"To-day we have the mournful duty of chronicling the passing of William Booth, the Head of that vast Organisation, the Salvation Army. The world has lost its greatest missionary evangelist, one of the supermen of the age. Almost every land on the face of the globe knows this pioneer and his Army, The Army which has waged such long, determined, and successful battle against the world's ramparts of sin and woe. Not one country, but fifty, will feel to-day a severe personal loss. From Lapland to Honolulu heads will be bowed in sorrow at the news that that striking figure who has been responsible for so much of the religious progress of the world of to-day is no more.
"The stupendous crusade which he initiated had the very humblest beginnings. It opened in the slummy purlieus of Nottingham, that city which gave to the world two of the greatest religious leaders of modern times--General Booth and Dr. Paton. It has passed through periods of open enmity, opposition, criticism, but its Leader and his band of devoted helpers have never lost sight of their high aim. They were engaged in 'war on the hosts that keep the underworld submerged,' and they have now long been justified by their unparalleled achievements. The time of scorn and indifference passed, and General Booth lived to receive honour at the hands of kings and princes, and to have their support for his work.
"It is not given to every man who sets out with a great purpose to accomplish his aims. But of General Booth it may be said that he did more. His Movement reached dimensions of which he probably never dreamed in its early days, yet the extraordinary results made him ever hungrier for conquest. In a way the latter years of his life were perhaps the most notable of his whole career. He displayed a vitality and enthusiasm which seemed to increase with the weight of time. At a time when most men seek a greater measure of repose, General Booth worked on with all the freshness of early years. And it can be said that he has died in harness. He did not lift his finger from the pulse of the far-reaching Organisation which he brought into being until death called.
"The story of the growth of The Salvation Army is the most remarkable in the history of the work of the spiritual, social, and material regeneration of the submerged. From the by-ways of all the world human derelicts, which other agencies passed by, have been rescued. No one was too degraded, too repulsive to be neglected. The work is too great to be estimated in a way which can show its extent. It has been achieved mainly by two great factors. The first is perfect organisation. Lord Wolseley once described General Booth as the greatest organiser in the world. The second feature was the wonderful personality of The Army's chief. He impressed it not only upon his colleagues but upon those whom he wished to rescue, and on the public at large. He radiated human sympathy and enthusiasm. His loss will be a heavy one for the world; it will be a severe blow for The Army. But we cannot think that his good work has not been built upon sound foundations, and that the war he directed so ably and so long will be relaxed. Nationally The Army has done magnificent work in fifty countries, and it has, therefore, tended to promote a greater spirit of brotherhood among the nations. To-day the whole world will unite to pay its tribute to a splendid life of devotion to a great cause. To that world he leaves a splendid example, and it will be the highest tribute that can be paid to his memory to keep green that lofty example which he set before all peoples."
The Daily Telegraph, August 21, 1912
"It is with no ordinary or conventional regret that we record this morning the death of General Booth. The news will be received by hundreds of thousands of Salvationists with profound and reverential grief, and by many who are not Salvationists, and who never could be, with respectful and sympathetic sorrow. For, whatever we may think of William Booth and of the wonderful Organisation which he so triumphantly established, it is certain that he belonged to the company of saints, and that during the eighty-three years of a strenuous life, he devoted himself, so far as in him lay, to the solemn duty of saving men's souls and extending the Divine Kingdom on earth. That success attended his efforts is, from this point of view, not of so much consequence as that the success was deserved by the patient, devout, and self-sacrificing zeal of the Founder of The Salvation Army. Long ago William Booth prevailed against the easy scepticism of those who found fault with his aims, and the sincere dislike of humble and reverent men, who doubted whether the cause of religion could be advanced by such riotous methods. Not only was The General of The Salvation Army a saint and a mystic, who lived in this world and yet was not of this world, but he also was possessed of much practical ability and common sense, without which the great work of his life could never have been accomplished. We need only refer to that remarkable book which he published in 1890, In Darkest England, and the Way Out, in which will be found proposals to remedy the crying evils of pauperism and vice by such eminently wise expedients as Farm Colonies, Oversea Colonies, and Rescue Homes for Fallen Women; to say nothing of picturesque but also practical devices, such as the Prison-Gate Brigade, the Poor Man's Bank, the Poor Man's Lawyer, and Whitechapel-by-the-Sea. How is it possible to ridicule the objects or character of a man who has proved himself so earnest a worker for God? As a matter of fact, William Booth was nothing less than a genius, and towards the end of the nineteenth century the world at large gave very generous recognition, not only to the spirit and temper, but to the results of an extraordinarily effective, and, indeed, epoch-making Movement. At the instance of King Edward VII The General was officially invited to be present at the Coronation ceremony in 1902. Nothing could have marked more significantly than this single fact the completeness of the change of public feeling; and when, in 1905, William Booth went on a progress through England, he was welcomed in state by the Mayors and Corporations of many towns.
