SALVATION ARMY’S FOURTH GENERAL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 11, 14 January 1936, Page 10

SALVATION ARMY’S FOURTH GENERAL

EVANGELINE CORY BOOTH, A REMARKABLE WOMAN IN A REMARKABLE POSITION WHO WORKS WITH BOUNDLESS ENERGY FOR HER CAUSE

'£HE SALVATION ARMY is now at work in 90 countries and it has on ils strength some 26,360 officers and cadets and more than 10,000 rank and file officers. At the head of this international force possessing authority to appoint, promote, degrade or remove any soldier of any rank in any country, removable only by reason of well-established mental or physical infirmity, bankruptcy or notorious misconduct, stands a woman, Evangeline Booth, elected fourth general by the majority vote of the High Council of the Army on September 3, 1934. Born on Christmas Day, 1865, Miss Booth was the fourth daughter and seventh child of the great William Booth, burning saint and irresistible administrator, founder and first general of the Salvation Army; and it was in the year of her birth that her father, with a. delicate wife and a family of sickly children dependent on him, finally cut himself loose from secure employment as a preacher in the Methodist Church, came to London* and took up his stand on the Milo End Waste, calling to repentance and to a Christian life the semi-savages who then lived in the appalling slums of the East End. Gaunt, hungry, wild eyed and wild haired, eloquent and noisy, banging a Bible ami waving an umbrella, he addressed himself to men and ’women who would never have dreamed of entering Church or Chapel. His ministry prospered, he founded the Christian Mission and insensibly, perhaps inevitably, this Mission, by reason of its objects, its methods and its struggles, developed into the Salvation Army. With (he world as a battlefield and the devil as the ever-present enemy, there was need for an army and the Army came into being— Christ’s Army—with, as its soldiers, men and women who cared nothing for worldly advancement, and, as its weapons, noisy bands, blue, red, and yellow banners, and meetings in poor halls and at street corners, with singing ami shouting and preaching nt which multitudes found God, sobbed their repentance ami started out along a new road. Converts were called recruits; the Salvationists drilled, skirmished, fought and advanced and when they died they were promoted to glory. They suffered persecution and ridicule. Toughs broke up their meetings, broke their drums and bugles and pelted the Salva finnists with stones; but. they came up smiling. The words of the songs they sang were crude, but < aught the imagination of the crowd. The, preaching was often hvsfe'ical and exaggerated. Their bands played clap-trap tunes, but in streets where music was a novelty. Cultivated people thought the whole business in the worst.

possible taste. But the Army went on from strength to strength, and it was the Army that was the background of Evangeline Booth’s childhood, the setting of her life. As a small girl, she and her brothers and sisters played at beating the salvation drum and at reforming drunkards; while still iu her ’teens she was appointed to Army work in London, and at thirty-one she took over the Canadian command, which she hold for nine years. In 1904, with the title of Coin-

mander, she was appointed to the national leadership of the Army in the’ United States of America, a post which she continued to occupy until her election to the. supreme post of General. Of all |he Booths, Evangeline is the most like her famous father. She resembles him closely in looks. With her heavy, hand-

some features and line dark eyes she shows the Jewish strain which he so clearly exhibited. She has the same ilair fur publicity, for getting the effects she needs. Ou a public platform she will work herself up into a line frenzy, yet remaining cool and calculating behind her sobs. When the United States came into the Great War she rushed her Salvation Lassies to France where, according tu popular tradition, they made doughnuts for the doughboys, who, in gratitude, sang this song: Tin hat for halo! Ah! she wears it well! Making pies for homesick lads Sure is beating hell. The Commander got a Distinguished Service Medal for her work. The succeeding chapter is less happy. In 1929 Bramwell Booth, William Booth’s eldest son and nominated successor, was deposed by the majority vote of the senior officers composing the High Council on the grounds that he was too ill to continue as general. This proceeding caused much bitterness and distress, ami Evangeline Booth was in the forefront of the movement to depose her brother, believing as she did that he had shown undue favour to his own : family iu the matter of Army promuti-ois. Furthermore, she warmly advocated the ; establishment of the principle whereby each i succeeding general should be elected by Council inste,ad of being nominated by his predecessor. This reform was adapted ami she herself stood for election in her brother’s place, but was defeated by Commissioner Higgins, who thus became, the Army’s third general. In 193.1, General Higgins himself retired on reaching the ago of 70. Evangeline, Booth stood again ami was this time successful. i According to the regulations al present in i force she will reach retiring age on • Christmas Day, 1938. I At the time of her election the General in formed her fellow officers that “she could | do a. day’s work with ami tire out. any man I in the room.” Between then ami now she I has gone a long way towards substantiating I that claim. I As head of a world wide organisation, she has a. heavy daily programme of administrative and business duties, yet she finds time to address meetings and lead missions all over the country. She has recently returned from a world four which taxed her strength to the uttermost. She spares neither herself nor her staff, and the only doubt that exists in the minds of many of her officers is whether she will bo able to last out her full term of office. A remarkable woman in a great, position.