"It was here (Banbury) that the idea of a Motor Campaign was conceived. Seven or eight years ago (1900) I held an afternoon Meeting in this place. On that occasion a crowd of my own people and friends came to the station to give me a send-off. Such was the affection shown, and so manifest was the pleasure derived from my visit, that I said to myself:--
"'Why should I not impart this satisfaction to those comrades and friends throughout the country who have never had the satisfaction of seeing my face, or hearing my voice?'
"And then the idea occurred to my mind that the automobile would not only be the readiest means of transit, but the only plan by which I could reach the small towns and outlying hamlets. Moreover, it would perhaps prove the only method by which we could get through the crowds who would be likely to assemble on such a Campaign."
By most men, in their prime, it would be thought an ample filling up of any week to address three large Meetings on the Sunday, and one each week night; but The General, at seventy-four, saw that, travelling by motor, and visiting in the daytime such smaller towns and villages as had never seen him before, or not for many years, he could not only reckon upon three large indoor Meetings every day, but speak, perhaps, to millions of people he had never before addressed. And so in six Motor Tours he passed from end to end and from side to side of Great Britain, gathering crowds from day to day for six weeks at a time.
We have met with people frivolous enough to write of all that as if The General's Motor Tours were luxuries! In one glorious sense they were really so, for, to him, there could never be a greater luxury than to proclaim the Gospel to a crowd. But, as a matter of fact, he found it less expensive to travel in this way than to go as he ordinarily did for a long journey to and from London by train to reach each town separately.
And the economy of Army forces, by means of Motor Tours, has been marvellous, every little Corps and village Outpost on the route on week-days being given an opportunity to gather crowds they never ordinarily reached together, and to unite their own efforts for once with those of their General in trying to lift up Christ more than ever before.
And The General was so alive to the value of inflaming the love of any handful of villagers or children, but especially of his Soldiers and Officers to the Master, that it was to him a continual delight to move about amongst his Soldiery in every land.
The General could rarely venture to plan very far ahead, because his public appearances had all to be made to fit in with other and often even more important engagements, of which only his Staff knew anything. It is, indeed, marvellous how few engagements he made ever had to be broken, and how successful almost every Campaign of his has been, seeing at how short notice most of them were undertaken. In one of his diaries I found a bitter complaint of the waste of time involved in having to wait for three hours between the steamboat and train. "Why," he asks, "could they not have arranged a Meeting for me?"
One who has travelled 8,000 miles with him on four Motor Tours says, though everybody, everywhere, pressmen included, were of necessity impressed with his sincerity and transparency, they could see that he had all the time only one object in view, the glory of God and the Salvation of souls.
And it is the extent to which he led all ranks into the same spirit which made it easy for arrangements to be made and carried out in so few hours for the very largest demonstrations, as to which it was never possible to hold any approach to a rehearsal, those joining in them living usually so widely apart from each other.
An occasional private letter gives, perhaps, the best possible explanation of his own heart in this perpetual motion towards the Cross. Who that saw him in some grand demonstration could imagine that he had been feeling just before it as this letter reveals:--
"My feelings alternate; but my faith is steadfast. Morning, noon, and night I tell God He is my only help. He will not fail me. To-night's Meeting will be, as you say, a great strain; but the memories of God's goodness encourage me to go forward in spite of unutterable sadness and gloom."