WILLIAM BOOTH

Evening Star, Issue 21966, 28 February 1935, Page 17

WILLIAM BOOTH

FOUNDER Of " THE ARMY " A RELIGIOUS AUTOCRAT AND HIS SUCCESSOR On October 20, 1912, William Booth, founder of the’ Salvation Army, died) and Brant well, h<; son, reigned in his «t«»d. ' .No ono Who witnessed General Booth’s funeral procession through the streets of London is likely to forget it, writes G. B. Mortlock. in the ‘ Daily Telegraph.’ The old warrior went to his grave full of yeaps and honour. He was a religious genius, who in his lifetime had been more reviled by professedly religious people than any leader since the Founder of Christianity Himself. With no endowment but his own indomitable spirit, and in the face of persecution. ridicule, and venomous misrepresentation, he created an ■ organisation which In his own lifetime spread to all peoples, nations, and languages of the world. Like Wesley, a hundred years earlier, he took the world for his parish. People were always querulously asking by what authority he did things. Queen Victoria was incensed that he raised an Armv arid called himself a general. His authority was his conviction of Divine inspiration a conviction which his Ajtny shared, and still shares. . Religious genius, like any other .genius, is akin to madness. * Madness, said Socrates, 11 is of two kinds: tho one is produced by human disease, the other by an inspired departure from established usages.” It is in the second of these senses that Mr St. John Ervine, whose monumental biography of Booth has just been published, asserts that Booth was one of the maddest men in the world. There has probably never been a more autocratic system of religion than that which Booth devised. “He arrogated to himself,” writes Mr Ervine, “ powers of authority and discipline over his followers that the Supreme Pontiff, despite his claim, to bo infallible, would scarcely have dared to take, and exacted from his officerl? and soldiers of whatever rank an unquestioning obedience which could not unfairly be described as servile. FEROCITY OF FAITH. When it is remembered that these powers were assumed and conceded at a time when Booth was being reviled and .slandered and his followers _ brutally beaten ad persecuted, the intellectual and spiritual dominance of the man borders on the miraculous. The existence of the Salvation Army as a vast international organisation is evidence enough of the greatness or William Booth. What Mr Ervine has clone is to exhibit in his full stature the astonishing figure which sets the mind searching vainly for a just and single epithet by which to describe him. He was a man ruthless, despotic, illmannered, yet possessed with such “ferocity of faith and purpose that he could entrench himself m the love and lovaltv of his abused followers. Mr Ervine disposes finally of the polite fiction whereby Booth has been represented as being born of a substantial middle-class lamily which had fallen on bard times. His father was an illiterate speculative builder, and Jus mother the daughter of a cottager who mat have been a farm labourer, but wap more probably a hawker. For the whole of! Booth’s childhood the family was desperately poor. Illness was to afflict the greater pact of his life. There is a vivid picture ot the days when, as a young man, he was employed as a pawnbroker’s assistant in Sopth London, using his Sunday evening freedom to speak at street corners, and panting back, frail and haltfed, just in time to save himself from being shut out at 10 o’clock. His meeting with Catherine Munitord resulted in one of the strangest stories of courtship. Their love letters are unlike any other examples in that gentlest of arts. They are concerned first ami Inst with the work. But they do not lack ardour. In one Booth signs himself. “ Yours in the closest alliance ol united soul, spirit, and body, for time and eternity, for earth and for heaven, for vifrpw and for joy, for ever and ever. Amen,” i

A TRUE PICTURE. So far as human observation goes, that grandiloquent superscription was a true picture of the life-long alliance in which William and Catherine Booth sought to reach the homeless and degraded by methods startling in their sensationalism. It is not always a pleasant picture which Mr Ervine gives of Booth. But everything was justified in the eyes of his followers by the certainty of his Divine mission. He was a magnificent despot ruling in the name of the Lord. . There never was such a Divine rigliter as William Booth. There never was a body so utterly devoid of any trace of democratic principle as the Salvation Army. Booth had seen to that in the Deed Poll which he executed in 1878, and supplemented in 1904. On the day of William Booth’s funeral his .officers and soldiers marched in thousands through the streets with banners flying and trumpets blowing. The general was dead, long live the general! The old man had nominated his son Bramwell to succeed him. What is more, in a letter to the new general he suggested that Herbert Booth, a younger son, might be nominated as the tnird of the dynasty. Bramwell was invested with ail the authority enjoyed by his father, but the seeds of disaffection which led to his deposition were already being sown in fertile soil. So far as Mr Ervine’s two closelypacked volumes are the story of William Booth and the Army lie created they will bo read with pride by every Salvationist. But there is a bitter sting in the tail. In an epilogue Mr Ervine sets out the facts as he has been able to gather them of the events which led up to Bramwell Booth’s deposition. Their publication is certain to make a painful impression on all who have the good name of the Army at heart. Whether or no any good purpose is to be served by the disclosure of the melancholy story is a question which it is too late to argue. ATTACK FROM AMERICA. .Evangeline Booth, the present General, when commander in America, was resolved to secure some alteration in the method of appointing the General. She also desired to limit his powers, and Bramwell remembered, when crisis was approaching, “ that his sister had threatened to tear him from his seat.” A highly-organised attack on the General was being conducted in America, largely in the form of bulletins signed “ W. L. Attwood,” a private soldier of the Army who was so private that Mr Ervine has been unable to discover'his real identity. Whispering calumnies were set going, in which the general was accused openly and by implication of misuse of power and funds, to say nothing of nepotism. As chief of staff Commissioner Higgins, afterwards himself to be general, stood closest to Bramwell Booth. Mr Ervine prints many letters in which bis unswerving loyalty and devotion to Bramwell are expressed. In January, 1928, he returned from America, and reported to the general that “ the campaign undoubtedly has begun to fail.” On. March 9 chief of staff Higgins attended a private meeting of several members of the higher command. They met in mufti. “ The chief of staff failed to tell the general that he himself had been invited to a meeting of disaffected officers, and proposed to attend it.” On March 5 Commissioner Higgins visited Bramwell Booth “ and expressed his proBund sympathy to the general” ovrr irm action of his sister me, “ but did not tell him that be himself intended to he, nresent at a meeting of disquieted commissioners in London th it very night, nor did he (Bramwell Berth) ever know that his chief of staif. who had sent him many affectionate letters in which eternal fealty was v«.v,ed, had attended this meeting and another which was held on March 9. ’ GLOOMT FORECAST. When Brain wall Booth was taken i'i, “ irtrigue,” says Mr Ervine, “ devc!< ped at a febrile speed. A vast fear per■ -aded the minds of many important officers that a Booth would succeed a Booth before thev could arrange to break the lyu.isty “This was their plight; If Bramwell Booth should die before the Hign Council were formally called, his noncnoi, whoever he or she might he, would automatically become general, and the dynasty would become more difficult to remove.”

The meeting of the High Council summoned while Bramwell Booth was ill in bed deemed all proof of his alleged “ unfitness ” to be unnecessary. Their refusal to hear his defence by counsel is an incident sad as it is surprising. _ „ Mr Ervine’s study ot Bramwell Booth’s deposition leads him to a gloomy conclusion. “ Bureaucratic business men will,” he says, “ henceforth rule the Army; men of high spiritual perception arc now, humanly speaking, debarred from the generalship, and perhaps from all great authority.” . , c What, then, is to be the future ot the Salvation Army? Mr Ervine answers that “ the prospect is dismal, and may justly cause those who admire the Army to fear that its life will be short and spiritually barren.” The accession of General Evangeline Booth to power in circumstances of fervid enthusiasm does not promise early fulfilment of that gloomy prophecy.