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

by H. Rider Haggard

In Holland, where our work has assumed the proportions of a national movement, the beneficent effects of which are recognized by all classes, the canal population is helped by means of a small sailing ship, on which are held regular meetings for them. Our Norwegian people also have a life-boat called the Catherine Booth stationed upon a stormy and difficult part of the coast, which not only goes out to help into safety boats and boats' crews, but whose crew also holds meetings on islands in remote fisher hamlets where no other religious visitors come.

The same principle of adaptation to local conditions and requirements will, I doubt not, quickly ensure success for the small detachment of Officers we have just sent to commence operations in Russia.

In Dutch India we have not only a growing Missionary work amongst both Javanese and Chinese, but Government Institutions have been placed under our care, where lepers, the blind, and other infirm natives, as well as neglected children, are medically cared for and helped in other ways.

In South Africa, both English and Dutch-speaking peoples are united under one Flag, and give themselves up to work amongst the native races round them—races which constitute so grave a problem in the eyes of all thoughtful men who know anything of the true position in South Africa. One of the latest items of news is that an Angoni has accepted salvation at one of our settlements in Mashonaland, and on return to his own home and work—lying away between Lake Nyassa and the Zambezi—has begun to hold meetings and to exercise an influence upon his people which cannot but end in the establishment of our work amongst them.

But, to my mind, one of the most important features of our work in all Eastern and African lands is our development of the native power under experienced guidance to purely Salvationist and therefore non-political purposes. Surely the most potent possible corrective for the sort of half rebel influence that has grown or is growing up in Africa under the name of Ethiopianism, as well as for much of the strange uneasiness among the dumb masses of India, is the complete organization of native races under leaders who, whilst of their own people, are devoted to the highest ethical aims, and stand in happy subjection to men of other lands who have given them a training in discipline and unity which does not contemplate bloodshed.

We are now beginning both in India and Africa, as well as in the West Indies, to find experienced native Officers capable of taking Staff positions; that is, of becoming reliable leaders in large districts where we are at work. These men have not merely all the advantages of language and of fitness for the varieties of climate which are so trying to Westerners, but they show a courage and tenacity and tact—in short, a capacity for leadership and administration such as no one—at any rate, no one that I know of—expected to find in them. Here is opened a prospect of the highest significance.

More than can be easily estimated has been done in spreading information about us for some years past by Salvationists belonging to various national armies and navies. We encourage all such men to group themselves into brigades, so far as may be allowed, in their various barracks and ships. Thus united, they work for their mutual encouragement, and for the spreading of good influences among others. It was such a little handful that really began our work in the West Indies, and we have now a Corps in Sierra Leone, on the west coast of Africa, formed by men of a West Indian regiment temporarily quartered there. The same thing has happened in Sumatra by means of Dutch and Javanese soldiers.

For British India we naturally felt ourselves first of all, as to the heathen world, under obligation to do something. And no inconsiderable results have followed the efforts which were first commenced there twenty-eight years ago. Our pioneers, though they greatly disturbed the official white world, won the hearts of the people at a stroke, by wearing Indian dress, living amongst and in the style of the poorer villages. Soon Indian converts offered themselves for service, and after training; were commissioned as Officers, and it was at once seen that they would be far more influential than any foreigners. From the point at which that discovery was really made, the work assumed important proportions, passing at once in large measure from the position of a foreign mission to being a movement of the people themselves.

The vastness of the country and the difference of language have led to our treating it as five separate commands, now under the general lead of one headquarters. Incidentally, this has helped us in dealing with some of the difficulties connected with caste, as it has been possible to remove Indian Officers from one part of India to another, and we have made some efforts which have, I admit, proved less successful in some districts than in others, to deal with castes which, within their own lines, are often little more than Trade Unions with a mixture of superstition.

Meanwhile, the practical character of our work has shown itself in efforts to help in various ways the lowest of the people to improve their circumstances. The need for this is instantly apparent when one reflects that some 40,000,000 of the inhabitants of India are always hungry. A system of loan banks, which has now been adopted in part by the Government, has been of great service to the small agriculturalists. The invention of an extremely simple and yet greatly improved hand loom has proved, and will prove, very valuable to the weavers. New plans of relief in times of scarcity and famine have also greatly helped in some districts to win the confidence of the people. Industrial schools, chiefly for orphan children, have also been a feature of the work in some districts.