebrations of the Ameri
can Legion in Paris as already described and was returning to
New York by way of London. It was not her fault that no
opportunity was presented of addressing the many who would
have liked to hear her voice in some adequate building. It was
deemed to be best for the Army that she should receive no
welcome from those who would have rejoiced to give it. But
she did call on her brother as General at International Head
views. The conference at
quarters and shared with him her
which witnesses were present was painful, and at its conclu
sion, she handed to Bramwell a paper stating her views. The
brother and sister then parted, never again to meet on earth.
Deeply as they differed over what was due to the Army, they
continued to be one in faith and in that affection which, how
ever wounded, is everlasting.
Those were the days when people were still talking about
Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points. Evangeline Booth made it
Fifteen Points. She hammered the inner significance of the
business as if it were a nail. In effect Salvationists did not mind
what sacrifices they made for Salvation. But it was a different
matter when those sacrifices had to be made for a hereditary
succession reserved for one branch of the Founder's family
this, after other children of the Founder, for one reason or
another, had been "estranged." The Fourth Point read as
follows:
It is almost universally hoped that the present

General will be the last to be appointed by his pred
ecessor.
The Seventh Point elaborated the Fourth Point:
To have the High Council or some such body

within the Army select the succeeding Generals would
provide a safeguard for the future which would be of
great strength to the organisation, and do more to elicit
and maintain the confidence of our own people than
anything else, and this would not in any way interfere
with the purposes of the Founder.
According to the opinion submitted in these pages Evan

geline Booth actually understated her argument. For she wrote:
If other religious bodies can change their constitu

tions it must be clear tliat the Salvation Army can. .
. ,
HIGH COUNCIL 207
on which her characteristic comment was that "where there's
a will, there's a way." But by the Foundation Deed of 1878,
as we have seen, no change in the constitution was necessary,
Bramwell could have done all that his sister wanted by a stroke
of the pen. For the Foundation Deed empowered and, indeed,
invited him to insert in the sealed envelope, either a name o
his successor, or "means" by which his successor might have
been appointed. Had he done this, the whole trouble might
have been abated.
The Fifteen Points were not intended to be a manifesto.
They were kept strictly confidential and few in the Army
knew anything about them. It was not until November 24th
an interval of six weeks that BramwelFs answer was forth
coming. It was an uncompromising negative and it was only
at that late date that Evangeline took what undoubtedly was
the serious step of circulating the correspondence among the
Commissioners and Territorial Commanders of the Army, and
even so the documents were private to officers as a whole.
That sentiment was aroused is quite true. But .not in the
main by anything written by Evangeline Booth. It was a sen
tence in her brother's answer that provoked the Army's higher
command. The sentence has to be read carefully. Wrote Bram
well:
And indeed if I felt it desirable to exercise with the
consent of the Commissioners the powers of alteration
of the Supplementary Deed of 1904, it would rather
be with the aim of protecting the essential features of
the Foundation Deed (of 1878) than otherwise.
In plain terms this meant one thing. The Deed Poll of
1904 which had been adopted as a safeguard o the Army
against unsuitabilities in a General might be weakened
and the
Army might be deprived of that protection. The fact that at
his assumption of office General Bramwell Booth had solemnly
accepted the Deed Poll of 1904 was ignored. He would ask the
necessary two out of three Commissioners to support him in
upsetting the arrangement made by his father, the Founder,

William Booth, at the instance of Gladstone, and on the advice
of the three outstanding lawyers, Asquith, Haldane and
Sargent.
And in the opinion of International Headquarters in
London be it noted, New York where Evangeline Booth
not,
was stationed Bramwell meant business. It was believed that
the Solicitor of the Army had been called into consultation and
action was taken not, be it repeated, by Evangeline Booth.
There occurred a scene as dramatic as it was painful.
Bramwell Booth had celebrated his seventieth birthday and
was absolutely sure of himself. On Tuesday, March 6th, 1928
he walked into his office as usual. On his table lay a letter and
he opened it. There were nine signatures to the letter, seven
of active commissioners and two of commissioners who had
retired. Among the names appeared Booth-Tucker, formerly
husband of his sister, Emma, and second to none save the
Founder as a stalwart of Salvation.
The letter was couched in respectful and, indeed, affection
ate terms but its significance was clear. The signatories declared
themselves to be in support of Evangeline Booth's Fifteen
Points and they could not consent to any weakening of the
Army's safeguards contained in the Deed Poll of 1904. It
meant that General Bramwell could not expect the two-thirds
majority needed under the Deed Poll of 1904 for any change
in that instrument. He could not make his autocracy absolute.
General Bramwell Booth sat at his desk bowed with grief.
In due course he went to his wife's room and she was surprised
by his appearance. "My darling/* he said, with a touch of the
simplicity that is akin to greatness, "here is trouble." And he
showed her the letter. "Unless I had seen it with my own eyes,"
he exclaimed as he pointed to a name, "I could not have be
lieved it." As the day went on, he would ask, "Why didn't they
speak to me?" not realising, perhaps, how hard that had be
come since the fate of Colonel Carpenter. He had never liked
joint communications in the Army and he tried to break up
this round robin by interviewing the Commissioners
separately.
These efforts were without result. Four days later he appealed
to Evangeline Booth:
I.H.Q.
March 10, 1928.
My Dear Eva,
I have turned for a moment from
preparing a full
reply to your last in order to write you a personal line.
HIGH COUNCIL 209
We seem to be drifting apart and it wounds me to the
quick. Is it inevitable?
I had no idea received yours that you attached
till I
so much importance to the method of appointing suc
ceeding Generals or I would certainly have put before
you some important views especially the dear Gen
eral's thoughts and experiences in dealing with the
matter.
But even though we do not agree on this, can we
not differ without bringing in personal bitterness? You
and I have been very near to one another, we have loved
the same truths and the same work and the same dear
ones who have gone before. Can we not love on to the
end, and for their sakes still be one? Life cannot be so
very long now for either of us. Surely we ought to be
able to avoid what would be such a sorrow to many of
our dear people who love us both and who have worked
hard for the Army and prayed for us.
You will, I am
sure, realise that a great respon
sibility rests upon me. I received it from the dear Gen
eralnay I received it from Godand

if it should be
that, as I conceive it, I am not at liberty to alter its

conditions, do not condemn me or feel to me as a kind
of enemy. Rather pray for me that grace and courage
may be given me to do what God wants and hold up my
hands in every endeavour to keep the idea and plan of
the Army what the dear father wished them to be.
I wish this in sincerity and affection,
(signed) BramwelL
This may be called the "brother letter" of Bramwell

Booth. It was answered in what was known at the time as
Evangeline Booth's "sister letter/* a long communication dated

April 9th, 1928 in which she reviewed the reasons for the
serious position into which the General had allowed himself,
and had been allowed by others around him, to drift. She
ended her letter with a last appeal:
I think I all that a sister can say. And

have said
you may take in the
itkindliness of a brother all that
I have written, that our hearts may be brought together
in the old time devotion.
So concluded the written correspondence between these
two that had lasted for nearly half a century.
Bramwell Booth was worn out by years of overwork. On
May 10th, 1928, he was seen for the last time in public. He
new training college at Denmark
laid the foundation stone of a
Hill in London, and the camera caught a glimpse of him in the
act of unfurling once more the Blood and Fire Flag of the
Salvation Army. From the colourful scene he disappeared into
a final seclusion and the public saw him no more. He was
attended by doctors and surrounded by nurses and a devoted
family who combined with one another in affectionate efforts
to shield him from worrying affairs. The generalship second
to no office in executive stress and strain became a regency.
its
The aspect of the Salvation Army during this trying period
was heroic. No organisation of eager, active jnen and women
of many races and nationalities could have been put to a more
searching test of faith in God. Officers tens of thousands of
them had staked everything youth, marriage, income, out
look on life, purpose on loyalty to a cause which had nothing
to offer in return except what Churchill might have called
"blood, sweat and tears," or less dramatically, hard work on
low pay. The General had been the symbol of their obedience
to the Saviour who had died for them, and many of them owed
their rank to his approval. And now what was to be said? Under
such strains political parties have been sundered and Churches
have been driven into schism. But the Salvationists showed that
they could take it, and not for a day were their services to God
and man in arrear.
For months the improvised regency continued, and
six
inevitably the sealed envelope lying within the locked safe of
the Army's Solicitor became an object of grave speculation.
There appeared to be no doubt in any mind that it meant a
continuance for many years to come of the government of the
Army by the immediate family of General Bramwell Booth.
The succession to the Generalship had now become the
one thing that mattered within the machinery of the Army, and
in November, 1928, there was great uneasiness in London. The
General's health, apparently, had become precarious and at
any moment his long and valuable life might draw to a close.
In that event the sealed envelope would be opened and a new
HIGH COUNCIL 211
General would arise, not elected, not submitted to any kind of
approval, to recall the Founder's words, of the wisest, holiest
and most energetic Officers and Soldiers. It might go very hard
with those who had struggled, as they believed, to extricate. the
Army from such hereditary entanglements.
It was decided that action must be taken. On
November
14th, 1928, seven British Commissioners decided to invoke the
Deed Poll of 1904 which provided for removing a General
from office. They signed the legal requisition calling upon the
Chief of Staff to summon a High Council, and the news was
brought to Commander Evangeline Booth in New York. Her
essentially cautious and conservative mind was somewhat dis
turbed. Bramwell was her brother and both of them were
Booths. "I am a little sorry/* she wrote, "I was not approached
before the Chief of Staff was asked to call the High Council
and my views obtained, but there may ha.ve been developements
of which I am ignorant." So little had she been thinking about
a High Council that in 1925, at any rate, she wrote as if it
might be called by Bramwell and asked by him for a vote of
confidence. Fancy, she had argued, the Founder wanting a
vote of confidence!
Week after week, the old General lay in bed, unaware that
his powers had been brought to an end. It was not until the
end of December, 1928,^ that the doctors adjudged him able to
stand the shock of truth, and someone had to break the news.
His daughter, Catherine, was selected for the duty, and she has
described the scene. It was New Year's Day, 1929. She kissed
him and he said cheerily that he was "on the mend." He then
looked steadily into her eyes and said, "They have called the
High Council." She could not speak. She nodded. "If I die,
Catherine/' he murmured, "remember, there must be no bit
terness. I forgive, you and the others must forgive too. They
want to change the General's (the Founder's) plan, they know
I will never agree."
From all parts of the world Commissioners and Territorial
Commanders made their way to London. They had anxious
hearts withinthem and they left anxious hearts behind them.
For they staked everything they had and everything they be
lieved on the divine mission of the Salvation Army.
The officers on reaching London were greeted with an
address of welcome. It was signed by eighty-one responsible
leaders of the Army in Great Britain who rejoiced at the pros
pect of the "personal and vigorous leadership so necessary to
its maintenance throughout the world." An even more signifi
cant communication came from one hundred and fifty-two
officers in the Women's Social Work over which Commissioner
Catherine Booth presided. "We think you should know," they
wrote, "that we are definitely and decidedly with the Chief of
Staff and the High Council in this crisis." On the other hand,
there was a large sympathy on the part of the public with
General Bramwell Booth whose gracious personality on cere
monial occasions was remembered and, it should be added, his
winning way with officers at meetings for the transaction of
business. It did not seem quite like cricket to turn him out of
his position when he was too ill to defend himself and remem
ber his years of service! To Evangeline Booth, acutely sensitive
to the atmosphere around her, the situation was exquisitely
painful, and in retrospect she would speak of it as a prolonged
nightmare.
At Sunbury on the Thames stood a mansion of red brick
and white stone, Georgian in design with an impressive portico,
which the Army had taken over for purposes far other than
those domestic luxuries for which it had been built. If ever
there were a dignified house of parliament, here it was, and
here on January 8th, 1929, met the High Council amid weather
that was damp, gloomy, chill and English.
The Chairman was Commissioner Hay of Australia, and
the sessions were held in what had been the ball room of the
mansion. It had been stripped of its once lordly curtains and
mirrors, but it was still illuminated by glittering chandeliers
shedding bright light on rows of cane-backed chairs and the
shelf of hymnbooks on the mantelpiece. To the right of the
chairman stood a stout easel carrying the most familiar por
trait of the Founder, William Booth, his bearded face
resting
on a strong governing hand. About his smile, benignant yet
discerning, there was a calm satisfaction. For here were his
cherished children in God, all of them in his uniform, no
novices in service but worn and grey with the battle. On his
own family the Founder also gazed during those long and
HIGH COUNCIL 213
hours of debate. There was his daughter-in-law, Mrs.
difficult
Bramwell Booth, the "Florrie" of that triumphant wedding
when the Mother of the Army was still with them, his grand-
daughters, also present were Commissioners Catherine and
Mary Booth, daughters of Bramwell. His daughters were Com
missioner Lucy Booth-Hellberg and Commander Evangeline
Booth. Four of the family stood firmly for Bramwell. Alone and
misunderstood, Evangeline was associated with what proved
to be a majority of the High Council.
A letterwas received from the absent General. Bramwell
admitted that the Chief of Staff, with his wife, had been acting
for him. He proposed that the regency henceforth should be
vested in the Chief of Staff, his daughter, Catherine, and his
sister, Evangeline, with the possible addition of two high-rank
ing commissioners. "Mrs. Booth," he added, "will stay with

