GENERAL BOOTH BACK AGAIN

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1889, 27 April 1892, Page 5

GENERAL BOOTH BACK AGAIN

London, February 20. ThegreatSalvation chief has returned from his wanderings fresh and fit as the proverbial fiddle— why a fiddle ?— notwithstanding he has in, six months compassed a journey equal in length to a double equatorial girdle ; or, as he hinuielf hath it : " The hardest spell of work any publio man ever did." The welcome was worthy of the hero of a hundred fights, and in some ways responsible for a large amount of violent language.

THE RECEPTION IN LOKDON.

The papers would not be so full of General Booth and his doings just now if there were anything else to write about. But Providence is on the side of the General. It not only affords him wonderful opportunities, but enables him to achieve apparent absolute impossibilities. Who, for instance, could have dreamed that the Home Secretary and Sir E. Bradford would have permitted the Salvation Army to completely block the main avenues of traffic east and west for two hours on a Saturday afternoon in order to welcome General Booth home? The procession privilege is one that (very properly) has of late been denied to demonstrators of all kinds save on Sundays. Socialists, trade unionists, the unemployed, and the women's rigfcts supporters asked for leave to parade the streets in vain. They were one and a<l peremptorily dealt with. On Sunday alone might demonstrators assemble in their thousands, and even then only at certain hours in certain places. On Saturday General Booth received exactly the same treatment a3 a foreign potentate on a visit to our Queen would have done. At the hour appointed the General's landau containing himself and daughters drove smartly up Oxford street (which was blocked) to the Marble Arch. Here scores of stopped omnibuses and other vehicles loaded with arrested travellers formed barricadeE, and inside the gate's and out a dense crowd stretched away far as the eye could reach up Edgware road, up and down Oxford street, and across the Park to the Serpentine,

The General had hardly taken up his position at the Park gates for the march past before the advance guard of the Army appeared. A not unfriendly reporter thus describes the bizarre spectacle :—: —

First of all came the mounted men. The male cadets, carrying flags of their respective countries, followed. Next came contingents from South, East, North, West London; contingents from Maidstone, Ipswich, Canterbury, Cambridge, Norwich, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire ; a long line of " chariots," or four-wheeled vans filled with the child-warriors of the Army; drunkard squads ; gaol - bird squads ; bearers of emblematic pictures ; social ** wings "of various sorts. General Booth stood bareheaded in his carriage all the time the Army occupied in passing him— in military language, passing the saluting point. There were numberless flags — some of them of immense size — bearing pious legends, and painted scenes of some of the General's adventures in his journey round half the globe. One flag bore the inscription " Blood and Fire," another " Save your Soul," a third "We clear the streets for God," a fourth " Death comes and the Judgment, " a fifth "Meet me in Heaven," a sixth '* Are you Saved ?" and bo on and so on. It is hardly necessary to say that scores of flags were inscribed with the words " Welcome to our General." The van loads of child-soldiers attracted general interest. How many hundreds of boy-warriora and girl-Amazons there were I cannot say. " Put 'em to bed," I heard some people in the crowd exclaim, "or they'll ketch the influenza." But the small creatures seemed quite happy. With their chubby red fists they rattled their tambourines. They " lisped in numbers " ; they sang compositions which they will understand more or less clearly when they grow to man's and woman's estate. They unbosomed themselves Urbi et Orbi. They scattered their benedictions right and left among us grown-up sinners. They blessed their General. " God bless you, my children," was the General's fond greeting and reply, given with a wave of the right hand and a flourish of the hat in the left. The children and the Eastbourne militants appeared to be the General's favorites. After the Army had been sweeping past the saluting point for ten or fifteen minutes a halt was called to enable society in its furs to drive across the line of march ; and the General sat down for a while.