"Is it better to live in this world with no religion at all or with a narrow and violent form of religious belief? People will judge the deceased teacher and chief, in respect of his theological and propagandist work, in accordance with the views which they hold upon this alternative. As regards his social labours, his passionate efforts to help the 'submerged tenth,' his widespread helpfulness of the poor, his shelters and refuges, the feeling must and will be almost universal that he was an energetic and warm-hearted benefactor of his kind, who wrought much good to his times, and helped others to do it, and who had what Sir John Seeley called the 'enthusiasm of humanity' in very honourable, if noisy and demonstrative, form. But, since The General mingled all this with a cult--a distinct theological teaching, a theory of the Divine government and destiny of mankind which was in external form, as Huxley styled it, 'Corybantic'--the question does and must arise whether religion of the Salvationist school does good or harm to the human natures which it addresses. It is not necessary to dwell upon the dislike--we might, indeed, say the repulsion--felt by serious and elevated minds at the paraphernalia, the pious turmoil, the uproar and 'banalite' of much that has developed under the Banners of The Salvation Army. Prayers uttered like volley-firing, hymns roared to the roll of drums and the screaming of fifes, have been features of this remarkable revival which outraged many of the orthodox, and made even the judicious and indulgent ask whether any good could come out of such a Nazareth. Nobody gave utterance to this feeling with greater moderation or kindliness than Cardinal Manning, when, while confessing that the need of spiritual awakening among the English poor was only too well proved by the success of General Booth--that the moral and religious state of East London could alone have rendered possible The Salvation Army--his Eminence added these grave sentences: 'Low words generate low thoughts; words without reverence destroy the veneration of the human mind. When a man ceases to venerate he ceases to worship. Extravagance, exaggeration, and coarseness are dangers incident to all popular teachers, and these things pass easily into a strain which shocks the moral sense and deadens the instinct of piety. Familiarity with God in men of chastened mind produces a more profound veneration; in unchastened minds it runs easily into an irreverence which borders upon impiety. Even the Seraphim cover their faces in the Divine Presence.'
"Yet against what new movement of spiritual awakening in the people--against what form of religious revival might not the same argument of offended culture and decorous holiness be employed? And where would the lower masses of men be to-day if Religion had not stooped out of her celestial heights--from the first chapters of Christendom until the last--to the intellectual and moral levels of the poor and lowly? In the sheet, knit at four corners, and lowered out of Heaven, there was nothing common or unclean. If, as is practically certain, General Booth, by the vast association which he founded and organised, touched with the sense of higher and immortal things countless humble and unenlightened souls; if, in his way, and in their way, he brought home to them the love and power of Heaven, and the duty and destiny of men, then it is not for refined persons who keep aloof from such vulgar tasks to mock at the life and deeds of this remarkable man. The particulars which we give elsewhere of his career show how, like Wesley, Whitefield, and Spurgeon, in this country, and like Savonarola, Peter the Hermit, and the Safi mystics abroad, William Booth, the builder's son of Nottingham, was obviously set apart, and summoned by time, temperament, and circumstances for the labours of his life. Like Luther, his answer to all objections--worldly or unworldly--would always have been, 'I can no other'. Meeting in Miss Catherine Mumford the wife who exactly suited him, and reinforced by many children, all brought up in the temper and vocation of their parents, The General made his family a sort of Headquarters' Staff of The Salvation Army, and celebrated his household marriages or bewept his domestic bereavements with all the éclat and effect of œcumenical events. We saw him buy up and turn into stations for his troops such places as the 'Eagle Tavern' and 'Grecian Theatre,' overcome popular rioting at Bath, Guilford, Eastbourne, and elsewhere; fill the United Kingdom with his War Cry and his fighting centres, and invade all Europe, and even the Far East. At home he plunged, insatiable of moral and social conquests, into his crusade for 'Darkest England,' being powerful enough to raise in less than a month as much as all England and the Colonies contributed for the Gordon College at Khartoum in response to another victorious general. For General Booth certainly ended by being victorious. If the evangelical creed he inculcated was rude, crude, and unideal, it was serious, sincere, and stimulating. He waged war against the Devil, as that mysterious personage was understood by him, with the most whole-hearted and relentless zeal. He enjoined, let it be remembered, an absolute temperance, soberness, and chastity upon the Officers and rank and file of his motley host; and, ugly as some may think the uniforms of Salvationists, the police and magistrates know that they cover for the most part honest hearts. Could The General have affected all this--or a tenth part of it--if he had not lent himself to the eternal necessities and weaknesses of the uneducated, and given them his drill, his banners, his drums, his prayer-volleys, his poke-bonnets, and his military tunics? We doubt it, and in contemplating, therefore, the enormous good this dead man did, and sought to do, and the neglected fields of humanity which he tilled for the Common Master, we judge him to be one of the chief and most serviceable figures of the Victorian age; and well deserving from his own followers the ecstasy of grief and veneration which is being manifested, and from contemporary notice the tribute of a hearty recognition of pious and noble objects zealously pursued, and love of God and of humanity made the passion and the purpose of a whole unflinching life."
Daily Chronicle, August 22, 1912
By Harold Begbie