Regeneration / Being an Account of the Social Work of The Salvation Army in Great Britain

by H. Rider Haggard

I cannot honestly report that I liked the looks of all these gentry, or believed everything that they told me. For instance, when such people swear that they have been wrongly convicted, an old lawyer and magistrate like myself, who knows what pains are taken by every English Court to safeguard the innocent, is apt to be sceptical. Still, it should be added that many of these jailbirds are now to all appearance quite reformed, while some of them are doing well in more or less responsible positions, under the supervision of the Army.

The Salvation Army Officers have authority from the Home Office to visit the various prisons, where the inmates are informed that those who are desirous of seeing them must give in their names. Then on a certain day, the Officer, who, under Commissioner Sturgess, is responsible for the Prison work of the Army in England, appears at the Wandsworth or the Pentonville Prison, or wherever it may be. There he finds, perhaps, as many as 150 men waiting to see him, the total number of ex-prisoners who pass through the hands of the Army in England averaging at present about 1,000 per annum. He interviews these men in their cells privately, the prison officials remaining outside, and stops as long with each of them as he deems to be needful, for the Governors of the prisons give him every opportunity of attaining the object of his work. This Officer informed me that his conversation with the prisoners is not restricted in any way. It may be about their future or of spiritual matters, or it may have to do with their family affairs.

The details of each case are carefully recorded in a book which I saw, and when a convict is discharged and given over to the care of the Army, a photograph and an official statement of his record is furnished with him. This statement the Army finds a great help, as in dealing with such people it is necessary to know their past in order to be able to guard against their weak points.

The Government authorities have now begun to seek the aid of the Army in certain special cases. If they feel that it is unnecessary to retain a man any longer, they will sometimes hand him over, should the Salvation Army Officers be willing to take him in and be responsible for him. General Booth and his subordinates think that if this system were enlarged and followed up, it would result in the mitigation or the abbreviation of many sentences, without exposing the public to danger.

In discussing this matter with them, I ventured to point out that it would be a bad thing if the Army became in any way identified with the prison Authorities, and began, at any rate in the mind of the criminal classes, to wear the initials G.R. instead of those of the Army upon their collars. This was not disputed by Commissioner Sturgess, with whom I debated the question.

What the Army desires, however, is that the Government should subsidize this work in order to enable it to support the ex-convicts until it can find opportunity to place them in positions where they can earn their own bread. The trouble with such folk is that, naturally enough, few desire to employ them, and until they are employed, which in the case of aged persons or of those with a very bad record may be never, they must be fed, clothed, and housed.

After going into the whole subject at considerable length and in much detail, the conclusion which I came to was that this work of the visitation of prisoners by Salvation Army Officers, and the care of them when released either on or before the completion of their sentences, is one that might be usefully extended, should the Home Office Authorities see fit so to do. There is no doubt, although it cannot guarantee success in every case, that the Salvation Army is peculiarly successful in its dealings with hardened criminals.

Why this is so is not easy to explain. I think, however, that there are two main reasons for its success. The first is that the Army takes great care never to break a promise which it may make through any of its Officers. Thus, if a man in jail is told that his relatives will be hunted up and communicated with, or that an application will be made to the Authorities to have him committed to the care of the Army, or that work will be found for him on his release, and the like, that undertaking, whatever it may be, is noted in the book which I have mentioned, and although years may pass before it can be fulfilled, is in due course carried out to the letter. Now, convicts are shy birds, who put little faith in promises. But when they find that these are always kept they gain confidence in the makers of them, and often learn to trust them entirely.

The second and more potent reason is to be found in the power of that loving sympathy which the Army extends even to the vilest, to those from whom the least puritanical of us would shrink. It shows such men that they are not utterly lost, as these believe; that it, at any rate, does not mark them with a figurative broad arrow and consign them to a separate division of society; that it is able to give them back the self-respect without which mankind is lower than the beast, and to place them, regenerated, upon a path that, if it be steep and thorny, still leads to those heights of peace and honour which they never thought to tread again.

This is done not by physical care and comfort, though, of course, these help towards the desired end, but by its own spiritual means, or so it would appear. Its Officers pray with the man; they awake his conscience, which is never dead in any of us; they pour the blessed light of hope into the dark places of his soul; they cause him to hate the past, and to desire to lead a new life. Once this desire is established, the rest is comparatively simple, for where the heart leads the feet will follow; but without it little or nothing can be done. Such is the explanation I have to offer. At any rate, I believe it remains a fact that among the worst criminals the Salvation Army often succeeds where others have failed.