But for the intervention of the police almost at the last moment the Army's "Emblematic Cars" would have appeared in the procession; there would have been tableaux vivanls of rescued drunkards, prisoners in gaol, " dossers' " lodgings, thieves' kitchens, slum dens, agricultural hovels, and gin-palace bars. But though the cars were not admitted, most of the squads that would have accompanied them were in the procession. Many of the large flags also, with their realistic pictures, almost compensated for the absence of the cars. There, for example, was a .vast picture of a tippler too far gone to stand steadiJy. He leaned with his back against a post. On one side of him was a Salvation soldier, and a constable on the other — the soldier trying to rescue him, the constable to " run him in." Between the two the fellow stared in stupid perplexity. A strong picture of a ship, a rock, and a lighthouse explained itself to the meanest capacity. There was a huge painting of the "poor man's Metropole." Gaol - gate pictures, "dosser" pictures, pictures of drowning sinners, were borne along in endless procession. Upon an enormous canvas was the representation of " General Booth talking over his scheme with the Earl of HopetOUQ, Governor of Victoria." That vivid picture might easily be made out at a furlong's distance. In it the tall, grey-headed, greybearded General stood in the middle of a room addressing the Governor, who sat in a chair, intently listening — all ears, in fact, and especially all eyes. Another canvas exhibited ' " the General addressing a huge crowd of people in Melbourne." It was a huge crowd, and no mistake; the General looked quite small in the perspective of the Melbourne^ gathering. "In Africa General Booth was warmly received," said another picture, reproducing a gathering of miners, A large painting of a scene in India bore the inscription " The General conducts a Native meeting by night," the artist of which had vigorously seized the ideas of bluish-white eyes, brown skins, and gorgeous turbans. The cycle corps of the Salvation Army, which came somewhere in the middle of the procespion, was neatly uniformed and equipped ; but they did not. ride their cycles, they led them. " Why don't you ride, you cripples ?" shouted some of the spectators. Why, because to cycle at a walking pace in a crowd is a hazardous, difficult operation compared with a run over a clear space. An inscription stated that the cycle corps had been organised for service between out-of-the-way stations with insufficient means of quick intercourse. A contingent of Salvation "lasses" waving large fans of dried palm-leaf was loudly applauded. But the greatest favorite by far was "Puffing Billy." "Billy" was a small boy, about six years old, mounted comfortably on a small donkey. " Puffing Billy " was painted on the small boy's helmet. The donkey was lead by a man wearing a hat covered with matches manufactured by Salvationists. Squads of " wood-choppers," " painters," coatere, a social reform laundry

•quad with a van, a squad of cooks exhibiting cheap victuals (a vast cheese and vaster loaf), with knives and forks, eaoh several feet long, followed some way behind "Puffing Billy." And last, or nearly last, followed several squads, slipshod, unwashed, depressed — a miserable woe-begone, tagrag of humanity from Slumdom. It was curious to see how many of the men in that tattered horde slouched along with downcast eyes and hands thrust deep into their pockets. They looked as if they were ashamed, or half-perplexed, or bored, or totally indifferent, or dismally resigned to their fate. There could not possibly be a stronger contrast than that between the bright, cheery battalions of the regular Army and its tattered riff-raff of camp followers.

Last of all came the General with band and escort. He followed in rear of the procession, standing in his carriage, hat in hand, and bowing right and left. Just before he started to follow his Army there was a terrific crush about the Marble Arch. He looked for a while as if he would be cut off altogether. But after a delay of some minutes his carriage moved onwards. The American President's handshaking at the White House must be child's play to General Booth's feat of standing in his carriage and incessantly bowing along the whole route, through Oxford street, Holborn, St. Bride street, and Victoria street, to the Embankment.

THE OVERTHE-SEA COLONY.

