GREAT LEADER.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 113, 12 April 1929, Page 2

GREAT LEADER.

LATE GENERAL BOOTH. PRIME MINISTER’S TRIBUTE. (Australian Press Association —United Service.) Received Mr S. Baldwin, the Prime Minister, accompanied bv his wife, presided at the Albert Hall celebration of the centenary of the birth of William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. Thousands of Salvationists .enthusiastically cheered the . pageant illustrating the rise and progress of the Salvation Army .from the moment the white bearded -survivors of General Booth’s originll Christian Mission, founded in 1805, stopped into the arena until the various phases of slum work, social activity, emigration and industrial' colonisation were comprehensively reviewed. . Mr Baldwin said that the Victorian age was unpopular to-day because, despite its faults, its numerous greatmen had faith in goodness, moral earnestness and sense of duty. Their work in human souls would last to eternity. Their critics would be forgotten with their generation. general Booth was one of the (greatest of men; he was both a conservative and .a reformer; he believed iri tradition and novelty which ho applied in gospel teaching. General Booth realised that religion was fundamental and faced the fact of evil of which we were afraid to-day, having banished the word “sin” from the dictionary. “Nevertheless, the ugly fact remains.” Mr Baldwin added: “We have to thank God for William Booth whom all Christendom recognises as one of the world’s great religious leaders.” * • There were none of General Booth s family on the platform; they received only ordinary tickets of admission tothe hall.