me." The letter also suggested a commission to advise on
changes within the Army.
The letter was tabled without result, and in law no other
course was possible. For the suspended General's authority
within the Army was challenged, and he could not assume the
initiative he outlined which, in any case, was wholly outside his
entire contention as to the Foundation Deed of 1878. But the
reading of the letter was a sudden surprise to Evangeline
Booth, and at the unexpected mention of her name she was
seen to be greatly moved.
The doors of Sunbury Court were closed against the press
but manifestoes swirled around the building like snow in a
blizzard. The War Cry was held to be under the control of the
Chief of Staff acting with the High Council while in session
and when material was found in that publication which in
fringed on the prerogatives of the High Council, the destruc
tion of 20,000 copies of the edition was ordered. After debate
during which Evangeline Booth read her "sister letter" to
Bramwell, a motion was made. In appreciative terms it recog
nised the General's services to the Army. But it set aside his
suggestion that a small council should be chosen to act with
him. It stated that at his advanced age he could not hope to
"recover sufficiently to take up the burden under which he
collapsed." He was requested, therefore, "to co-operate with the
High Council In securing the future welfare of the Army."
The motion was laid on the desk of the presiding commissioner
and signatures were invited.
was a scene scarcely credible in its intensity of emotion.
It
Some officers wept as they signed. For Bramwell had been for
years a dominant factor in their lives. Others could hardly hold
the pen. As the sense of unhappiness became oppressive some
one suggested a hymn and with spontaneous fervour the hall
rang with the strains of the old hymn O God our help in
ages past, which, on so many occasions in England, has brought
courage to hearts and minds. Thus was Bramwell requested to
assist the High Council by a voluntary withdrawal from his
office.
General Bramwell Booth was recuperating at Southwold,
his home on the east coast. A deputation was appointed to wait
on him. For obvious reasons it did not include any member of
the family. A picturesque commissioner was Evangellne Booth's
special friend, Yamamura, of Japan. The journey to Southwold
was tedious and chilly. The Salvationists arrived sick at heart.
But they were received with that gracious hospitality which is
a tradition in the Army, Mrs. Bramwell Booth and her daugh
ter, Olive, giving them a welcome cup of tea. So refreshed they
were ushered into the sick room of their long honoured leader.
The sight of Bramwell lying on his bed was a sad shock.
He was evidently far weaker than they had been led to suppose.
They stood in silence around him while he spoke of "one man
control" and found it difficult to pursue a train of thought. The
documents lay on the bed before him and he murmured,
"I must have a little time. I must have
light to see what
I must do and how I must do it. I have had some trouble in
my soul. God has given me very gracious feelings in the years

gone by. Perhaps he wants me to do without them now!"
Mrs. Booth suggested that he
might pray for his visitors
and their families. The little company knelt as a blessing was
invoked on their various homes. They rose to their feet and in
turn each held his hands and kissed them,
wishing for him in
return the blessings that he had
sought for them. It was a scene
worthy of the nobilities in the Salvation Army. The Commis
sioners returned to the train and found themselves
again in
HIGH COUNCIL 215
London. It was the last time that Bramwel! Booth conferred
with his officers.
The position was now clear throughout the world. The
General had been asked to retire of his own free will and his
answer was awaited. In eighty lands near and distant, the cry
to God was, "Save and bless the General and
keep the Army
unbroken." Then came word from Southwold.
The General wrote that he had consulted his medical ad
visers. They assured him that in a few months he would be
"fully recovered." The request to retire was, he wrote, 'little

less than a threat of
expulsion should I fail to comply with it."
He added,
"I do not want to judge you but it seems to me a strange
thing that I cannot be given time to recover."
Under the circumstances, it was not at all strange. The
High Council was costing daily a sizable sum of public money.
Important were absent from commands that required
officers
their attention. To
keep the issue open for six months on the
chance of a very sick man returning to the prime of life, was
unthinkable.
Feeling was now acute, and it was embittered further by
an unforeseen developement. The High Council was asked to
admit a leading lawyer, William Jowitt, K. C., afterwards Lord
Chancellor in the Government of Prime Minister Attlee. He
would put a case for General Bramwell Booth. The application
was refused. On the Salvationists gathered at Sunbury Court,
%
trained against calling the law against one another, this threat
of legal pressure came as a severe disillusionment. At the time
Commissioner Samuel A. Brengle was, perhaps, the Army's
outstanding exemplar of the spiritual life known as holiness.
He was a man whose whole soul revolted against the mere hint
of controversy within the household of faith, and he had been
for many years among Bramwell Booth's most intimate and
understanding associates. He arose and addressed the High
Council in words that were never forgotten by those who heard
them:
When I was once in Italy I visited a picture gallery,
with a room dark, save for an illurfiinated portrait of
the head of Christ. I treasured memories of that picture
and sorrowed when later I heard that a vandal had
slashed his knife across it. In my heart I long carried a
darkened room, and in it an illuminated portrait of
our General. But when I read the General's letter, this
portrait was slashed.
There was no basis for the suggestion that the High

Council was expelling General Bramwell Booth from the Sal
vation Army.
was now clear that the General would only quit his
It
officeunder compulsion. By the terms of the Deed Poll of
1904 a declaration of simple unfitness to be effective would
require a three-fourths majority. The hundredth anniversary
of the birth of Catherine Mumford, Mother of the Salvation
Army, fell on January 16th, 1928. It was a Wednesday and late
in the: evening the roll was called. So careful was the counting
that the result was only reached after midnight. There were
found to be fifty-five votes for the deposition and eight votes
against. Evangeline Booth voted with the majority. Four of
her kin voted among the eight.
The delegates at Sunbury-on-Thames were worn out by
the excitements and uncertainties of proceedings that touched
them so closely. It was decided, therefore, to adjourn the pro
ceedings until Friday. It was stated in the press, apparently
with authority, that there would be no appeal by Bramwell
Booth to the courts. The only business still to be transacted
was thus to be the election of a new General.
On Friday afternoon this election was proceeding. The
telephone rang. A
voice stated that there was a message from
the Royal Courts of Justice in London. It was a peremptory
message. Without the knowledge of the High Council General
Bramwell Booth had called in the law. No further business was
to be transacted at Sunbury until the following Tuesday when
the High Court would consider the case. So ran the injunction
obtained.
If anything could have broken up the Army, it would have
been this bombshell. A
group of Swedish officers wrote to
Bramwell expressing and grief' at the
their "astonishment
appeal to a "worldly court" which was, in their opinion, "alto
gether at variance with the Orders and Regulations of the
HIGH COUNCIL 217
Salvation Array, with the precepts of the Bible and a truly
Christian spirit/* For the rule of the Army, following the
practise of Quakers, does not permit such appeals to the
secular law.
At Sunbury there developed a calamity which Evangeline
Booth, as an eyewitness, thus describes:
Commissioner Haines, all the way through the

Council, carried himself with ability and correctness,
making a splendid Vice-President, strong in his words
of support to others, and it only took the first gathering
to show us that he exercised a remarkable influence
over all the Headquarters Commissioners. He was ex
ceedingly courteous to me, as I sat next the Presi
dent's table, practically next to him which gave him
the opportunity of showing me many little considera
tions.
Upon this had noticed him making many
day I
notes and asked him he was going to speak. He re
if
plied in the affirmative. The afternoon wore on, it came

up to the time to adjourn for a cup of tea. I said to
Haines, "You speak next." He didn't think he would.
I did not know he was not feeling well and urged him
again. He got up on his feet and made a never-to-be-
forgotten address . . .
The High Council adjourned upon the conclusion

of his speech. Naturally everybody went out of the
room. I went upstairsworn out heartsick hungry be
cause I cannot eat, and cold because we are always cold
over here *
. Haines had left the Council Chamber
.
and almost immediately after fell. They laid him on a

sofa. He had a cup of tea and seemed better.
The High Council had tea and went back to the
Council Chamber. As soon as we had gathered Commis
sioner Hay announced that the General had taken out
an injunction . . .
Haines, lying on the sofa outside, noticed the peo

ple coming out and asked why we had adjourned. Some
body said to him, "The General has taken out an in
junction." . . Haines just gasped, said, "Oh how did
.
they find it out?" and died. His face turned almost

black. You can never imagine the scene. Commissioner
Hurren rushed up to me, his own face as white as death.
He said, "Haines has gone!" and burst into tears . . .
I ran downstairs and said aloud, "A martyr to the cause

* .. and the whole Council took it up.
The grounds of the injunction were twofold. First, it was

pleaded that the Deed Poll of 1904 was invalid. Secondly, it
was complained that Bramwell had been judged without a
hearing.
The first of the grounds was not pressed in Court. For had
not Bramwell been from the first a party with his father to the
Deed Poll of 1904? Had he not endorsed it as a condition of
his entire Generalship? But Mr. Justice Eve did rule that
the High Council should have heard Mr. William Jowitt in
defence of the General before taking a vote on his fitness, and
this formality was imposed on Sunbury Court. Mr.
Jowitt
arrived, said his piece and a second vote was taken. The Gen
eral was deposed by fifty-two votes to five, and four of the five
belonged to the family. Once more Evangeline Booth voted
with the Army.
There was a strange incident during the proceedings. For
Mr. Jowitt, although briefed on the other side, was greatly
impressed by the personality of Evangeline Booth. Later he
had conversations with her over the situation that had arisen
in the Army and thenceforth he was among her valued friends.
The verdict of the British press on the deposition of Bram
well Booth was an endorsement of the attitude that had been
taken by his sister. The Times of London held that the Consti
tution of the Army had become "disconcertingly out of date/'
The British Weekly, a leading organ of evangelical noncon
formity, held that "autocracy, always so admirable and essential
in making a start, always ends in the ditch." In the
popular
weekly John Bull Alfred G. Gardiner, editor of The Daily
News of London, wrote thus:
If we had been asked a month or two

ago what
community in the world was least likely to burst into
the flames of rebellion, most of us would have said The
Salvation It seemed so drilled and
Army.^ disciplined
to obedience, so indifferent to the
ordinary controversies
of the secular world, that
anything like a brawl over its
affairs was unthinkable.
HIGH COUNCIL 219
Gardiner supported the High Council to the limit and
pointed out that "no victory in the courts could be other than
a disaster to the Army," if it were against the Army's consent.
For the High Council there now remained one duty.
Under the terms of the Deed Poll of 1904 the Commissioners
and Territorial Commanders must not separate without elect
ing a new General to take the place of the General deposed.
There were two candidates for the vacant office whose names
might be described as inevitable. Amid the confusion of un
certainty Evangeline Booth was assured by her friends that she
could not withhold from the High Council an opportunity of
having her as General if the Spirit so moved them. Then there
was the Chief of Staff, Edward J. Higgins, who had acted as
General after the requisition of the High Council. He also was
in the forefront of the landscape. Between these officers the
High Council decided by ballot. Commissioner Higgins re
ceived forty-four votes, Commander Evangeline Booth's vote
was seventeen,
Never in her life had the Commander had to face the
rough and tumble of politics where defeats and victories are
a part of the game. Never had she played seriously those games
when one wins and the other loses. It was thus a new experience
this reading out of figures in which she was in a minority of
two to one, and she felt it keenly. She had to face the after
math of a prolonged nervous strain.
Before setting sail for the United States to continue her
command she proceeded to her brother's home and asked to
see him. The request was denied and Evangeline Booth has
always held the impression that Bramwell had desired that she
bid him farewell. She arrived at Waterloo Station en route for
the liner that was to take her to New York and many thou
sands of Salvationists had gathered on the platform with
flowers and blessings. For she had deserved well of the rank
and file and, as they knew, she had paid the price.
There remained the former General murmuring his
prayers day and night as he lay, weaker
and weaker, on his bed.
The British people decided that nothing should be permitted
to obliterate their recognition of the immense services he had
rendered to his generation. From King George V he received
the Companionship of Honour. General Bramwell was pro-
moted to Glory on June 16th, 1929. London awarded him a fu
neral hardly less impressive than his father's pageant. Once
more the people turned out by the million. Once more the
procession wended its slow way to the cemetery at Abney Park
where lay William and Catherine Booth. With a broad white
riband drawn conspicuously from shoulder to waist, the younger
Catherine Booth led her part of the service, her arms uplifted
and her face aflame with conviction.
They who had voted for the deposition of William Bram-
well Booth acted under a sense of stern necessity. They were
aware that the wisdom and justice of their decision were not
accepted as obvious by the immediate family and close friends
of the former General, that the fight was not over. This was
the situation with which the first elected General of the Salva
tion Army, Edward J. Higgins, had to deal. He was, of course,
the first Salvationist, other than a Booth, to hold the highest
office in the Army.
For the best part of his career he had served the family.
He had been one of Evangeline Booth's able young men in
Canada, and in the United States he had been her Chief of
Staff. Bramwell had appointed him Chief of Staff at Interna
tional Headquarters in London in which capacity he had been
closely associated with Mrs. Bramwell during her husband's
illness. He was thus well acquainted with the inside factors
that affected a still troubled future, and in the High Council,
before a vote was taken on the appointment of a General, he
had made it clear that, if chosen, he would act with the full
authority of his predecessors.
At the outset he was faced with a legal difficulty. By
virtue of his office, the General of the Salvation Army was
custodian and administrative trustee of all properties owned by
the Army in Great Britain. That was Bramwell's position and
on becoming General, therefore, he made a will dated August
15th, 1913, bequeathing these large interests to his successor
that is, the person named in the sealed envelope. When, how
ever, Edward Higgins was installed as General, Bramwell
J.
was unwilling unchanged. On March
to allow his will to stand
28th, 1929 a date subsequent to the election of General Hig-
ginshe added a codicil to eliminate Higgins as custodian and
administrative trustee and to substitute executors for the Army
HIGH COUNCIL 221
other than the elected and legally recognised General. These

executors were Mrs. Bramwell, Commissioner Catherine and
a solicitor other than the Solicitor of the Army. It meant that
General Higgins was to be responsible for leading the Salvation
Army while others than he controlled the British assets.
The property of the Army in the United States was held
under a continuous corporation and was not affected by this
developement. But Commander Booth, like other high officers,
was much concerned by the position and she was careful to
have the best legal advice available in New York. The attorney
for her command was Henry W. Taft, brother of the President
and Chief Justice of the United States, and partner of George
W. Wickersham, Attorney General under President Theodore
Roosevelt. The codicil to Bramwell's will was submitted to
this important firm of lawyers who reported that "the Execu
tors (Mrs. Bramwell, Commissioner Catherine and the solic
itor) have made no transfer of the Salvation Army to General
Higgins nor even have definitely recognised his right to such
a transfer." Hence, "the serious embarrassment which General
Higgins is subjected to by this attitude." Wrote Mr. Wicker-
sham, "clearly this anomalous situation ought not to be acqui
esced in indefinitely'" and steps should be taken to ensure
"that such a situation shall never arise in the future."
In the story of the Army here was a grave emergency. The
funds and properties of the great organisation in Britain were
put into uncertainty. Its activities were impeded. Its leader
threatened. In
ship was plunged into perplexity. Its unity was
the Self Denial Fund there was a sharp drop of 50,000. It
is enough to add that the Government in Whitehall inter
vened.
The Attorney General was, by a coincidence, that William
Jowitt, K.C. now Sir William
who had represented Bramwell
before the High Council and there met Evangeline Booth with
whom he had conversed freely over the Army's affairs. He was
thus fully acquainted with all sides of the case and he proposed
a settlement out of court. The terms were to be:
1. During General's term of office, no change in the