Naturally the General has been interviewed, and by dozens of men — Pressmen chiefly. The great question asked by one and all of these übiquitous persons was whether the General had yet fixed on the locale for the much talked of " over-sea colony." But Mr Booth has arrived at no definite conclusion. Whilst in South Africa he was strongly in favor of that portion of the world. Anon he was converted to the idea of dumping his reformed and tutored vagabonds and criminals upon some rich land in New Zealand, Back Home again he confesses a returning partiality for South Africa. Between these two colonies apparently the choice lays. South Africa offers the General a farm of 25,000 acres (as a going concern, I suppose) for the very modest sum of L 25.000. The land, accordding to Mr Booth, is splecdid, and altogether would be the Utopia of Salvafcionism; but the head of that corporation wants the land for nothing, or he will have none of it, New Zealand, with a taighty generosity, has offered the General 10,000 acres of land for nothing, and " land all of which would be splendid when cleared. " But such munificence is not to Booth's liking, nor doe 3he express any gratitude to the New Zealand Government. Listen to what he said to a 'Star' man, and you will understand the better what manner of man the Salvationist General is. " Ah," he says, "if we had only a Government that governed, I could go to them and get so much advanced per acre to clear the land on the security of the land cleared. But if Government did so, of course people would say ' Here is the Government endowing a religion.' I and my poor people have to suffer, then, because I am religious, and because I believe in God. What we want is a Government to govern, and then we could get things done." The curse of the colonies, African, and Australasian, according to the General, is the love of money. Folk (he says) do not emigrate to these countries to make a living and be happy, but solely to make their " piles "as quickly as possible. To this end, apparently, they flock into the towns and lounge at the corners of the streets, instead of going into the country and learning to be contented to eat." What Mr Booth desires is that the Government should take these poor people and put them on the land and teach them to live. General Booth would be happy to pick out the suitable folk and select the proper land. All this could be done with despatch if there were only existent " Governments that govern." But the Booth gospel is that Governments only talk politics, and all the colonies are cursed with the Bame insatiable thirst for gold. The General is naturally highly gratified with the reception he met with in all the Australasian colonies, " where Governors presided, and high officials moved resolutions at our meetings." The Salvation Army is far more generally appreciated and esteemed in Australia than in the Old Country, and, says his Generalship : " I was interviewed and complimented by almost every Governor, statesman, and philanthropist." The only trouble experienced by Mr Booth was with the New Zealand Labor party, who insisted upon misunderstanding the object of his over-sea colony scheme. " They thought," quoth he, "we were going to flood the towns with labor, and bring in labor that might become 'blackleg' labor." The General's plan, of course, aims to compass the exact antithesis of this misconception. He would, he urges, take the surplus labor from* the towns — take away the " blacklegs " and put them on the land. Of course the surplus labor and the " blacklegs " would have first to be converted to Salvationism. On the subject of South Africa the General is exceptionally loquacious. It is a " grand country, cursed with gold and diamonds, the gaining of which is the sole object of its peoples." But what the country wants is a number of the General's improved peasantry " to live on the land, and be content to live on it." "But," said one tormentor, "agriculture in South Africa is not too flourishing nowadays, ia it ?" " Why," says Mr Booth, " a man takes a farm and he says at once ' Where is the market ?' There is the curae of all the colonies — the curse of money. Men have large farms there, and what could one of my people do with a large farm 1 But give him five acres to live on and eat what he grows and he will be happy. Fart of my plan is to buy the Afrikander out of his great holdings (query : for nothing ?) And we could do it. I showed them in New Zealand how they could buy out the squatter who had settled down on much of the best land, and make a profit out of it !"

General Booth has come Home with some mighty notions and a greatly-increased sense of his own importance. He has shaken hands with premiers, hobnobbed with treasurers, has been honored by the presence of " high officials " on his platforms, and has seen the Pope. In all his travels he has not met half a dozen people whose opinions are of value who have not been in entire harmony wi;'i him. He has come back more confirmed than when he Btarted as to the " justness and greatness " of all his notions with respect to the benefit and improvement of his Submerged Tenth. The agonies he has gone through in thinking about the miseries of the people "only God in heaven knows."

Last night Mr Booth was "welcomed home" once more at Exeter Hall, where thousands of lads and lasses, in peak caps and poke bonnets, assembled to do the much-travelled one homage. The General spoke at length on his tour, enlivening his discourse with numberless anecdotes, some new, some very ancient, but all in connection with himself. It was announced, too, at this gathering, that the Army work at Home had progreseed and flourished exceedingly during the chief's absence, and that L 370,000 had been poured into the Salvationist coffers during the past year from various sources. The coffers are not yet replete.

Some statistical genius has discovered that England and Ireland tocher drank 42,000,000 gallons more beer 'Lv. Germany last year.