Rejoicing as we do in all that, we cannot too strongly guard every one against the impression that The Army has become, either at its centre, or anywhere else, so situated that there is not at any given moment extraordinary strain in some financial direction. It has come to be very generally known that the individual Officer can only keep in existence because he has schooled his desires to be content with what others all around would regard as "an impossible pittance."
We hear one day of a great city where the conditions of life are such that a Rescue Home is evidently urgently needed, and the lady who calls our attention to the matter offers at once to find £500 towards the fitting-up of such a Home. But we know that to keep it up requires gifts amounting to some thousands of pounds each year, which, if not subscribed locally, we shall have to provide from Headquarters.
Now what is to be done? Are we to stand still with what seems to us so valuable an offer, not only of money-helps but of opportunity to help? Under the circumstances we know what The General would have done. He would without a moment's hesitation have said: "This ought to be done, and must be done"; and, trusting in God, he would have made the other step forward, though perfectly conscious that it would probably involve him in new cares and anxieties.
"Four shillings and tenpence. Now, really, can't we manage that twopence to make five shillings?"
Such an appeal, heard at a street-corner, where one of our Open-Air Meetings is being closed, is, I fear, the first and last that many people hear of The Salvation Army. They have not been present at the Meeting. All the beautiful speaking and singing of happy men and women, anxious to do anything they can for the good of others--of this the passers-by know nothing. Many of them "would not be seen standing to listen" amidst the crowd, still less when, for want of any considerable crowd, they would be more conspicuous. Hence they have no chance to see or know what really takes place. Had they even seen the whole process of getting that four shillings and tenpence they would have noted that most of the money really came from the Salvationists forming the ring, who threw their pence, or sixpences, gradually, in the hope of inciting others to do likewise.
As it is, I fear, many go their way "disgusted at the whole thing," because of the little scrap of it they have overheard.
But, pray, what is the essential difference between the call for "twopence to make up a shilling," and the colossal call made in the name of some royal personage for "an additional ten thousand pounds" to make up the £25,000 needed for a new hospital wing? Surely, a hospital, whose value and services commend it to the entire population should need no such spurs as subscription lists published in all the papers, or even the memory of a world benefactor to help it to get the needed funds. But it does, and its energetic promoters, be they royal or not, deserve and get universal praise for "stooping"--if it be stooping--to any device of this kind needed to get the cash. Do they get it? is the only question any sensible person asks.
And nobody questions that our "stooping" Officers and "begging Sisters" get the twopences and shillings and pounds needed to keep The Army going, in spite of all its critics--whether of the blatant street-corner, or of the kid-gloved slanderer type.
If we reflect upon the subject we shall see how sound and valuable are the principles on which all our twopenny appeals are based.
From the very beginning The General always set up the standard of local self-support as one of the essentials of any real work. Whilst labouring almost exclusively amongst the poorest of the poor, he wrote, in 1870:--