Foundation Deed of 1878.
2. Nobody in the Family to be victimised.
3. The number of active Commissioners not to ex
ceed thirty.
4. The next General to be elected by these Com
missioners.
5. The sealed envelope to be opened "not to bind
the Commissioners to elect the person specified but to
show what General Bramwell Booth's wishes were."
6. The Executors appointed by General Bramwell
to hand over the property.
7. Total costs of both parties to be paid by the
Army.
General Higgins called together all available Commission
ersand their answer to Sir William Jowitt was unanimous.
They would adhere to the Foundation Deed of 1878 save for
three changes the creation of trustees to hold the property,
provision for electing the General and fixing his age of retire
ment. The Family would receive the same treatment as others
"neither more nor less." There was no intention of increasing
the number of active Commissioners except as the work re
quired. All future Generals would be elected. The sealed
envelope would be opened only if a majority of officers elect
ing a new General
desired, and even so it was to be destroyed.
The Bramwell Booths must recognise the validity of the Deed
Poll of 1904 under the terms of which Bramwell was deposed.
If the legal advisers of the
Army thought it advisable, this valid
ity could be supported by a court order. The Army was to pay
costs.
Over the negotiations out of court Evangeline Booth was
uneasy. "Difficulties," she cabled on January 13th, 1930,
"should be settled here and now and once for all ... no
avenues should be left open for renewed controversy inside or
outside the Army in years to come." To Sir William Jowitt
she cabled a strong protest against "any limit or restriction,
actual or implied, relative to the number of Commissioners,"
which, she held, could not be "of any advantage save to per
sonal interests/*Four days later her misgivings were confirmed.
General Higgins cabled that he and the Commissioners had
"utterly failed" to arrive at a settlement with the Executors
out of court.
HIGH COUNCIL 223
There was now no mistaking the gravity of the position
that faced the Salvation Army throughout the world. The ex
perience of Presbyterians in Scotland and of Anglicans in
England had demonstrated that civil law, when applied to
spiritual organisations, may lead to unexpected results, and in
the case of the Army there was every reason to be anxious.
General Higgins was asked by the executors for particulars,
papers and proofs of many things an indication that it was
to be a fight to the finish. On the eve of the hearing in court,
the General and his Commissioners had a long conference with
the Army's lawyers covering the contingencies that might be
expected to arise and what, in each such event, should be the
course of action.
Evangeline Booth laid aside all natural feelings and sug
gested to General Higgins that she should send a cable of
urgent appeal to her niece, Commissioner Catherine, pleading
for a reconciliation. That message was as follows:
With deep love for you and loyalty to our Saviour,

the Father of us all, I appeal to you, my dearest Cath
erine, to render a supreme service to our beloved Salva
tion Army. I would beg of you to use your great influ
ence to secure a friendly hearing of the case now pending
and acceptance of the Deed of 1904 by agreement of us
all expressed in Court.
Let me assure you from my heart that I have no
objection personally to your election to any position
that God may have within His will for you, and pray
daily for you and your dear mother that you may be
used by the Lord for a great ingathering of souls and
strengthening of oiar forces,
I am sure that you, on your side, would not desire
to occupy any position like the Generalship except as
the result of the free choice by a duly constituted body
acting through the Holy Spirit.
Dear Catherine, let us honour our Saviour by sub
mitting this whole affair to the Providence of God,
accepting His will and working in harmony to fulfil
His purposes. If this be the objective, nothing can
separate us in love and service.
To Commissioner Lamb the Commander cabled:
Personally can see no objection to Commissioner

Catherine (being) General if properly elected. If I still
am actively engaged in (the Army) will do all in (my)
power to help.
These messages were sent and received. The issue thus

disclosed was whether the Court would support the Deed Poll
of 1904 and confirm General Higgins in his office or disallow
the Deed Poll, order the opening of the sealed envelope and
declare the person named therein to be the legal General.
The case came into court. Within a few minutes it was
stated to the judge that General Bramwell Booth had accepted
his office in 1912 upon the terms of the Foundation Deed of
1878 and the Deed Poll of 1904 which provided for the deposi
tion of a General for cause shown.
"Is that admitted?" asked the judge.
Yes, it was admitted, and a copy of the Deed Poll signed
by Bramwell was handed to the bench.
The judge looked at the signature. He ruled that it placed
Bramwell in exactly the same position as if he had been the
maker of the Deed Poll of 1904. He was ready, then and there,
to decide the case.
Counsel on both sides asked permission to mention certain
issues that had been raised. His Lordship replied with asperity
that he would be no party to wasting the time of the Court
and the money of the Army over matters that could only be
irrelevant. He realised that the executors Mrs. Bramwell
Booth, Commissioner Catherine Booth and their solicitor-
were entitled to a decision of the Court over the question
whether they should hand over the property. But he made it
plain that General Bramwell Booth had taken an altogether
erroneous step in challenging the Deed Poll of 1904 which he
had accepted as a condition of holding his office.
The case had looked as though it would last for several
days. It was over in two hours. The Deed Poll was supported
and the property was to be transferred, and if any vindication
of Evangeline Booth's whole attitude were required, here it
was in open court according to the law of the land.
HIGH COUNCIL 223
General Higgins pleased Commander
Evangeline Booth
with a gesture that she
appreciated. Henceforth, her title
would be not Commander alone but Commander-in-Chief.
When visiting London she accompanied him to Hadley Wood,
the home of Mrs. Bramwell Booth, and
sought to abate any
misunderstandings that had arisen between the third General
and the second General's family. There was a frank talk in
which Evangeline Booth herself defeated
by Edward J. Hig
gins sought for goodwill which would benefit the Salvation
Army.
There were still problems to be solved and General Hig
gins appointed an Advisory Committee in London to prepare
solutions. These were to be submitted to a full Conference of
Commissioners to be called during November, 1330, and this
Conference was attended by Evangeline Booth,
On the eve of the Conference there occurred an incident
that somewhat disturbed her mind. Mention has been made of
F. A. Mackenzie, the war
correspondent who had written a
book, The Clash of the Cymbals. In the newspaper most
little
read by Salvationists, The Daily News of London, he an
nounced a "new crisis" in the Army. The alleged trouble was
due to "Miss Eva Booth's demands/' She was described as "a
wonderful leader" but "emotional, sensitive and difficult to
handle." General Higgins had "done everything to conciliate
her but she was seemingly in a fighting mood." She wanted
"autonomy" for the Army in the United States where the Army
was "many times richer and more powerful than the organisa
tion in England," and "trouble" was thus "brewing" oversea.
Poor Mackenzie lost no time in seeking to make amends.
It was not long before Evangeline Booth heard that he was
dying of a fatal disease and she sent him a letter of sympathy.

He wrote back like the Trojan he was:
After all, I have always been a great traveller and
must not shrink from the prospect of the greatest and
most glorious journey of all. I am sorry that what I
wrote you caused you such grief.
There is no mystery about Evangeline Booth's attitude.
At the time of the High Council she had said that "reform in
the organisation of the Army must come ... to be controlled
from a world centre by a single man, whoever the man may
be, is not a good plan." On Mackenzie's allegations, she wrote,
therefore a pointblank denial. There was "absolutely no truth"
in the statement that she was coming to London with
pro
posals involving the secession of the American branch of the
international body. She and her Commissioners would consider
the reforms "from the same standpoint as that of the other
eighty-two countries and colonies represented at the Con
ference."
The International Conference of Commissioners met at
Mildmay in London, a building where religious gatherings
could be conveniently accommodated. It was an expense to the
Salvation Army but the money and the trouble were not
wasfecOOnce more a cynical civilisation could see the type
of men and women developed under the compelling urgencies
of what implied by the Cross of Christ around which, every
is
,hour of every day of every year, Salvationists meet with one

another. During the First World War David Lloyd George
asked Smuts of South Africa to visit Wales and talk to some
coal miners on strike. "What," asked Smuts, "shall I do if
they
won't agree?" Replied the British Prime Minister who knew
his Wales, 'Ask them to sing for you." At the Salvationist
Conference every morning session began with outbursts of
song and prayer, volleying forth unity of aim and purpose
amid any differences there might be of policy and method.
Business began at 9:30 a.m. and did not end until twelve
hours later. But, wrote a Commissioner, "the absorbing inter
est of the discussions has more than
compensated for natural
tiredness at the end of the day." Over much of the business to
be transacted there was no serious difference of
opinion among
the great majority of Commissioners. It was
agreed that, for the
future, Generals were to be chosen by the High Council which
thus was transformed into a permanent
organ of Salvationist
opinion. Generals were to retire at the age of seventy-three.
The sole trusteeship of the General for the Army's properties
in Great Britain and Northern Ireland was to be
brought to
an end and a continuous corporate trusteeship substituted for
it as in the United States.
It was
immediately proposed that a private bill embodying
the conclusions of the Conference of Commissioners should be
HIGH COUNCIL 227
presented to Parliament. On the votes taken to authorise

this action there were minorities on two
voting divisions of
twelve and seven, and these minorities included
Evangeline
and Catherine Booth. For Evangeline Booth held that such
legislation by Parliament should not proceed without the limit
ing of the General's powers. Over the appeal to Parliament
there were, indeed, misgivings in
quarters friendly to, but out
side, the Army. George Lansbury, the labour leader, had
long
been known as a devout Anglican and he drew attention to "
what had happened in Parliament to the Church of England.

The Prayer Book had been most carefully revised only to be
rejected in the House of Commons on grounds of ritual.
The Bill was a voluminous covering about fifty
affair
pages. A Committee of the House of Commons eliminated the
provision that the General should retire at the age of seventy-
three years, holding that this was a matter domestic to the
Salvation Army itself, and the House carried the third reading
of the measure by two hundred twenty-one votes to
thirty-one.
Evangeline Booth was, of course, back in the United States and
she could only pour in her bombardments at long range. But
she did draft a new clause which suggested considerable in
genuity. Why should not the Bill authorise the High Council
to limit the powers of the General by a three-fourths
majority,
if at any time it was so desired? The limitation so voted would
have the same force of law as if it had been included in the
statute itself.
The Chairman of the Select Committee in the House of
Lords was Viscount Chelmsford, formerly Viceroy of India and
a close friend of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. The new
clause was held to be out of order and for two reasons. It
should have been included in the original bill as passed by the
Commons. Also, Parliament does not give authority to any body
other than itself to alter one of its own acts without a new
approach to Parliament. Any bill when passed is, within its
scope, the lastword on the subject. They tried to meet Evan
geline Booth's point by saying that in due course another bill
could be laid before the legislature. She wired:
Your cables suggest that we can run in and out

o Parliament like oiir backyard.
So ended the great crisis in the Salvation Army.
The story has been told here in essentials alone. It leaves
the deeper impression on the mind because of what has been
omitted from the narrative. Any suggestion that Evangeline
Booth was animated by personal motives during these years
Is not supported by the evidence, published and unpublished,
to be found in her papers as sent to me, nor is it indicated in
the plain record of what occurred.
And there is another thing to be said. Salvationists are of
like nature as other humans. But there is something rather
fine about the way they weathered these storms. A reason is
that, day by day, they went on with their work for God and
man, and we may conclude that a ship must be seaworthy that
can weather such storms. Also, a pilot must be guided by map
and compass who steers the ship safely into port.
AT FOURTEEN. The spiritual qualities which were to make her one
of the
great women of the world already were evidenced in Evangeline Booth's face
(Photograph by Elliott and Fry, London,)
EXPERT CYCLIST. In her early days in England and Canada, Evangeline
rode to many appointments on a bicycle. (Photograph by the Salvation Army
Studio, London.)
FIRST ARMY BONNET. Euangeline proudly wears the bonnet designed by
her mother for the Lassies.
SONGS THAT STILLED A MOB. Evangeline Booth and a little Singhalese
to quell themob at Torquay, England. (Photograph
boy whose singing helped
by Debenham and Stewart, Torquay, England.)
BY HIS SIDE. The future General kneels beside her father's chair. (Photo
New
graph by Falk, York.)
she lectured all over the world in the same costume.
A DAUGHTER'S TRIBUTE. Evangeline Booth, then Commander of The
Salvation Army United States, at the graves of her father and pioneen
in the
of the Movement. (Photograph by Albert Hester, St. Kilda's Studio, London.)
THE SPIRIT OF A CRUSADER. Evangeline Booth, as she appeared in 1912
when she was Commander in the United States.
SPIRIT OF THE A. E. F. Not only did she plan and direct the program to
help the Doughboys she also borrowed $25,000 "on faith" to send the Lassies
abroad. (Photograph by Ira L. Hill's Studio, New York City.)
ONE OF MANY HONORS. Already awarded the Distinguished Service Medal
by direction of President Wilson^ Evangeline Booth receives an honorary Master
of Arts Degree from Tufts College. (Photograph by Ira L. Hill's Studio, New
York City.f
A WORLD-STIRRING EVENT. The Commander-in-Chief of Salvationists
<c 3
in the United States salutes her American troops' at the 1914 International
Congress in London.
receives a medal for saving
FOR SAVING A LIFE. "Mazie," her pet dog,
when her heart collapsed after a senous
Emetine's life by summoning help
Gabriel Moulin Studios, San Francisco.)
illness. (Photograph by
ri *
^ W
Ô 5
c
I I
^
O
HH to
21
^
M ^
M S
GENERAL EVANGELINE BOOTH. (Photograph by Ira L. Hill's Studio,
New York City.)
FULFILMENT
WE
in which
ARE now at the year 1930, and Evangeline Booth
was completing sixty-five years of her life. It was a year
the Salvation Army was drawing a distinct line be
A
tween the past and the future. long accepted situation had
passed away, never to return.
The first two Generals had been appointed. The third
General was elected. And it made a difference to the outlook of
every Salvationist officer, soldier and supporter throughout the
world. By means of multitudinous and believing prayers the
Army continued to be guided and guarded by the Holy Spirit
dwelling within the mind of the fellowship of grace according
to the promise of Our Lord. But that guidance arid that guard
ianship were vested within a broader and a deeper authority.
It was true that in this first election Evangeline Booth was
defeated, and that some of her ardent supporters regarded the
it was soon apparent that there had
surprise as a set-back. But
been no real interruption of her ordained career. Never had
her aims been personal, never had she fought for herself as
satisfied. And the
merely an individual with an ambition to be
fact that she was not chosen to be the third General demon
strated her disinterested attitude. What had been victorious
was not was a principle for which she had stood as
herself. It
the symbol. In plain terms had that principle been declared to
the Army and the world by her father, the Founder. The
does not
Army, he had announced in terms already quoted,
to the Booths. It belongs to God. At a cruel cost to her
belong
domestic affections, this daughter, this sister, had vindicated her
allegiance to William Booth's will and
his jwdsdom. Election as
229
third General would not have weakened that vindication. But
non-election clarified the issue.
Salvationists are not great students of comparative religion.
There is nothing in other religions, so they hold, with which
the redeeming love of a Crucified Christ and His resurrection
from the dead can be compared. But others, who may be de
scribed as humanists even in matters of faith, may see in all
this the working of a universal trend in the developement of
our race. It is seen in monarchies and other political institu
tions. It is seen in finance and industry where firms start in the
family and are re-organised as corporations and companies-
above all, in religion. The Old Testament tells how the wor
ship of the Hebrews was first entrusted to the Tribe of Levi
with its central House of Aaron how the sacred genealogies
were absorbed, however, within the whole Chosen People as
rivers lose themselves in the ocean. So has it been with the
honoured families of Confucius and Mohammed. To this day
ancestries are traced here and there to the illustrious fathers
of those faiths, but the faithful themselves have long since
overflowed the pedigrees of the founders. It was history itself,
therefore, and the will of God revealed in history that set the
Salvation Army as a worldwide expression of the Gospel free
from the fetters of flesh and blood. ,
But the transition, though inevitable, could not have

