THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 6325, 27 September 1907, Page 2

THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN.

“I should dearly like to second Mr G. B. Sims’s articles in the *Ory of the Children’ before Igo away on my Eastern tour," said General Booth to a representative of the London "Tribune," "It is high tim© the country woke up and did something to stop the streams which supply the cesspools of all filthiness and abomination, and fill up our prisons and pauper homes. My people come to me and weep over the poverty , and wretchedness and abominations to be found in the very homes of the people. Yet the country is spending all this money on education. teaching geography, all about tbe man in the moon, and bo on. while the children ore left to grow up without knowing anything of the importance of washing their faces or how to cook a dinner, and there is no attempt to make them familiar with some of the temptations that are round about their little feet before they rtn-n run. The remedy, however, lies more in 'rescue work than in legislation. ? all the ills that human hearts endure. How small the part' that kings, and laws can cure.

“There you have the justification for a large part of the work of the Salvation Army. Laws will, no doubt, do a great deal, but it is with the individual, with the drunkard himself, that the real work must bo done. Drunkenness is , the justification for the existence of total abstinence agita>tion. If nobody ever got drunk there would bo no more harm in drinking a glass of beer than in eating a beef steak; perhaps, inded, not so much. I could make out a terrible case against the beefsteak. But a man can eat a'beef steak and walk home steadily, kiss his wife and children, and spend a pleasant time with them. Nothing will cure anybody of drunkenness but a combination of religion and reason and habit. The facta described by Mr Sims ate a disgrace to our civilisaton, and are the despair of all religions. Nobody has any, real faith in tbe possibility of reclaiming drunken women excepting the- Salvation Army. I can show you hundreds of cases, and we know that over £0 per cent- of those who ’have been through our homes are permanently cured, lam .told that there are over 750 women in this City of London over forty-five years of age who are confirmed inebriates, m and out of - prison. ■■ The County Council will not take hold of them, and they wont give us the money to do the work - for -them. I would take them right away for two or throe years and - make them , earn their bread all-the time.”