Attacking the Salvation Army may look like the advance of a forlorn hope, but this old dog has never yet let go after fixing his teeth into anything or anybody, and he is not going to begin now. And it is only a question of holding on. Look at Plumptre's letter exposing the Bank swindle.
The "Times", too, is behaving like a brick. This world is not a very lovely place, but down at the bottom, as old Carlyle preached, veracity does really lie, and will show itself if people won't be impatient.
[No sooner had he begun to express these opinions in the columns of the "Times" than additional information of all kinds poured in upon him, especially from within the Army, much of it private for fear of injury to the writers if it were discovered that they had written to expose abuses; indeed in one case the writer had thought better of even appending his signature to his letter, and had cut off his name from the foot of it, alleging that correspondence was not inviolable. So far were these persons from feeling hostility to the organisation to which they belonged, that one at least hailed the Professor as the divinely-appointed redeemer of the Army, whose criticism was to bring it back to its pristine purity.
To his elder son:—]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, January 8, 1891.
Dear Lens,
It is very jolly to think of J. and you paying us a visit. It is proper, also, the eldest son should hansel the house.
Is the Mr. Sidgwick who took up the cudgels for me so gallantly in the "St. James'" one of your Sidgwicks? If so, I wish you would thank him on my account. (The letter was capital.) [Mr. William C. Sidgwick had written (January 4) an indignant letter to protest against the heading of an article in the "Speaker", Professor Huxley as Titus Oates." "To this monster of iniquity the "Speaker" compares an honourable English gentleman, because he has ventured to dissuade his countrymen from giving money to Mr. William Booth…Mr. Huxley's views on theology may be wrong, but nobody doubts that he honestly holds them; they do not bring Mr. Huxley wealth and honours, nor do they cause the murder of the innocent. To insinuate a resemblance which you dare not state openly is an outrage on common decency…] Generally people like me to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them, but don't care to take any share in the burning of the fingers.
But the Boothites are hard hit, and may be allowed to cry out.
I begin to think that they must be right in saying that the Devil is at work to destroy them. No other theory sufficiently accounts for the way they play into my hands. Poor Clibborn-Booth has a long—columns long—letter in the "Times" to-day, in which, all unbeknownst to himself, he proves my case.