The General, seventeen years ago, wrote to a wealthy lady who had been excusing somebody's want of liberality to us by some of the slanders they had heard.
"Tell your friends in Gull-town the same that I am telling the public: that nine out of every ten statements in the Press that reflect upon us are either out-and-out falsehoods or 'half-lies,' which are worse still; and that, though not infallible, when in one case out of ten we do make mistakes, there are circumstances which, if known, would excuse them very largely.
"I am having wonderful Meetings--immense crowds, soul-awakening influences all day--Penitent-Forms; back-sliders, sinners and half-and-half saints coming back to God. Never saw anything, anywhere, in any part of my life, much more blessed.
"Read my letter in The War Cry about the Two Days--every word as from my heart.
"Money or no money, we must and will have Salvation. If the rich won't help Lazarus through us, then their money must perish. We must do the best we can.
"Join the Light Brigade, and give a halfpenny per week! We shall get through. Is your soul prospering? Cast yourself this morning on your Lord for a supply of all your need."
This "Light Brigade" is another invention of the General's, partly founded upon the Indian habit of taking a handful out of every new supply of food, and laying it aside for the priests.
The "Light Brigade" consists of Soldiers and friends who place on their table a little box, into which all who like can drop a little coin by way of thanksgiving to God and care for the poor before they eat. These are called "Grace-before-Meat" Boxes, and in England alone they produced last year £8,284. 17s. 2d. for the support of our Social Work.
Altogether I venture to say it will be found that for every shilling he ever got anywhere he prompted the giving of at least a thousand shillings to other benevolent enterprises, and that mankind is indebted to him for the stirring up to benevolent action of countless millions who never even heard his name.
At the same time it will be found that by his financial plans he has made The Army so largely dependent upon public opinion that, were its beneficent work to cease, its means of survival would at the same time become extinct, so that it could not continue to exist when it had ceased to be a Salvation Army.
Chapter XXIII
In Germany in Old Age
Though we have had occasion to mention Germany repeatedly, there has been no opportunity to call attention to the great importance which The General attached to our Work in that country. It seemed almost as though we had been premature in our attack upon the country, so little were either Governments or people prepared for our violent urgency, when we began in Stuttgart, in 1886. But The General lived to see his annual visits to Berlin looked forward to by the Press and public as a natural provision for the spiritual wants of those who had practically ceased to be of any religion.
In the following description of him, taken from German papers during one of his last visits to that country, we get not only some idea of his appearance to the people when he was eighty-one years of age, but his sense of the importance of that people in the future of The Army. And it is a remarkable fact that German cities should have been subsidising The Army's work before any English one did so.