been other than severe. For the family, if describable as a fetter
in a movement outgrowing its origins, had been less a fetter
than a force. Whatever may be said about any of the Booths,
this undeniable they worked and they warred to win. They
is
might be hereditary but never were they other than aggressive

and expansionist, and the Army never hesitated to back them
to the limit. It was thus fortunate as the Army would put it,
providential that the change, when it came, was, as it were,
under-written by so outstanding a pioneer in the movement
as Evangeline Booth, and, with her holding so
important a
command as the United States, there could be no question of
standing at ease. From the council chambers in London the
Apny flung itself into new campaigns on the battlefield. With
ranks unbroken, with standards uplifted, brave men and
women, undismayed, marched along rough roads in many
lands that everywhere converged on the Cross of Christ and
FULFILMENT 231
His empty tomb as the assurance that the Kingdom of God

cometh.
Many in the Army under the Flag and many supporters
of theArmy within the community thanked the circumstances
by which the Commaiider had been led back to the United
States. Nor were their welcomes home again merely consola
tory. For the time being, so they held, it was obvious that her
place was at the old desk in New York where so often hers had
been the only signature that counted for public confidence.
Never had they been more acutely aware of what the Army in
a new world had owed to her shrewd judgement in money
matters and to her high standing among the leaders of a great
and critical nation.
It had been the impulse of Evangeline Booth throughout
her career never to omit seizing the chance of rendering first
and effective aid anywhere and at any time where an emergency
arose. To be ever ready to help the individual and the people
as a whole was her instinct and it spread throughout her range
of leadership, rendering the Army as sensitive to the call of
firemen on duty or coast guards. In 1906 an earth
catastrophe as
quake had shaken San Francisco into conflagration. At once the
Army had been on the spot and she wrote:
The majority of the people who escaped had noth

ing but their nightclothes the earthquake taking place
at four in the morning. Something like forty babies
were born the first day after the disaster, nearly all of
them on the bare ground.
But beginning in 1929 there occurred a far more serious,

if less physical, catastrophe to the nation which spread from
coast to coast. It was not a case merely of the Army trying
to do what it could for others. The Army was itself involved
in the disaster and had to be pulled through a difficult time.
Those dark days are still known as the depression.
In one hour, to use an apocalyptic phrase, immense but
jiominal values on the stock exchanges vanished into thin air
owing to the collapse of quotations. Millions of families rea
lised too late that they had been over-extended in their finances.
Banks failed by the hundred and for some days every bank had
to close its doors. Loans that at other times wottld have been
granted as a matter of course by renewal or continued were
declined or called in. Mortgages were hard to obtain and renew.
The Salvation Army, with every institution a liability based
on the confidence and gratitude of the public, was never more
pressed at once by the needs of others and by its own contin
gencies.
Not without acquiring the toughness of experience had
Evangeline Booth throughout her active service in the Army
faced one crisis after another, on the pavement where she sold
War Grys, in halls that were empty until she saw them filled,
even in police stations and courts of law. With millionaires of
one day becoming bankrupt on the morrow and former suc
cesses ending in suicide, she girded on her armour and was
received by President Roosevelt at the White House. It was an
audience, apparently, at which a hard-pressed head of the
state chatted with all his incomparable charm about this, that
and the other, without undue concentration of mind on the
subject which alone at the moment was of interest to his visitor.
The upshot of the interview was that the Salvation Army had
to wrestle with the redoubtable Jesse Jones of the Reconstruc
tion Finance Corporation, who also happened to be somewhat
preoccupied. It is enough to say that funds from the national
resources at Washington were not forthcoming for an organisa
tion which, however deserving of support on account of its
urgent secular activities, was essentially spiritual in aim and
ability. As always in its history the Army had to win through
the hard way, and win through it did. But not without much
personal privation and determined effort. And it was half
the battle to know that at National Headquarters the Com-
manderrin-Chief was every bit of her old self, and that at
International Headquarters in London for the first time was
a General who had been trained in the new world and breathed
the air of the great open spaces.
It had been, the view of the Commander from the first
that big men should always be approached in a big
way. Cap
tains of commerce whose minds are accustomed to
dealing in
millions should not be worried with whimperings for dollars
and cents. They should be presented with a budget and pro
posals that they can respect. In one instance even Evangeline
;
Booth was taken by surprise. A wealthy New Yorker, John
FULFILMENT 233
Markle, was a man who liked to have his own way, and Evan
geline Booth was one of the few people to whom he would
listen. One day she went to his office,
supposing that she might
receive $25,000 or some such sum. He handed to her a check
for half a million. "Do I look
pale?" she asked as she gripped
the arms of her chair. Out of the munificence arose the Evan-
geline Hotel behind National Headquarters on Fourteenth
Street, where may be seen the portraits of
John Markle and his
wife, Mary, deeply loved but, when her husband made his gift,
lost by death.
Some whose sympathy with the Army was restrained some
what by other affiliations were taken aback by the excellence of
the buildings that had arisen. The answer to such occasional
murmurs was that the Army followed a wise policy making
their equipment what would last for years to come. The differ
ence in cost between doing the thing well from the outset and
merely erecting temporary makeshifts, when spread over a
period of occupancy and use, is, as every executive knows, so
small as to be negligible. Not that Evangeline Booth tolerated
extravagance over marble and granite and aluminum. In one
case she took her officers to task and enquired,
"What is the business that you intend to run? A national
bank or a legislature?"
Gifts to the Army came sometimes in a curious way. There
was an unknown man who called at National Headquarters
from time to time and left quite sizeable sums of money. He
refused to disclose his name and nobody knew or tried to find
out where he lived. But his contributions totted up to the
ten thousands of dollars. A nice little subscription arrived for
the Christmas Baskets. The donor was quite frank about it. He
was handing over the result of a speculative "rivalry in the
turkey raising business/'
During this period when her active service in the United
States was drawing to a close Evangeline Booth was conscious
tKat a new generation was arising in a changed atmosphere.
She was much interested in -but not wholly convinced by the
claims made on behalf of psychology nor was it any wonder.
For half a century Salvationists, and she conspicuous among
them, had been studying the behaviour of men, women and
children, and how to treat cases. Their entire activities were
in discipleship to Him of whom it was said that "He knew
what was in man." There was not much in psychology, so
argued the Commander in effect, that had not been rule of
thumb in the Salvation Army since it started its operations.
Onthis whole situation Evangeline Booth made her mind
plain in a letter dated April 26, 1927:
No one can be more anxious than I that my Officers

shall increase in knowledge and in those advantages
of education the value of which is patent to all. But
ten thousand times more am I anxious that the Holy
Fire of which the Army was born shall be kept burning
in your hearts, and the Divine Wisdom give not only
unction but life to your utterance! It is in this direction
our power lies.
Modern methods? Yes if they mean greater effi
ciency in the discharge of our God-given duties I wel
come these. Yesif they mean grander results in the
number of souls saved I rejoice in them. Yes if they
add strength and solidarity to our forces if they give
more wisdom to our leaders if they assist more poor
they set at liberty more captives if they unstop more
if
deaf ears if they give more sight to more blind eyes
if they bind
up more broken hearts I love them. But
we must also remember that they are nothing in them
selves. They must be devoted to the. service and
subject
to the influence and inspiration of God if
they are to
be servants of the Kingdom. They must be His, not
ours! They must be means, not ends!
Blunted knives of the intellect made of lead would n^

serve the surgery of the sword of steel,
sharp and two-edged,
that is quick and powerful to the saving of the soul.
From everywhere her opinion was asked on every con
mean
ceivable subject. But this did not on every subject
that
her opinion was forthcoming. For instance, the
controversy
between dog-lovers and doctors over vivisection interested her
deeply and even painfully but she did not hold herself to be
at liberty, considering her
obligations to the Army, to allow
her feelings to determine her utterances. It was so with other
matters of public discussion.
In one important region of uneasiness she was able to
FULFILMENT 235
render a conspicuous service. It was the Far East, where
Japan
was dfifting with Germany into a dangerous militarism. The
feeling of the Japanese people for the Salvation Army has
always been cordial, and that feeling had been stirred to grati
tude in 1923 when the island kingdom suffered its
devastating
earthquake. Evangeline Booth was, among the foremost in
raising money for relief and Japan did not forget it. Now,
many years later, in 1929, when great issues were in the balance,
the Commander was encouraged to visit
Japan as a messenger
of goodwill.
The Emperor Hirohito had enjoyed the advantage of a
progressive education in the West. Within his official adherence
to the Shinto religion lay a
sympathy with the Christian faith.
He and his family stood for sanity and peace. But his throne
was surrounded by violent men of the Japanese
army, navy
and high finance who were preparing for adventure and, in
some cases, were to be tried and condemned as war criminals.
An exuberant chauvinism was fomented which went far be
yond a reasonable loyalty to the Emperor and his empire.
The welcome that Evangeline Booth received when she
landed in Japan surpasses description, and she was equal to it.
Long experience at public functions and her own inborn dig
nity enabled her to present herself to the crowds and to the
celebrities with a gracious and compelling charm. She
cap
tured the people and was herself captured by their sense of
order, their courtesy and consideration. Her keenly observant
eye noted their scrupulous and habitual cleanliness, their
traditional love and appreciation of flowers.
The celebrations were a Hail anct Farewell. For the Em
peror was reigning during the last ominous years of his dynastic
divinity, and never again would he be seen in the future as
Evangeline Booth was privileged herself to see him. For she
was summoned to an audience with his Majesty, and the occa
sion was marked by all the significance of an elaborate cere
monial. Through long corridors of the Imperial Palace, simple
in proportion but polished until the woods shone like glass
and all the gilding was golden, she approached the presence,
so turning that at once she faced the Emperor when he faced
her. As she advanced she bowed thrice.
The Emperor stood by a table on a low dais. It was not
etiquette for him to speak save in his own Japanese language
or to understand the speech of others except through that
medium. Hence there stood behind Hirohito an interpreter,
understood to be a Christian, to whom the Commander ad
dressed what she said and from whom she received what was
said to her. It was, of course, evident that, despite this pro
cedure, the Emperor at once grasped the meaning of his guest
and was much interested in her uniform and personality. The
interview lasted far beyond the usual limits in time of such
audiences and at its conclusion Evangeline Booth, retiring
backwards, again executed her threefold obeisance.
It was intimated to her that she had made a favourable
impression on the Sovereign and, to her surprise, she was

handed a further command to attend the Emperor's garden
party in the grounds of the palace. The prescribed costume for
ladies was the agelong silk of Japan, with hair gleaming around
large and beautiful combs. But the Salvationist leader was
honoured by permission to appear again in her uniform and
the bonnet that her mother had designed in the Army's early
days. There she stood amid lawns and trees that were a triumph
of Japan's horticulture.
The Emperor's guests were aligned the arrangement is .
the same at Windsor Castle along the route to be taken by

the Emperor. When a slow ^nd solemn procession was ob
served by the thousands thus gathered to be entering the scene,
silence that might be felt in its intensity hushed the least
whisper of conversation. Between groups of advancing courtiers
the Emperor walked erect and
absolutely alone, his counte
nance betraying no sign of interest in the spectacle of which
he was the central figure. All who were present bowed their
faces towards the ground.
Suddenly there was a slight and instantly suppressed sensa
tion among the Japanese nobility and
gentry assembled. For
the Emperor had broken precedent. He had in his
paused
progress. He had turned on his heel. He had raised his arm.
He had rendered a salute to Evangeline Booth and her at
tendant He had then resumed his unsmiling, almost
officers.
mechanical, walk past his subjects. It was a gesture that could

not be mistaken.
FULFILMENT 237
To all this there was a sequel. It is told by Richard
Terrill Baker in his book Darkness of the Sun (Abingdon-
Cokesbury Press):
The Salvation Army had difficulties [in Japan] early

in the war, because of its use of military symbols in its
organisation and because of its tie to head offices in
Britain. The military clique threw the Salvation Army
head into prison on suspicion of anti-war propaganda.
It was an order from the imperial household itself
which released the suspect, and the Emperor promptly
sent him a gift of ten thousand yen as a public denial
that the Salvation Army was in any way disgraced.
Evangeline Booth still held her command in the United

