It has been truly said that within four days after the German Army entered Belgium, another Army entered also—the Salvation Army! One came to destroy, the other to relieve distress and minister to the wounded and dying.
The British Salvation Army furnished a number of Red Cross Ambulances, manned by Salvationists when the Red Cross was in great need of such. When these arrived in France and people first saw the big cars with the “Salvation Army” label it attracted a good deal of attention. The drivers wore the Red Cross uniform, and were under its military rules, but wore on their caps the red band with the words, “Salvation Army.”
There is a story of a young officer in sportive mood who left a group of his companions and stepped out into the street to stop one of these ambulances:
“Hello! Salvation Army!” he cried. “Are you taking those men to heaven?”
Amid the derisive laughter of the officers on the sidewalk the Salvationist replied pleasantly:
“I cannot say I am taking them to heaven, but I certainly am taking them away from the other place.”
One of the good British Salvationists wrote of meeting our American boys in England. He said:
“Oh, these American soldiers! One meets them in twos and threes, all over the city, everlastingly asking questions, by word of mouth and by wide-open trustful eyes, and they make a bee-line for the Salvation Army uniform on sight. I passed a company of them on the march across London, from one railroad station to another, the other, day. They were obviously interested in the sights of the city streets as they passed through at noon, but as they drew nearer one of the boys caught sight of the red band around my cap among the hate crowning the sidewalk crowd. My! but that one man’s interest swept over the hundred odd men! Like the flame of a prairie fire, it went with a zip! They all knew at once! They had no eyes for the crowd any more; they did not stare at the façade of the railway terminus which they were passing; they saw nothing of the famous ‘London Stone’ set in the wall behind its grid on their right hand. What they saw was a Salvation Army man in all his familiar war-paint, and it was a sight for sore eyes! Here was something they could understand! This was an American institution, a tried, proved and necessary part of the life of any community. All this and much more those wide-open eyes told me. It was as good to them as if I was stuck all over with stars and stripes. I belonged—that’s it—belonged to them, and so they took off the veil and showed their hearts and smiled their good glad greeting.
“So I smiled and that first file of four beamed seraphic. Two at least were of Scandinavian stock, but how should that make any difference? Again and again I noticed their counterpart in the column which followed.... It was all the same; file upon file those faces spread out in eager particular greeting; those eyes, one and all, sought mine expecting the smile I so gladly gave. And then when the last was past and I gazed upon their swaying forms from the rear I wondered why my eyes were moist and something had gone wrong with my swallowing apparatus. Great boys! Bonny boys!”
The Salvation Army was founded July 5, 1865, as a Christian Mission in East London by the Reverend William Booth, and its first Headquarters opened in Whitechapel Road, London. Three years later work was begun in Scotland.