The Authoritative Life of General William Booth, Founder of the Salvation ArmyRailton, George S. (George Scott)
History
The Authoritative Life of General William Booth, Founder of the Salvation Army
Railton, George S. (George Scott)
Booth, William, 1829-1912; Salvation Army
The Governments of the various Australian Colonies must, however, have
the credit of first giving to our Officers public patronage. As has
already been mentioned, the Governors, Premiers, and Ministers have, for
some twenty-seven years past, been seen presiding over the anniversaries
of our Colonial work, speaking in no measured terms of all our
activities, and so helping us to get the means to support them.
The Queen Mother and the present Queen of Holland were the first royal
personages personally to visit our Institutions, although the present
King of Denmark, when Crown Prince, had for years used our Refuges in
that country for cases he thought deserving, and his brother, King
Haakon, of Norway, attended, as a warm friend, one of The General's
Meetings in Christiania.
Canadian and South African Governors and Ministers have acted like the
Australian ones in their public expressions of confidence in us, and
they have given us very considerable liberty in their prisons, so that
most of the criminal population comes more or less under our influence.
The greatest of our governmental victories have, however, been won in
Switzerland and Germany, where we were for so many years looked upon as
a dangerous, if not harmful, influence, owing chiefly to the gross
calumnies of "Christian" teachers and writers. The results of our work
upon those whose lives had been a disgrace and burden to the community
could not be hidden, however, and there is now scarcely a cantonal
government in Switzerland which does not subsidise some one or other of
our Institutions. The cities of Hamburg and Elberfeld, in Germany, have
led the way in granting to us similar assistance, and it can only be a
question of time before we gravitate into an equally honoured position
elsewhere. For although we continue to keep as far as possible aloof
from all parties, and party feeling, and have not, therefore, the means
of influencing and obtaining grants from politicians in the ordinary
way, we compel attention by what we do, and have, undoubtedly, done more
than any other religious community to create that inclination towards
intelligent care for the criminal and outcast which is almost becoming a
fashion, in governmental circles, nowadays.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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