States.But it was evident that her real position in the Army
had become international. Thus was it that in 1933 there were
made the usual detailed arrangements for her to voyage over
an unkindly ocean in order to visit the capitals of Australia
and New Zealand. To her characteristic distress the doctors
stepped in- they had no alternative professionally and vetoed
the tour. But despite this disappointment it was hinted here
and there that something of great importance was in the wind.
The Salvation Army Actof 1931 wasjnjorce. According
to the terms of this measure Edward J. Higgins announced
his intention of retiring from the office of General to which
he had been elected. In 1934 a High Council was summoned
to choose his successor, and on August llth Evangeline Booth
set sail on the Leviathan from New York for London.
A foretaste of what lay ahead of her was noted in the
crowd of reporters and camera-men who assailed her with
their friendly but insistent greetings. Arriving at Plymouth
she was handed a bouquet of flowers that spread themselves
abroad in rich profusion which seemed to lend fragrance to
the photographs themselves. She proceeded to London where
the familiar Clapton Hall was crowded to overflowing. Here
had she heard her mother's farewell to the Army. Here had
her father been laid in state for all to honour. And now it
was her turn to be, not in death but in life, the upholder of
the Blood and Fire Flag. The stalwarts of Salvation raised the
roof in greeting, and she so addressed the great audience as
to evoke scarcely interrupted cheering. At the penitent form
knelt fifty seekers after God.
In the midst of the furore Richard Griffith, as private
secretary, wrote a brief letter that has its drama:
Mr. Donald Barnes,

Lake George, N.Y. August 1st. 1934.
Dear Mr. Barnes,

I forgot to see that the Commander's diving board
was safely put away before leaving.
Will you please get someone to help you out with
it, and put
it in the loft.
Be
sure it is laid perfectly, flat, otherwise it might
get a twist in it.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Griffith
Colonel
Poor diving board! Your day is done in so far as you have

served Evangeline Booth. And dear Richard Griffith How 1
careful you always were of every least detail!

The newspapers were now with one accord breaking out
into headlines. But within closed doors the High Council was
as secluded in effect as Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel electing
a Pope. The Solicitor of the Army, William Frost, certified
that the proceedings were in order and for six days thirty
Commissioners, eleven Lieutenant-Commissioners and six Colo
nelsforty-seven in all -sat at their blue-draped tables, main
taining a dignity in keeping with the solemn decision that they
were called upon to make.
The result was a foregone conclusion. Evangeline Booth
'received 32 votes; Commissioner Mapp, Chief of Staff, 9 votes;
Commissioner Catherine Booth, 4 votes and Commissioner
Hurren, 2 votes.
In effect the choice of Evangeline Booth was, as jt was
afterwards made, unanimous, and she changed her uniform
of commissioner for that which had been designed for the
Founder. Thus had the prophecy of her father' been fulfilled,
FULFILMENT 239
Your career has been a remarkable one, but destiny,
unless I am mistaken, has something in store for you
more wonderful still.
A bewildering avalanche of messages from far and near

arrived by wire and mail. "In these troublous times/* wrote
President Roosevelt, "it is particularly important that the
leadership of all good forces shall be for the amelioration of
human suffering and for the preservation of the highest spir
itual ideals" and he added:
Through your efforts as Commander-in-Chief you

have earned the gratitude and admiration of millions
of your countrymen. I am confident that under your
guidance the Salvation Army will go steadily forward
in service to the unfortunate of every land.
To the many millions who had met Evangeline Booth,

or heard her speak, or read of her doings, the fact that she
was now the Fourth General of the Salvation Army was of
great interest, and in some quarters there was a quite human
desire to celebrate. It was the same Leviathan on which she
had sailed east that brought her home, but with a difference.
What had been a speculative departure was transformed into
an exultant welcome. For a start Mayor La Guardia gathered
together two hundred and fifty leading citizens as a reception
committee. Down the harbour boats were beflagged and the
sirens made their music. Overhead Ruth Nichols the aviatrix,
roared in her plane scattering roses on one who in so different a
manner had brought womanhood into the forefront of affairs.
A fireboat owned by the City uplifted its silvery fountains in
sparkling cascade. Along Lower Broadway was launched a
lunch-hour parade led by the band of the Sixteenth Infantry to
which four Salvationist bands added support. The "grand
canyon" of Manhattan was snowbound with ticker-tape and the
crowds had a fine time according to their customary manner.
At the City Hall the proceedings were broadcast, and the
'
vibrant voice of the new General, pleading and purposeful,

claimed,
The world for Christ and Christ for the world.

Among Salvationists "Farewells" on earth, like "promo
tions to Glory/* are occasions to be remembered. There are
printed programmes with photographs, special services, collec
tions, conversions and reunions. The farewells accorded to
Evangeline Booth after her long commandership.in the United
States of thirty years were mighty demonstrations of love, grati
tude and affection. The greatest of them, perhaps, were in
Chicago and Madison Square Garden, New York, where im
mense multitudes crowded the auditoriums and tried to get
inside. People of influence and position had seats, nor did
it seem that Vice-President Thomas Riley Marshall when in
office had exaggerated in declaring that the greatest man of

the day was a woman! For the General-Elect seemed to be just
what a slowly recovering but still uneasy world wanted a
leader whose whole mind was set on teaching people how to
be at peace with God, at peace with themselves and at peace
with one another.
The enthusiasm was a final verdict by her generation on
her essential integrity during a career that had included stormy
periods. It was the emphatic endorsement of her lifelong
fidelity to that child's vow by which she dedicated her being
to the Gospel of Him who died on the Cross for Man. But this
fulfilment of her meaning to the world, though she would not
have had it otherwise, condemned her to four years of travel
and labour more intense in stress and strain, possibly, than
any years that she had ever spent. In one of her letters she
wrote ruefully that as General she was not able to spend one
single moment of her life doing what she wanted to do.
First, she had to carry out a long programme of meetings in
Great Britain, One of them, she would say as she let her
memories have their expression, was very much like the
others that is, to her, not to the cities and towns that she
visited. For the Army they were rallies, for the
people they were
revivals, and she failed not nor did she falter. Then came the
long and fatiguing tours over land and sea, covering scores
of thousands of miles and
triumphal in their incidents. For
in her official capacity she did not travel as a
private passenger.
From the merchant marine she received a salute fairly to be
described as unique. When Evangeline Booth
stepped aboard,
FULFILMENT 241
the Flag of the Salvation
Army was hoisted to fly in the
breezes.
Of her is record but we
itineraries there may take them
for granted. Here and there, however, the spotlight picks out
some happening that illustrates the pilgrimage. She arrived
at Bombay where
smallpox was found to be in the ship. It
seemed as if the little party of Salvationists, travelling at such
expense and with so vitally significant a message within them,
would have to spend their precious days in
quarantine. But
the Governor of Bombay
appeared in person and effected a
speedy rescue, entertaining the General at his official residence.
Thence she emerged, an Indian sari draped over her head
yellow edged with crimson and proceeded to tour the vast
and crowded country, north, south, east and west, everywhere
arousing the attention of peoples to whom life is wedded to
faith. She was the
guest of maharajahs, of governors, of the
Army itself, nor did she ever neglect to spend time with com
munities at the very lowest level of the social and economic
scale. Among the
primitive races of India none are more
ancient and picturesque than the Bheels. Aboriginal in cus
toms and superstitious in beliefs they have lived and died,
generation after generation, without healing, without progress,
without any hope of being better than their forefathers. But
the Army was at work among them, and they were responding.
Headed by their leaders, some on horses, others on elephants
and camels, they marched past, proudly carrying their bows
and arrows, while the General, fascinated by the strange proces
sion and stirred to the depths of her being by what it signified
in terms of universal redemption, took the salute.
The Salvation Army was among the' agencies in India
that were obeying the command of Christ when He said,
"Cleanse the lepers." And the lepers were cleansed. They might
gaze out of sightless eyes.They might hold up handless arms
and totter on footless legs. But they were saved. They could
and did pray. They could and they did smile. They could and
they did sing. It was a memorable moment in the life of
Evangeline Booth when she stood and listened to those strangely
vigorous voices chanting her own chorus The World for God.
The flesh had failed but the spirit was awaiting promotion
into eternity.
A civil servant in India, Sir Harold Stuart, had been a
great admirer of the Salvation Army. He was faced by a prob

lem that had long been insoluble by the civil administration.
From time immemorial there had been criminal tribes preying
on the community and especially travellers on the highways.
These accomplished bandits had argued that they could obtain
more jewels and gold by robbery than they could earn by
work, and there had been no answer to the logic. It was de
cided, therefore, that the entire problem be handed over to
the Salvation Army, and in truth it was something of an
assignment.
The Army was assisted by public funds. But it made the
condition that only its own officers should be engaged on the
task of human reclamation. A settlement was organised and
named Stuartpuram after Sir Harold. The tribesmen were col
lected into compounds without fences or walls. Any one of
them could walk out if he so desired. Every chain was struck
from their limbs. Wives and families were invited to join the
fathers. The men were taught a trade. The women were helped
to manage their homes. The children were sent to school.
And it worked. By the hundreds these victims of demonology
and loathsome rites, in their filthy rags, were reclaimed and
restored to the country as citizens holding the faith and singing
.the hymns that had been known to William Booth himself.
Evangeline Booth was the guest of those criminal tribes

folk and she was never tired of telling their story. We see her
amid the opulent magnificence of the Grocers' Hall in the
City of London. She was entertained by the wealth and power
of a metropolis still unbombed by blitzkreigthe guest of
honour at one of those banquets which it is something of an
achievement to have survived. She spoke to those city fathers
of the criminal tribes and it seemed like a traveller's tale. But
when she had said her say there arose a tall and slender man
who asked if he might add a word or two. He was none other
tfian Lord Willingdon, once Viceroy of India. Quite
simply
he told how it had been he who had authorised the transfer-*
ence of the criminal tribesmen to the care of the Salvation
Army and he wished to bear testimony to what General Evan-
FULFILMENT 243
geline Booth had said about the results. Indeed, she might
have said a good deal more than she did.
It was in London that Lord Rothermere, brother and
successor to the prestige of Alfred Harmsworth, Lord North-
clifEe, the newspaper baron, called together a company of
journalists and invited Evangeline Booth to another of those

banquets. Her response was an anecdote, and what an anecdote!
At a school for the people a little girl fainted.
"You must go home, my dear," said the teacher, "you are
sick."
"No ma'am" she replied, 'Tm not sick. I'm only hungry."
"Then you must go home and get something to eat,"
"Oh no, it's no good going home to get something to eat."
"What do you mean?" asked the teacher, "no good going
home."
"There are us and mother feeds two a day. It's not
five of
my day. Mother the baby a little every day."

tries to give
, The great tour round the world enabled Evangeline Booth
to redeem as General the promise made by her as Commander
to visit Australia and New Zealand. One incident moved her
heart deeply. On her way to Perth, the capital of Western
Australia, the train had to traverse wide tracts of under-
irrigated land, and small but faithful corps appeared on the
platforms of the- stations greeting her in what they regarded
as the great event in their Salvationist lives. One of these stops
was at a place six hundred miles from the nearest outpost of
the Army, but parents with their two children had covered
that long distance for the sake of a few minutes with the
General and they brought with them their love offerings. Such
devotion to the Blood and Fire Flag stimulated within Evan
geline Booth an even added determination
to exhaust every
ounce of her energy in the endeavour to see as many scattered
Salvationists as possible and bring them into renewed contact
with the worldwide crusade for Christ.
In this spirit she saw something of the Dutch East Indies
and of Honolulu, everywhere meeting multitudes of native
listeners whose minds had grasped that here was a friend and
a leader of friends who was trying to make life worth while
for all who have the opportunity of living it. Back in the
United States, she was, as it were, on her own quarter-deck,
and at Los Angeles it was former President Hoover who pre
sided over the mass meeting in the Mapleleaf Gardens. She
crossed the country from coast to coast and also found herself
again at Esher near London, England, where she had her
temporary home. England would not let her be silent, and
one great meeting had a special significance for her., For it
recalled the sacred months before her birth. In 186S her
mother had stood on the platform of the Dome Auditorium
in the Pavilion at Brighton, with Evangeline present within
her. And now it was the daughter who, on that same platform,
carried forward the mother '$ message in the mother's faith.
During her later years distinctions were showered on
Evangeline Booth. We
have seen that President Wilson con
ferred upon her the Distinguished Service Medal after World
War I. In 1921 she received the honourary degree of Master
of Arts .from Tuft's College, and in 1928 the Fairfax Medal
for Eminent Patriotic Service. Especially gratified was she
to be granted in 1930 the Order of the Founder of the Salva
tion Army. Three years later the King of Sweden gave her the
Vasa Gold Medal. Even during her retirement she was hon
ouredthe Gold Medal of the National Institute of Social
Sciences was an instance. It was always happening for instance,
the torchlight procession along Broadway in New York where
she was shown on a float, one of ten that celebrated ten eminent
women.
In 1939 I was eyewitness of the great scene as it always is
on the campus Columbia University when many thou
of
sands of the faculty, alumni, students and friends attend com
mencement. President Nicholas Murray Butler stood before
Evangeline Booth, arrayed in her appointed academic gown,
and she was decorated with the hood of an honourary Doctor
of Laws.
The
Fourth General visited a number of European coun
tries and her reception in Holland was typical of experiences
elsewhere. She was the guest of Queen Wilhelmina at luncheon
with Princess Juliana and Prince Bernhard also at the table.
She spoke to crowds in the royal gardens. There was a close
spiritual affinity between Scandinavians and the Army and
many Scandinavians were convinced and active Salvationists.
There is one adjective that best describes those four years
FULFILMENT 245
"
of Evangeline Booth's
Generalship. They were feverish years,
nor could they have been otherwise. She was reaching her
seventies and there was the underlying consciousness that every
hour of every day meant one hour less of active service for
the Army. Every hour, therefore, was devoted to what the
Aposde called "redeeming the time because the days are
evil.'*
For over the darkening landscapes of an already stricken

