It is upon this truth that Booth’s scheme is founded. Sometimes, indeed, he forgets it, and talks as though the preaching of Christ and him crucified were enough to regenerate society. But this truth, that man is very largely the creature of circumstances, and that evil circumstances should be changed if there is to be any improvement, is the governing idea of his project. No doubt the “General” seeks an escape from the logical consequences of this truth. He says, for instance, that (p. 286) “to me has been given the idea,” as though God _had_ intervened and selected him as the human agent. But this is all nonsense. In the first place, if God gave Booth the idea, he might as well have given him the cash. In the second place, the idea—or rather, the set of ideas—is by no means a revelation. Every part of Booth’s scheme has been advocated by other men, and several parts are already reduced to practice, though not on the gigantic scale he contemplates. His Farm Colony is admittedly borrowed from Mr. B. T. Craig, a veteran Freethinker who was the soul of the Ralahine experiment. With this gentleman Booth has had interviews; indeed, the “General”—perhaps with Mr. Stead’s assistance—has simply picked other men’s brains, although he takes care to conceal his indebtedness. Naturally, too, the astute leader of the Salvation Army recognises the necessity of a _pious_ appeal to wealthy Christians. He therefore “asserts in the most unqualified way that it is primarily and mainly for the sake of saving souls” that he “seeks the salvation of the body” (p. 45). And he declares (p. 3) it must not be supposed that he is “less dependent upon the old plans” or that he “seeks anything short of the old conquest.” At the same time (p. 279) he “does not think that any sectarian differences or religious feelings whatever ought to be imported into this question.” Is it not better, he asks, that miserable crowds of men and women should have work, food, clothes, and a home, even with “some peculiar religious notions and practices,” than that they should be “hungry, and naked, and homeless, and possess no religion at all”? Put in this way, of course, the question admits of only one answer. But this way of putting it begs the wider question; for it does not follow that Booth’s is the only possible scheme of social reform, or even that it is calculated to succeed.