IN LOVE

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 February 1935, Page 11

IN LOVE

GENERAL BOOTH’S STORY. “I have longed foi* my own children, I have been in love several times, but,” said General Evangeline Booth —fight-ing-Nun-Commander of the Salvation Army—to a writer in an English paper, “something has always stepped in to prevent my marrying.

“Once, instead of keeping a tryst, I had to visit a man under sentence of death in prison. “It was the last straw to the man I loved, and who loved me. It caine on top of a number of incidents which proved that I had always some promise to keep to the poor and sick, or some meeting to attend. “Even now, just when, I have become general, I must sail to Australia. I promised them 1 1 would go last year, but fell sick.”

General Evangeline has risen from commanding an army of two in the slums of London to her present authority over an international army of two millions. She first went round in a coster’s car; she is now driven in a limousine —still on the same mission.

How has she effected the change? Chiefly by being the first to work for the poor in their own homes. She started the army in Canada and the United States on those lines, and finally conquered America when she sent out her Salvation lassies to the front with General Pershing’s army. “They slept in haystacks. Some never had their Army jackets off for a fortnight. They all but went up to the front line trenches,” said Evangeline Booth, “cheering the men with songs, sweets and cigarettes.

“Some were wounded. But not one of them went wrong. The men respected their religious calling, and yet I can tell yon I chose some very pretty girls.”

Here is a woman in whom compassion—the driving force of her work—is controlled by a world-wise mind. She has seen human joy and misery —in the halls of the mighty and the hovels of the depraved. She sat between her men High Commissioners issuing statements. “I have always relied on the men’s advice,” she said, and they purred. “Do it,” she said, and again. "It must be done.” She overruled all objections by her statesmanship, fire, blandishments and cold command.

She could beat any politician. She is the world-woman I (/id not believe existed. Vital at the age of 69, with auburn hair pleasantly curled. ’