was stealing the confusing and stifling shadow
civilisation there
of World War II, nor was it any wonder that horrified ap-
peasers asked in dismay whether there was any power within
the Christian Gospel whereby the hearts of the Hitlers might
be changed and the might of their -arms arrested. "Why doesn't
somebody see Hitler?" was a question sometimes heard on
Evangeline Booth's lips, and she was serious about it. For
Salvationists in Germany are among the most devout, and the
most determined of all Salvationists, and even the Nazis in
their fury against the faithful respected that good work of
the Army against which, in the very nature of things, there
can be no law. Not only essential evangelism but good psy
chology has taught that the absorption of human energies in
what helps the human racethat is, the Gospel is the true
alternative to the misuse of those energies in what harms the
race.
With vigorous initiative, therefore, the General called
upon the Army to undertake a World for God Campaign, and
a spiritual aggression was thus substituted for aggressive na
tionalism. The urgency of the orders was driven home by one
of those apt citations in which Evangeline Booth excelled:
The King's Business Requireth Haste.
Her contribution to the united effort was one more of

those motorcades which were so exhausting to the woman and
so inspiring to the organisation. As Great Britain had seen
the father standing in his automobile, so was the daughter
seen, the very incarnation of the Founder in her challenging
appearance yet, as the were beginning to realise, the
people
last of the line in their time to be first in the movement.
Britain had
For many years the Royal Family of Great
shown repeated appreciation of the services rendered to the
community by the Salvation Army at such sacrifice. How
Edward, Prince of Wales, honoured Evangeline Booth, has
been told in these pages, and it was now the turn of his
brother, King George VI, and the Queen, Elizabeth, to carry
forward a gracious tradition. Evangeline Booth was received
privately at Buckingham Palace where the conversations with
her were of the most intimate character. She was told of the
young Princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, singing the chorus
of her song, The World for God, and when the great day
came she was invited to the Coronation.
That incomparable "solemnity" was enacted with all the
symbolism 'of the middle ages expressed in the grandeur of
a monarch's court in full display of a priceless regalia, of
jewels allotted to the Orders of Knighthood, of ecclesiastical
vestments second to none in their grandeur, of uniforms naval
and military bedecked with distinctions. It was history's last
word in pageantry, seldom if ever equalled in the past, never
exceeded in sheer glory of magnificence. The splendour of
oriental potentates and foreign envoys completed the inde
scribable scene.
Alone and unattended Evangeline Booth entered the Ab
bey. No church, no ancestry, no throne had furnished her
with the uniform above all, the bonnet that she wore. So
complete a contrast was she to everyone else in the vast and
crowded building that inevitably eyes wandered in her direc
tion and noted how she had been placed prominently where
die could not be missed. For hers was a representative capacity.
She stood for a certain definite phenomenon within the body
politic of every nation a religion of the people, by the people,
for the people, that it was thus dramatically asserted would
never perish from the earth.
Amid the varied sensations and excitements of a breath
less climax in her long career, Evangeline Booth would not
have been her own human self if she had not felt the tug of
time at her heartstrings. Her triumphs were beyond all her
expectations but all such triumphs are temporary. The end
of her authority as General was now manifestly approaching
and her farewellto stand alone in the annals of the Army
FULFILMENT 247
was under gradual organisation. Little did she anticipate that
she would be struck by a cruel blow.
On October 9th, 1938, she left her house at Esher in
Surrey. She was accompanied by her secretary, Richard Griffith,
no longer a Colonel but a Lieutenant-Commissioner. For thirty-
six years this greatly beloved man a friend of all who knew
him had been her indispensable assistant in every
emergency,
her "trouble shooter" in every worry, her thoughtful and
efficient aide-de-camp. She was in one of her moods of fore
boding and was fearful for some reason that things were not
as they should be. Griffith cheered her up and told her not to
be whimsical.
They arrived at Bristol and made their way to the Colston
Hall where the usual hurlyburly of a great meeting in prepara
tion was apparent. Evangeline Booth took her place on the
platform but there seemed to be some slight delay in the
proceedings. They asked her to follow them behind the scenes
and there, without one moment of expectancy, she saw Richard
Griffith lying before her, his life on earth at an end. It was
embolism hitting the brain. And he was gone. They brought
him back to New York and there we who had known him saw
his face for the last time.
A disaster tested her stout spirit. Arrangements for her
great farewell were under completion and she was making
her mind ready for what was intended to be a fitting recogni
tion of her long labours within the Army. That she would
have felt the strain of such an occasion is obvious. But she
would have gone through it like the fine trooper that she
always had been when it came to a crisis. She would have used
the opportunity to appeal again and yet again for a better
world, for better people in the world, for the Kingdom of Gpd
In 1914 she had been in London attending the Army's
International Congress. How high had been the hopes! How
knit together in the seamless robe of Salvation had been the
groups assembled out of scores of countries! But mankind had
been suddenly rent asunder by the declaration of World War
I. The vision of a brighter day had been distraught like a re*
flection of loveliness in waters troubled.

And now it was twenty-five years later. Once more the
Army was organising peace. Once more the friends of man in
every country were thinking that way. Once more descended
the shatterings of Armageddon. A farewell attended by many
thousands? Authority cancelled any such plans. Nothing was
now to be thought of except the safe return of Evangeline
Booth to her home in the United States.
It might almost be said that they had to smuggle her out
of the country and across the Atlantic. The publicity that had
been the air she breathed was cut off and she found herself
in a vacuum. It was, perhaps, the hardest situation in her life
that she had ever had to face. For retirement from active
service is never easy.
AFTERMATH
so it was that, at long last, Evangeline Booth found

AMD herself once more in the land of her adoption. Seventy-
four years, that was her age, and despite all her illnesses and
her accidents and her adventures, she had completed the usual
span of life, with something to spare. Within herself she was
eternally young, and of her, as of Moses, it could be said that
her eye was not dim nor was her natural force abated.
Alone and unassisted she mounted her horse, Golden, in
the morning, so enjoying a quiet ride through private paths
around her home nor was she ever happier than when she
was grooming the animal, giving it feed and otherwise attend
ing to its needs. Moving a table or chair in a room is the
gentleman's privilege but one had to be quick about it if one
was to anticipate the sudden impulses of an eager and thought
ful hostess. Bold as ever was her big and rounded caligraphy,
and in conversation and correspondence her mind was as alert
as ever as disconcerting in its originality.
Her home, Acadia, awaited her arrival from England. It
had always been her own creation just what she liked and
could look forward to. The trees that she had planted so many
years before, rewarded her affection by growing to glorious
maturity especially the copper beech with its richly coloured
foliage. The little cascade that flowed from the lakelet below
the lawn made constant music that soothed- the ear. It was
an ideal residence, suitable to her moods, yet it was hard for
her to adapt herself to altered circumstances.
Never had she regarded Acadia merely as a personal satis
faction. The place had been designed as an escape from dis-
249
tracting interruptions and as a haven where she could recover
from nervous strains. At Acadia with its private telephone she
could consult with officers, compose music, perfect addresses
and brood over problems to be solved. Acadia for its own
sakethat had never been the idea. Acadia was a help to her
serving the Army.
She was still addressed as General, and in the United
States it was hard to think of the Army except in terms of her
personality. But in the records there appeared a letter after
her name, "R," and it made a difference. She was "retired" and
many an officer has known how that feels. Her influence was
great but it was no longer an executive influence. Others than
she were administering the great organisation that she knew
so intimately and loved so deeply. They acted according to
their most dedicated judgement. She could only watch and
pray for God's providence to guide the Army, and this posi
tion on the side lines was something to which she had to be
come accustomed.
Never in her life had she made a study of leisure. Hers
had never been a passing of the time. She had used time to
the utmost. Minor occupations that interest aged women in
which so many of them excel particularly needle work would
have been new to her. For there was the memorable occasion
when she did visit a Threadneedle Battalion and gave a display
of her prowess as a seamstress. Wrote one of her hostesses:
Your thread measured two yards at least, and the

length of your needle was proportionate. I think, but
am not quite sure, whether or not you were supposed
to be sewing on a button. All other work ceased be
cause hands were needed to protect faces from the point
of the needle and the swing of your hand as you tri
umphantly swept it through space, in the prosecution
of your self-appointed task.
So with puzzles and patience or solitaire. No such devices

could have eased this mind seething with impulses to
help
others. Even the newspaper was but a
sorry diversion. For it
showed that the world she had known was passing away. The
captains and the kings who had honoured her were departing.
Only the eye of faith could foresee through the swirling dark-
AFTERMATH 251
ness the better world for which she had worked so hard,
spoken so often and named one of her books. It 'was a world
that still needed what she stood for, but she was, in a measure,
laid aside. She who wrought for right was appalled by wrong.
Itwas not defeat but it did mean that the battle was still on.
And to the last ounce of her energy she threw herself into the
unending conflict. She addressed mass meetings. Her name as
a magnet drew in the money.
She whose lifehad begun within a family which was
everything to and its accepted work in the world, was
itself
now without kith and kin at her side, save for Mrs. Herbert
Booth with whom she was in frequent and affectionate rela
tion. But she had with her "Gipsy/' her cadet in the Training
College at Clapton, her inseparable companion as she went
her ways over land and sea, and a shining example of what is
meant by a Salvationist. It is only with a certain reverence that
I can write of Gipsy, her active yet often suffering presence,
always with a serene smile on her face, always with a quick
little word of kindness on her lips, glowing with an indwelling
Spirit that seemed to be part of herself, yet as she firmly be

lievedwas a Gift from above. A more humble, cheerful,
efficient and unwearying saint of God- sick or well never lived
the long life with more selfless exampling of her faith, and she
completely won the devotion of Evangeline Booth. Another
of the household was Brigadier Farringdon, for many years
a secretary of the General, whose loyalty to her chief might
almost be described as possessive, another of these Salvationists
with persistence in well-doing that does not change with time.
But no one could quite make up for the vacuum in the home
left by "Dick" Commissioner Griffith who had lifted so many
burdens from the General's shoulders, reassured her when she
was in so many doubts and eased so many irritating, if trivial
worries.He was irreplaceable.
times, she would wonder why she had to go on living
At
when, as it seemed, so much of her work in the world had
been done. With Paul the Apostle she could say, "I have
fought a good fight, I have kept the faith." Why was it denied
her to add, **I have finished my course"? Seeing something of
her one realised how true it is that the last mile is the stretch
where you win the race.
When
her father was at her age, the reporters asked him,
"What the Army's future?" and that question pursued
is
Evangeline Booth as she saw the spiritual child of her family

launched like a ship with others occupying the bridge. The
answer of William Booth was drastic:
That depends upon the Army. If she is energetic

and faithful and steadfast, she will go on branching
out, this way and that way, going from great to greater
things. If she is slothful and slackens her zeal, she will
perish .
yes, I hope she will perish and be swept
. .
away, for dead things should not encumber the ground

but should make place for the living.
At those grave words she did not flinch. She accepted

the Founder's challenge. So would it be and so should it be.
But not for an instant did she waver from her faith that -the
Salvation Army was securely held in the hands of God. So
many faithful stalwarts in the cause of Christ scattered through
out the world would continue to find that all things are pos
sible even amid impossibilities.
Onehesitates to add a personal word to this narrative,
But beginning with her papers, I end with her papers. The
most intimate scrutiny of the inner life of the Salvation Army
that has ever been permitted to an outsider, leaves on the
mind a profound belief that the Army is now, as eighty years
ago when Evangeline Booth was an infant, one of the world's in-
dispensables. Deep as was the need for the Army when William
Booth first preached the Gospel in a cemetery, it is to be more
deeply realised when cemeteries have become international in
significance. One cannot say the last word in these pages with
out confessing to a good deal of sympathy with these Salva
tionists who, despite so many setbacks from war and revolu
tion in so many lands, go forward step by step, however foot
sore, thinking and working and praying for others than them
selves, and doing their bit, whatever it be, with a minimum
Of material reward.
During a period of inward development amid outward
revolution, this fine fellowship of service arid sacrifice has not
failed to know its leaders. The Sixth General of the
Army,
AFTERMATH 253
Albert Orsborn, with his threefold watchword Prayer, Pur
pose, Passion has proved himself to be an inspirer and an
administrator, strong but just, in whom is the Instinct for
fighting and winning that has become habitual among Salva
tionists. He has gathered around him, not only his executive
colleagues, but an Advisory Council of seven Commissioners
and Lieutenant Commissioners whose function it is to be ears
and eyes of the International Leader. The Organisation is
thus centralised for action but broadened for deliberation,
better able than ever before to confront the insistent and
growing calls of a world in desperate need of the Army's
ministration and, more important, the Army's mentality. Not
in vain did the Booths lay the foundation of a structure which
has risen far above their utmost expectations at the outset,
nor is the fact to be overlooked that among the seven advisers
of the Sixth General is one bearing that honoured name, Com
missioner Catherine, one with Evangeline in a kinship at once
human and spiritual.
Evangeline Booth started her conscious girlhood among
Salvationists and it is among Salvationists that she has been
spending her eighties. Clouds darken the sky. The future is all
unknown. But they are assets in society, surely it may be said,
who, have the courage to act on the assump
like Salvationists,
tion that, amid such apocalyptic weather, may be seen the
vision of the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the
world. And this has been the sure and certain hope that has
always inspired and sustained Evangeline Booth.
TABLE
SHOWING
EVANGELINE BOOTH'S FAMILY
On the Father's Side: Samuel Booth, Grandfather. He was born at
Belper in Derbyshire, 1775. He first married Sarah Lockitt
who died at Nottingham in 1819. Their only son, William,
also died leaving the widower alone in the world. In 1824
he married his second wife, Mary Moss. Her father was
Joseph Moss, stated to have been a farmer, and she was
born near Belper in 1791. There were five children:
Henry, born 1826, died in infancy.

