SOMETHING FOR NOTHING?

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21972, 22 December 1936, Page 15

SOMETHING FOR NOTHING?

TO 'I'UJC EDITOB Or THE PBENH. Sir,—Your correspondent, "Housewife," in "The Press" of December 19, is evidently a God-fearing woman, for she opens and closes her letter with a reference to the Omnipotent. She surprises me when she says, "Once I was insulted by a Salvation Army woman because I did not give to a collection which she was making. 'People like you don't know what it is to want,'" etc. The astonishing thing about her statement is not that she was insulted, but that the Salvation Army needs to collect money at all. When it was decided to depose Bramwell Booth from control one reason given was that the assets of the Salvation Army were £30,000,000, and he was not capable of successfully managing such a huge concern. The Salvation Army is not required by law to publish a balance-sheet, and has never offered to do so. If this were done the general public might wake up to the fact that there is no business in this world to-day more highly commercialised or more capably managed than is that of the Salvation Army.—Yours, etc., HAVELOCK GREEN. December 19, 1936. LAn ofliccr of the Salvation Army, to whom this letter was referred, said that the statement that the army's, assets were £30,000,000 was incorrect.! "The Salvation Army has for many I years published a balance-sheet," he said, "and the New Zealand territory has for the last 53 years issued a balance-sheet and statement of accounts, which can be secured by any enquirer."!