Regeneration: Being an Account of the Social Work of The Salvation Army in Great BritainHaggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider)
Religion
Regeneration: Being an Account of the Social Work of The Salvation Army in Great Britain
Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider)
Great Britain -- Social conditions; Salvation Army
Why, exclaims the Officer, there are a dozen ways out. Let us find one
of them. You, A., have been faithless to your wife. Well, when the
matter is explained to her, I daresay she will forgive you. You, B.,
have defrauded your employer. Well, employers are not always
relentless. I'll call on him this evening and talk the matter over.
You, C., are hopelessly in debt through horse-racing or speculation.
Well, at the worst you can go through the Court and start afresh. You,
D., have committed a crime. Go and own up to it like a man, stand your
trial, and work out your sentence. I daresay it won't be so very heavy
if you take that course, and we will look after you when it is over.
You, E., have been brought into this state through your miserable
vices, drink, or whatever they may be. Cure yourself of the
vices--we'll show you how--don't crown them by cutting your throat
like a cur. You, F., have been afflicted with great sorrows. Well,
those sorrows have some purpose and some meaning. There's always a
dawn beyond the night; wait for that dawn; it will come here or
hereafter.
And so on, and on, through all the gamut of human sin and misery.
Of course, there are cases in which the Army fails. As I have said,
there were about a dozen of these last year, six of which, if I
remember right, occurred with startling rapidity one after the other.
The Suicide Officers of the Army always take up the daily paper with
fear and trembling, and not infrequently find that the man whom they
thought they had consoled and set upon a different path, has been
discovered dead by drowning in the river, or by poison in the streets,
or by whatever it may be. But everything has its proportion of
failures, and where intending suicides are concerned 1 or 2 per cent,
or on the quarter basis that I have adopted as beyond question of
sincerity of intent, 4 or 8 per cent is not a large average. Indeed,
20 per cent would not be large, or even 50 per cent. But these figures
do not occur.
Of course, it is suggested that many of those who drift into the
Anti-Suicide Bureau have no real intention of making away with
themselves, but that they come there only to see what they can get in
the way of money or other comfort. As regards money, the answer is
that, except very occasionally, the Army gives none, for the simple
reason that it has none to give. For the rest the fatal cases which
happen show that there is a grim purpose at work in the minds of many
of the applicants. But I repeat, let us halve the figures, let us even
quarter them, which, as Euclid remarked, is absurd, and even then what
are we to conclude?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account