Ann, born 1827 who married a hatter in Tunbridge,
1846.
WILLIAM BOOTH, born April 10, 1829, Founder
of the Salvation Army and father of EVANGELINE
BOOTH.
Erinna,born 1831. An unmarried invalid. Died 1871.
Mary, born 1832, married a builder's clerk of works,
died a widow in 1902.
On the Mother's Side: John Mumford, a wheelwright and local

preacher, grandfather. He died in 1879. He married Sarah
Milward who died in 1869. They had five children. Three
died in infancy. A fourth, John, when 16 migrated to
America. The remaining; child, a daughter, was
CATHERINE MUMFORD. In 1855 she married
WILLIAM BOOTH and was later known as tfre Mother
of the Salvation Army.
The Children of William and Catherine Booth were:

William Bramwell Booth. Born 1856. Died 1929. Sec-
-
ond General of the Salvation Army. In 1882 he married
Florence Soper, daughter of a doctor in Plymouth.
Ballington Booth. Born 1857. Named after a brother
of his grandmother Mumford. In 1886 he married Maud
Elizabeth Charlesworth, daughter of Rev. Samuel Charles-
worth, Rector of Limehouse, London. In 1896 they seceded
from the Salvation Army.
Catherine Booth. Born 1858. Known as Katie and the
254
EVANGELINE BOOTH'S FAMILY 255
Marchale. In 1887 she married Arthur Sydney Clibborn,
a Salvationist Colonel at the time who adopted the name,
Booth-Glibborn. He -was of Quaker family in Ulster. In
1902, the Booth-Clibborns left the Salvation Army to join
John Alexander Dowie, leader of a "Zionist" sect.
Emma Moss Booth. Born 1860 and given family
names, Known in the Army as Consul. In 1888 she mar
ried Frederick St. George de Latour Tucker, a former Judge
in India who adopted the name, Booth-Tucker. In 1903,
she was killed at Dean Lake, Missouri in a railway accident.
Herbert Henry (or Howard) Booth. Born 1862- In
1890 he married Cornalle Ida Schoch of a Swiss family
that had migrated to Holland. Her sister, Celestine, -was
married to William Elwin Oliphant, a curate who had
joined the Army and become a Commissioner. Herbert
Booth left theArmy in 1902, and after the death of his
wife In 1919, he married, 192S, Annie Ethel Lane, a former
Salvationist officer in Australia, who established two resi
dential hotels in Yonkers. Herbert died in 1926.
Marian Billups Booth. Born 1864. Named after J. E.
Billups, a contractor at Cardiff in Wales and friend of the
Booths. She ranked as Staff Captain but owing to physical
"weakness could not face arduous service.
EVANGELINE CORY BOOTH. Born 1865. Unmar
ried. Fourth General of the Salvation Army.
Lucy Milward Booth. Born 1868. Named after her
grandmother Milward. In 1894 married Emanuel Daniel
Hellberg, a Swedish Salvationist who changed his name
to Booth-Hellberg. He died in 1909,
INDEX
Blatchford, Robert, the Socialist, 56
Blitzkrieg destroys Army's records
in London, 3, 108, 242
Bonanza Creek, 126
Abdul the Damned, 125 "Bones" and Evangeline Booth, 68-71
Aberdeen, Earl of, Governor-General Booth, Ann, aunt of Evangeline
of Canada, 124-125 Booth, 11
Acadia, Home of Evangeline Booth Booth, Ballington,
at Hartsdale, N. Y., 160, 248-9 brother of Evangeline Booth, 25
his games, 33
Advisory Boards, 160
Albert of Belgium, King, 185 his silver ring, 35
Alexandra Palace, 71 musical abilities, 58
Algonquin Hotel, New York, 200 married Maud Charlesworth, 107
American Legion in Paris, 205 command in United States, 107
Arabian Nights, 24 left Salvation Army, 116
Arc de Triomphe, Evangeline Booth other allusion, 199
at, 187 Booth, Bramwell,
"Ark," Evangeline Booth's ancient brother of Evangeline Booth, 25
houseboat, 161 as a young man, 106
Armenia, 125-6 marries Florence Soper, 106
Army-Navy Game, 193O, Evangeline urged to undertake social work,
Booth present at, 154-5 108-109
Arnold, Thomas, 54 letter to Evangeline Booth on
Ashbourne, Derbyshire, 13 Canada, 132-3
Ashby-de-la-Zouche, Spa at, 4 succeeds father as Second General
of the Salvation Army, 158
Asquith, Herbert H., Prime Minister,
his home at Southwold, 214
171, 196, 207
visits United States, 200
B decorated by King George V, 219
public funeral, 220
Baker, Newton D., Secretary of See High Council, 190-228
War, 173 Booth, Catherine,
Baker, Richard Terrill, on Salvation sister of Evangeline Booth, 25
Army in Japan, 237 sent to France and was addressed

Baring-Gould, Sabine, and Onward as La Mar&chale, 59
Christian Soldiers, 40-1 married to A. S. Clibborn, 138
Barker, William S., Lieutenant other allusions, 116, 126, 199
Colonel, 177, 180 Booth, Charles, Liverpool shipowner,
Barnsley, orange woman converted 109 -
at, 56 Booth, Emma,

Bennett, Arnold, 72 sister of Evangeline Booth, 25
Bernhard, Prince, of Holland, 244 addressed as Consul, 25

"Besom, Jack," saved from drink, 9 married to Frederick St. George
Birrell, Augustine, 172 Latour Tucker, 137
Black Tom explosion, 175 killed in railway accident, 140-3
256
INDEX 257
BOOTH, EVANGELINE, Fights Battle of Torquay, 87-107
Her birth at Christmas, 23-25 Declines marriage with Prince
Her long span of life, 23 Galitzni, and others, 47
She named, 26
is Evidence before Parliament, 109
Her girlhood home, 31-39 Receives her mother's wedding
Her favourite marmoset, 42 ring, 110
Her first child's sermon, 43 Command in Canada, 116
Second sermon on God Is Love, Deals in New York with situation
43-44 arising out of Ballington Booth's
Defence of her sister, Marian, resignation, 116-118
44-45 Love of horses, 120-123
Visit to Dor6 Gallery and sequel, Command in Canada, 118-134
46-47 Collects money for Armenians, 126
Gives herself to God, 48-49 Starts schools hi Newfoundland,
First singing in public, 50 126
Wears uniform as sergeant, 50 Bureau for Missing Persons, 126
Sells War Crys in London, 59 Expedition into Klondyke, 126-131
Accompanies Elijah Cadman on Loyalty to Salvation Army, 139
revivals, 59-60 Leaves Canada, 133
At Whitchurch in Shropshire, 60 Commander in United States, 144-
Follows "Gipsy 75 Smith at Hanley, 163
62 First Christmas in United States,
Great success in Marylebone, 62-72 148
Her toy factory, 63-64 Administrative problems, 156
"White Angel of the Slums," 64 Views on tobacco and dancing, 168
Disguised as flower girl, 64 on women's suffrage, 168
Sells matches in Rotherhithe, on physical fitness, 163-4
London, 64 on Christian Church, 169
"Her great moment,** 66 Her swimming and diving, 161-2
Purchases guitar, 66 Escape from drowning, 162
Sings in public houses, 66 Attends International Congress,
Faces "Skeleton Army," 67 1914, 168
Her preaching, 72-74 Returns to United States on
Invited to House of Lords, 74-75 Vaterland, 172
Leaves Marylebone, 75-76 Not permitted *to proceed to
Farewell letters, 77-80 France, 174-5
Field Commissioner, 81-82 Her dangers in United States,
At Highgate: plays snare drum, 175-6
81-82 Address to Salvationist women
In brickfields at High Wycombe, going to France, 176-7
82 Appointed Commander-in-Chief,
In charge of International Train 225
ing College at Clapston, 82-85 Received by Emperor Hirohito in
Organises first woman's band in Japan, 234-6
Army, 85 Views on psychology, 233-4
Rides first woman's bicycle in on vivisection, 234
Army, 85 Faces depression of 1929, 231-2
Attitude towards Holiness Move Received by President F. D.
ment, 85-86 Roosevelt, 232
258 INDEX
Elected Fourth General of migrates to London, 11
Salvation Army, 237-3 contemplates emigration, 11
Tour in India, 241 resists Calvmist predestination, 18
Entertained at Grocers* Hall, becomes Methodist minister, 19
London, 242 secedes from Methodist New Con
Visits Australiaand New Zealand, nexion, 20
243 opposed to celebacy, 21
Entertained by Queen Wilhelmina his numerous descendants, 22
of Holland, 244 games with his children > 33
Received by King George VI and impulse to help homeless, 108
Queen Elizabeth, 246 sixtieth birthday, 109
Granted honorary degree of Doctor opens Congress with prayer, 115
of Law by Columbia University, formal letter to Evangeline Booth,
245 147
Attends coronation of King George later note of appreciation, 148
VI, 246 "counsels" to family, 197-8

Farewell cancelled owing to World failure of eyesight, 156-7
War II, 247 death and public funeral, 157-8
Booth Family, List of, 254-5 assumes sole control, 191
Booth, Herbert, on future of Salvation Army, 252
brother of Evangeline Booth, 25, Booths, the actors, 3-4
131-2, 13$, 140, 142, 199 Boozers' Day, 156, 164
Mrs. Herbert Booth, 251 Bramwell-Booth, Catherine, niece of
Booth, Lucy, Milward, Evangeline Evangeline Booth, 211, 212, 213,
Booth's sister, married to Emanuel 221, 223, 224, 253
Daniel Hellberg, -afterwards Booth- Brengle, Samuel A., commissioner,
Hellberg, 116, 140, 145, 213 215-6
Booth, Marian, sister of Evangeline Bright, John, 74
Booth, 25, 108, 110, 141 Brighter Day for converts in prison,
Bopth, Mary, aunt of Evangeline 159
Booth, 27 Brighton Pavilion, Evangeline
Booth, Mary, daughter of B ram well Booth's mother at, 24
Booth, 213 British Weekly, 218
Booth, Samuel, Evangeline Booth's Broad Street Wesleyan Chapel,
grandfather, 4 Nottingham, 7
his failureand death, 5 Brown, Ford Madox, 121
Booth, William, Founder of Salvation Browning, Robert, his Easter poem,
Army and father of Evangeline 7
Booth Buckingham Palace, Royal Stables
Booth, William, at, 123
Evangeline's father, birth, 4 Bureau for Missing Persons, 126
his literary style, 5 Butler, Nicholas Murray, 244
his hard apprenticeship, 5 Byron and orient, 23
experience as pawnbroker, 6
contact with chartists, 6
his conversion, 7-9
his first sermon, 10 Cadman, Elijah, his story, 54-6
street-preaching, 10 Cairns, Earl, and Evangeline Booth,,
relations with Methodists, 11 74-5
INDEX 259
Canada, Evangeline Booth's com D
mand in, 118-134
Carlyle, Thomas, on life decisions, Daily News of London, 203, 218,
45 225
Camp Cory, Lake George, 161 Darkness of the Sun, 237
Cardinals, College of, 195 Dawson City, 126, 131
Carnegie, Andrew, 115 Deed poll of 1904, 145, 196-8, 207,
Carpenter, George, afterwards fifth 211, 218, 219, 224
General of Army, 204 Democratic Convention of 1932
Catholic Dictionary's tribute to opened with prayer by Evangeline
Salvation Array, 159 Booth, 152-154
Charlesworth, Maud: married to Devil's Island, Salvation Army
Ballington Booth, 107 Rehabilitates, 188-189
Chattanooga, William Booth at, 23 Dickens, Evangeline Booth's interest
Chelmsford, Viscount, 227 in, 3
Chesterton, Gilbert, 33 his notebooks, 5
Chilcoot Pass, 127-8 his residence in Marylebone, 63

Christian Endeavour, 159 Disraeli, 23
Christian Mission, afterwards Dore, Gustave, his gallery visited by
Salvation Army, 23, 164, 192 Evangeline Booth, 46-7
Christmas Baskets, 232 Doughnuts, origin of, 183
Chums (for boys), 159 Dowie, John Alexander, 36, 147
Church of England, Situation in, 7
Circus, Booths' attitude towards the,
36-7
Eagle Tavern, City Road, London,
Clash of the Cymbals, 203, 225
57, 106
Clemenceau, Evangeline Booth visits, Edward VII, King, and William
187
Booth, 21
Cleveland, President, message to Eglinton, Nellie, her story, 65-66
Congress, 115 Elba, Napoleon at, 106
Clibborn, Arthur Sydney, Elks of Chicago, 201
married "Katie Booth" and Empress of Ireland, sunk with many
adopted name Booth-Clibborn, Salvationists, 171
138 Encyclopaedia Britanfdca .corrected,
v ' '
joined Dr. Dowie and left Army, 36 , v. 'V

