THE SALVATION ARMY CRISIS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 9039, 14 February 1891, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE SALVATION ARMY CRISIS

A correspondent of the London Times, writing on December 26, gives tbe following circumstantial account of what he describes , as a serious crisis in tho affairs of the Salvation Army:— I have the best authority for stating that i Mr Frank Smith has resigned his office in i the Salvation Army. To those persons who i have not enjoyed the opportunity of watchi ing the- operations of the Salvation Army from behind.the scenes this may appear a ' small matter. Mr Smith, or Commissioner i Smith, as he used to be called, will be known to the general public as one of the few men i outside Mr Booth's relations or his connexion s by marriage who have attained high place in tbe Salvation Army; he may also be remembered as a person wbo came into collision with.the police some little time ago and was punished accordingly. To men who know the Salvation Army, on the otlier hand, the news that Mr Smith has resigned his office at this critical period in the history of the Salvation Army will appear to be an i announcement of a most important character, for it is nofc too much to say that in Mr Smith was to be found that one substantial ■ guarantee that an earnest and business-like effort would be made to carry out the prac- . ticable part of Mr Booth's scheme. In this i grave crisis it is right to give public utterance to words which, under other circum- ; stances, might well have been left unspoken. The secret of the authorship of " In Darkest . England" is now matter of common knowledge. Charitable hypothesis, combined • with the fact that a facsimile of some 10 : lines of manuscript in Mr Booth's handwriting has appeared in one of the Sal- ; vation journals, assigns to Mr Booth tha i credit of having written at least two chapters iof the book. His own explanation of tho ■ affair is that he supplied a professional . writer with the materials for writing a book, ■ and that "In Darkest England" wa3 the i result. The question whether, under theso • circumstances, Mr Booth was justified in i letting the book appear as if it bad been ■ written by him, is one of literary ethics, and i into such a question we havo no right to • expect Mr Booth to enter. " Bufc," it may be > eaid, " the ideas which the book contains , were the ideas of Mr Booth." There is strong i reason for believing that the truth lies in the ; opposite direction—in fact, it is believed i that when the whole story comes to be i known ib will be found that the ideas of the . substantial parts of the scheme—that is to i say, of the city colony and the farm I colony—bad their origin in tho mind .of Mr Frank Smitb, and that these I ideas were accepted most reluctantly iby Mr Booth. Mr Frank Smith, who , has quarrelled with his chief once before i upon a point of principle, was until a few . hours ago in full charge of the Social Reform i wing of tbe Salvation Army. It was in his office afc 3G Upper Thames street thafc.l found i the labour registration bureau localised, and i from tbat office I made, in company witli Mr i Smith, a tour of investigation through i shelters, food depots, and the Wuifcechapel" ; factory. The familiarity with the details of • tlie work shown by Mr Smith, and the ; character of the work done at the factory in . Hanbury street, Whitechapel, convinced me i that so long as Mr Smith remained in con- , trol of tho practical part of the business there . was room for hope. Against the wild and . futile aspirations of "In Darkest England," againsfc the proposals for the establishment i of banks financially unsound, against the 1 fact that one result of contribution to Mr Booth must be the endowment of the Salvation Army, I placed the fact that down in Whitechapel, under the directions of a shrewd and practical man, personal results of a highly satisfactory character had been obtained. In those personal results I found the only . ground for hoping that tbe money, and . the promises of money, which have been poured into Mr Booth's treasury with generous hands of late, had net been thrown away. And now the man to whom belongs j the credit of having organised the White- | chapel factory has resigned his command of, i the department of which thafc factory is a i part. He has not been expelled, as many officers have been before now, for refusal to obey autocratic commands; ho has simply, resigned because he and Mr Booth are at variance upon a. matter of principle. Nor is the subject matter of tbe difference far to seek. Those who are familiar with the inner workings of the Salvation Army know that Mr Smith bas always been of opinion that it was before all things necessary to keep the social working of tbe scheme as distinct as possible from the religious work of the Salvation Army. Nor need there be any hesitation in hazarding the conjecture that this was the real ground of difference. Mr Booth's method of inviting subscriptions, however, in spite o( an apparent willingness that funds should be divided, leads to the mingling of all separate funds into one common fund. He suggests, for example, that thoso who disapprove of the matrimonial bureau may subscribe to somo other specific department; but it is obvious that every contribution to a specific department sets a proportionate amount of the general fund free, to be spent at Mr Booth's .discretion. This, however, is bufc a 6mall matter. Mr Smith has not given to the public his reasons for resignation;' nor, unless he is provoked by misrepresentation, will he give them. The significant fact is that he has resigned, and that he has resigned at this critical moment. This means fchafc ono cf the few outsiders to Mr Booth's family in high placo in the Salvation Army has been removed. It increases the odds npon one of Mr Booth's kinsmen having been named to succeed him; it means that the man who for months past has worked with single-hearted energy in the ono department of the Salvation Army which gave room for hope to tho most sanguine has felt that he was in duty bound to resign his office just at the moment when money enough had been secured to ensure a fair trial. It may be that the funds have been promised rashly, and given, still more rashly, in cash; bufc they bave been secured, and it is obvious that nothing but an absolute sense of duty could have induced Mr Smith to resign at so important a juncture. There must be something vitally wrong either in the scheme or in tho management of the funds. Upon no other hypothesis can the resignation be explained. For my part, I make bold to say that Mr Smith's management of the Social Reform Wing was tho best guarantee the public had that the money contributed to Mr Booth's treasury would not be thrown away. ■ Ifc is just to go even further and to say that, whereas it is a thousand pities that large sums should have beon contributed in cash already, thoso who have contributed promises only aie now entitled to withhold the fulfilment of those promises until a full and satisfactory account of tho causes for Mr Smith's resignation has been given. He was tho life and soul of the Social Reform Wing. It may well be that his resignation is destined to be the death-blow to Mr Booth's more ambitions schemes.