Darkest India: A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out"Booth-Tucker, Frederick St. George De Lautour
History
Darkest India: A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out"
Booth-Tucker, Frederick St. George De Lautour
India -- Social conditions; Poor -- India
Looking now to the objections which may be urged against General Booth's
scheme, we are at once confronted by two important considerations. The
first concerns the "General" himself. He asks for a million pounds
sterling to enable him to carry out his project, and the question seems
to have already been asked, Is he the person to whom a million pounds
may be entrusted? Will it be so safeguarded that those who subscribe may
feel assured that the money will be properly applied and an honest
attempt made to do the work here planned out? To all these questions we
are disposed to reply in the affirmative. General Booth and his
Salvation Army have by this time pretty well weathered the storm of
abuse and scorn with which their methods were at first received, and
however much we may be disposed even now to question the taste or
propriety of those methods, there can be no amount of doubt in the mind
of any reasonable man that the Salvation Army has been the means of
achieving enormous good the whole world over. In his administration of
this huge organization of which himself was the founder, Mr. Booth has
proved himself a man of probity and of the strictest possible integrity.
We do not hesitate to say that all the money he requires for this great
scheme may be safely placed in his hands, and that he will render a
strict account of its disbursement. Then comes the question, how far is
it possible for him to succeed in the work he proposes to undertake? He
has already in the field a vast organization doing good work among the
dregs of the population, and the extension of this organization to carry
out the main points of his project is not a matter of difficulty. The
ill is a terrible one, the evil gigantic, and the means to grapple with
it must be gigantic also. But given the means, will they be effective?
We frankly confess that we do not believe they will be so effective as
General Booth hopes, but we believe at the same time that if he can
achieve only one-tenth of what he hopes to achieve, ten millions of
pounds would be worthily laid out upon it. The hungry, the dirty, the
ragged, the hopeless and outcast, the criminal and the drunkard, the
idle and the vicious--can he gather all these in with any hope of
starting them afresh on the journey of life? So much work of this kind
has already been done without any special system, that there can be
little doubt that to a large extent he can. With the honestly poor it is
not a difficult matter, but with the vicious and criminal classes, who
have no inclination to work so long as they can steal, it will be a long
time before the Salvation Army or any other agency can effect any
sweeping reform. The work will be slow, but we believe it will be done.
It has been objected against General Booth's scheme that it is not new,
except in the fact that General Booth proposes that it shall be himself
who carries it out. It seems to us, on the contrary, that it is new in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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