138 Enemy attempts against Evangeline
Confucius, 23,0 Booth, 175-6
Constable, John, 57 Epworth League, 159
Cornwall, Revival in, 51 Ervine, St. John, his "epilogue," 204
Coronation of King George VI, 246 Esher, near London, home of
Cory, John and Richard, supporters Evangeline Booth, 244, 247
of William Booth, 26-7 Evangeline Hotel, New York, 232
Eve, Mr. Justice, 218
Cozens-Hardy, later Master of the
Rolls, 192
Cradle Roll, 159
Criminal tribes in India, 242 Foch, Marshal, 188
Croydon, Saucepan hurled at Salva Foundation Deed of 1878, 192-193,
tionists, 53 207
260 INDEX
Fowler, Henry H., later Viscount Hay, Commissioner, 212
Wolverhampton, 102-103 Hellberg, Emanuel Daniel, see under
Funerals transformed to triumphs, Booth, Lucy
9-10 Herrick, Myron T., ambassador, 201
Funny Folks, 103 Hey diddle, diddle, 43
Higgins, Edward J., third General of
the Salvation Army, 219, 222, 223,
225, 237
Gardiner, Alfred G., 218-9
Highgate, Evangeline Booth at, 81
George V, King, and Queen Mary,
171
High Council, 190-228
High Wycombe, Evangeline Booth
Gibbons, James Cardinal, letter on
at, 82
Salvation Army, 185-6
Hirohito, Emperor, 234-236
"Gipsy," Evangeline Booth's insep
Hitler, Adolf, 245
arable companion, 130, 251
Hollywood Bowl, Evangeline Booth
Gkdstone, W. Booth's interview
in, 152
with, 194-196
and Armenian atrocities, 126 Honolulu, 243
other references, 23, 207
Hood, Tom, his Song of a Shirt, 13
God's Soldier, by St. John Ervine, Hoover, Herbert, President, and

204 Evangeline Booth, 152, 243
House of the Seven Gables, 5
Golden, Evangeline Booth's horse, Hull House, Chicago, 86
249
Great Western Hall, Marylebone, 63 Huxley and "Corybantic Christian-
ity," S3
Grenfell of Labrador, 136
GrenviUe, Sir Richard, 136
Gregory, Dean of St. Paul's, 4
Griffith, Richard, Lieutenant-Com Imitation of Christj 135
missioner, sudden death of, 247, In Darkest England and the
251
Way
Out, 109
Grogseller's Dream, The, recited by Indians in Alaska, 131
William Booth, 17 International Conference of
Commissioners, 226
H International Congress, First,
Haines, Commissioner, sudden death "trophies" at, 71
of, 217-218
of 1914, 170
Haldane, R. B., afterwards Lord International Training College, 82-85

Chancellor, 196 Ivanhoe, 4
Hanley, Evangeline Booth at, 62
Hansen, Jim, murderer, 131
Happy Eliza, 55-56
Harmsworth, Alfred, Lord North- James of Hereford, Lord, 109
cliffe, 243 John Butt, 218
Harrogate, Rivalry with Sanger's Jones, Jesse, of the Reconstruction
Circus, 53 Finance Corporation, 232
Hartsdale, New York, Evangeline Jowitt, Williaim, afterwards Lord
Booth's residence, 135 Chancellor, 215, 218, 221, 222
Hawaii, Evangeline Booth at, 152 Juliana, Princess, of Holland, 244
INDEX 261
Matlock, Derbyshire, William Booth

at, 28
Mellon, Andrew, 115
Kempis, Thomas a, 85 Merrie England, 57
Keswick Convention, 85 Methodists and their ejaculations, 8
Kingsley, Charles, and St. Elizabeth Middlesborough, Liquor selling
of Hungary, 21
reduced, 56-57
and Chimney Sweep, 54
Milward, Sarah, Evangeline Booth's
Kings, Lynn, "Polly" at, 30 grandmother, 13
Kitchener, Earl, and Salvation married to John Mumford, 15
Army, 174 Mohammed, 230
Knights of Columbus, 173
La Guardia, Moody, Dwight L., compared with
Fiorello, Mayor of New William Booth, 135-136
York, 239
Moss, Mary, Evangeline Booth's
grandmother, 4
her shop hi Goose Gate, Notting
ham, 5
dies, 27
Lake George, 161
Motorcades, 245
Lamb, Commissioner, 224
Mumford, Catherine, Mrs. William
Lamplighter's story, 52
Booth, Evangeline Booth's mother
Lansbury, George, 227
and "Mother of the Salvation
Lawrence of Arabia, 136
Army," 15
Lee, John, accused of murder, 102
Mumfo.rd, Catherine,
Lee, Porter R., 150
her kindness to animals, 15-16
Leper colony in India, 241-242
range of her reading, 16
Leviathan, 237
married to William Booth, 17-19
Life and Labour in London, 109
their total abstinence, 17
Life Saving Scouts and Guards, 159
insists on spiritual equality of
Lincoln, Abraham, 23
women, 18
Lloyd George, David, Prime Minis
her first and shortest speech, 21
ter, 226
letter to Evangeline Booth, 76-77
Longfellow and use of force, 167
address on Love, Courtship and
Lutterworth, the home* of Wycliffe,
54 Marriage, 83-86
diagnosis of cancer, 108
her last address, 108
M farewell at Congress Hall, 109-110
message to Crystal Palace, 110
Macfadden, Bernarr, 162 death and funeral, 110-111
Mackenzie, Fred A., 136, 203, 225 her Pisgah, 111
Manners Mdkytk Man, 84 other allusion, 216
Markle, John, 232-233 Mumford, John, Evangeline Booth's
Marshall, Vice-President, 201, 240 grandfather, 14
Masefield, John, and The Everlasting marries Sarah Milward, 15
Mercy, 63 his later years, 27-28
Mason and Dixon Line, Problems Music, Booth's attitude towards,
south of, 159 37-38
262 INDEX
Pilgrim's Progress, 57
N Porter, Melville, and Evangeline
Booth, 60
Newfoundland, 126 Prayer Book, Revision of, 227
Nelson^ Evangeline Booth's dog, 39 Princess Elizabeth of Windsor, 246
Newman, John Henry, and Anglo- Princess Margaret of Windsor, 246
Catholic Revival, 7 Prohibition, 164-165
New York Times, 161, 165
New York School of Social Work,
150
New York World announces Evan
geline Booth's impending recall Quaker cemetery, Resurrection in,
from U. S. A., 200-3 52-53
Nichols, Ruth, aviatrix, 239 Quaker influence through lay
Notre Dame, Evangeline Booth ministry, 14
honoured in, 188
R
Rabbits, E. J., William Booth's first
Ochs, Adolph, 161
supporter, 12-13
O'Connell, Daniel, 6
Railton, George Scott,
O'Connor, Feargus, 6 his early career, 28-29
'
Old Linen Campaign, 173

association with Evangeline, 29
Olympia, 111
death, 31
Onslow, Earl, and Evangeline Booth, other allusion, 40
74-75
Reconstruction Finance Corporation,
Orders and Regulations, 111-2, 115,
232
216-217
Red Cross, 173
Orsborn, Albert, Sixth general of the
Revenge, The, 136
Salvation Army, 252
Review of Reviews, 58
Rockefeller, John D., 115
Rockefeller Investigation Into
Salvation Army, 150
Page, Walter Hines, Ambassador, Rogers, Will, and Salvation Army,
171 185
Paget, Sir James, 108, 120 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 152
Palmerston, 23 Roosevelt^ Quentin, his grave
Parkin, Mary Ann, "Polly," 30-31 decorated, 184
Payne, John Barton, Tribute to Roosevelt, Theodore, Jr., Major, 180
Salvation Army, 186 Rotherhithe, London, Evangeline
Peart, William, Commissioner, 161 Booth in, 64
Penitent Form of Salvation Army, Rothermere, Lord, 243
Origin of, 8 Rousseau's idea of human slavery,
Perth, Western Australia, 243 Challenge to, 9
Pershing, John J., general, 180, 183 Rugby School, 54
Pettit, Walter W., 150 Russell, Sir Charles afterwards Lord
:
Piccadilly Circus, London, Evange Russell of Killowen questions

line in, 64 Evangeline Booth, 103
INDEX 263
Stah-Wahn Knife, 131
Starkey, John H., hung for murder,
56
Salisbury, Sarah Sayers, Salvationist, Stead, William T., 58
at, 57-8 cooperates with William Booth in
Salvation Army, Aim of, 2 writing In Darkest England? 109
origin of its name, 40 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, and Evan
uniforms, bonnet and phrases, 42 geline Booth, 26
reaches United States, 112-115 Stuart, Sir Harold, 242
unity of, 119 "Submerged Tenth," 109
Founder's forecast, 252 Sunbeams (for girls), 159
Salvation Army, increase of assets Sunbury-on-Thames, 212, 216
in United States, 148
Salvation Army in United States and
First World War, 166-189
San Francisco Earthquake, 231 Taft, Henry W., 221
Sanger's Circus, 53 Taft, William Howard, President,
Sankey, Ira D., his harmonium attends Evangeline Booth's meet
owned by Evangeline Booth, 135 ing, 151
Sargent, afterwards Lord Justice, Tales of a Wayside Inn, 167
196-207 Tennyson prophesies air war, 167
Sayers, Sarah, at Salisbury, 57-58 Thackeray, 24, 57
Sealed Envelope, 193, 196, 198, 199 Thlinget Indians, 131
Shaw Bernard, his Pygmalion, 64 Threadneedle Battalion, 250
Shaftesbury, Earl of, Times of London, 218
interviews Evangeline Booth, 74-75 Titanic, 58
his memorial among the flower- Toronto, 122
girls, 75 haunted house near, 122-123
Sheffield, Hallelujah Band in, 51-52 great meetings at Massey Hall,
Shepherd, Cuthbert, Evangeline 124-125
Booth's first convert at Maryle- Torquay, Battle of, 87-104
bone, 72 Toynbee Hall, London, 86
Sherlock Holmes in Marylebone*, 63 Tucker, Frederick St. George Latour,
Skagway, 127, 128, 131 136
"Skeleton Army" opposes Salvation married Emma Booth
ists, 67 adopted name Booth-Tucker, 137
Sladen, Hugh, Mrs. Commissioner, "Saint and SaOhu," 136
"Motee," 143 other allusions, 127-208
Smith, "Gipsy" Rodney, Leaves the Tussaud, Madame, her waxworks,
Salvation Army, 61-62 63
Smith, "Soapy," his story, 128-130
Smuts of South Africa, 226 U
Social Salvage: A Study of the Cen
tral Organisation and Administra Uncle Tom's Cabin, 26
tion of the Salvation Army, 150
Soper, Florence, married to W. V
Bramwell Booth, 106
Southend-on-Sea, 72 Vanderbilt, General, 186
Speyer, James, 165 Vanity Fair, 57
264 INDEX
Victoria, Queen, Wilhelmina, Queen, of Holland, 244
proclamation to Indian Peoples, Willard, Frances Elizabeth, and
137 Evangeline Booth, 26
her Jubilees, 170 Willingdon, Lord, Viceroy of India,
notes Salvation Army's uniforms, 242
55 Wilson, Woodrow, President, gives
other allusion, 24 D.S.M. to Evangeline Booth, 187
Volunteers of America, 116, 119, 137 Winchester College, 84
Wodehouse, P. G., 66
W Women's Christian Temperance
Union, 26
Walsall, Prizefighter converted in, 51 Women's Social Work, 212
Walworth in London, 11 Wootton-under-Edge, Evangeline
Warburg, Felix, 161 Booth's address at, 80-81
War Cry, 3, 213 World for God, The, musical com
Waterloo, Battle of, 106 position by Evangeline Booth, 38
Water Babies, 54
Waterford, Catherine Mumford's
retriever, 16, 39 X
Wellington, Duke of, 6
Wells, H. G, 6 Xavier, Saint Francis, 29
Wesleyan Controversies, 11
Wesleys, 7, 115, 191 Y
"Whipsie" and Evangeline Booth,
67-68 Yamamura, Commissioner, of Japan,
Whitechapel Road, Tent off, 52-53 214
Wickersham, George W., 221 Young People's Legion, 159
Wilberforce, William, 74 Yukon, 126
CD
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(1948) General Evangeline Booth of The Salvation Army

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92 B7254w^2

Keep Your Card in This Pocket

TENSION ENVELOPE CORP.

All rights reserved. No part of this book

"Steal," he answered as if it were a matter of

This book is, know, the most intimate review of the

To many officers of the Salvation Army I owe a debt of

gratitude for courtesy that has been characteristic of a great

Finally, Evangeline Booth herself. What can be prefaced

of us urged Evangeline Booth in the heyday of

toward the mark for the of the high calling of

filled to overflowing with the affairs of the Army urgent re

gossip. He in the building trade, and during an

proceeded. He was apprenticed at the age of

red revolution. In actual fact it consisted of little more than the

apparent. His conscience was stirred to sensitive reactions that

In a boyish trading I had managed to make a profit

Before your solemn convictions are registered on

Strange words from a pawnshop and, perhaps, it was no

There in the pulpit from time to time she saw an impres

With a stifled sob and a half-formed scream,

There was an awkward silence. One of the guests had been

lost, and there was nothing that anyone could do about it

At last he was entitled to a 'reverend which courtesy he re

honoured their signatures. They were the Wesleys of the nine

one of his tours through the United States, Gen

sixty-five Gladstone and Disraeli, now among the ancients, had

In November of that year the Booths moved their home

tioned the incident.

helped her mother keep the little shop in Nottingham, To

Jesus lives and loves me still.

Proceed King's Lynn. No home, no hall, no friends, no

For our encouragement the dear Lord has told

heaven over one sinner that repenteth, and has I think

She told of Eva's sermons in the old schoolroom, and

The question in that home was not whether this, that or

was the circus. It was an entrancing mystery, arriving from no

goddesses on their Elysian thrones. What she yearned for was

My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine.

And Evangeline Booth spent many a merry hour singing

My mother was a great believer in hydropathy. At

The Son of God goes, forth to war,

stanzas which Sullivan, at the very peak of his fame as a

remember aright thirty shillings. Catherine, wife of the

signify her disapproval. Evangeline was very sorry about this

Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,

Good cheer amid adversitythat was the homiletic. "Hey

of staying around like a good cow and giving milk to poor

Justice cries out:

No grand-daughter of Sarah Milward, no daughter of

My mother often said that our sister Marie, two

have asked Evangeline Booth whether she was ever

a lady who happened to be standing near broke in

The way in which this event in the life of Evangeline

Paris, April 2nd, 1894

prudent sometimes. I will stay here only some days more

and, I hope, not Siberia or Caucasus. It is hard, very

Little Lamb to send me a few lines dear sweet Little

For years Evangeline Booth was pursued by rumours of