The death of "General" William Booth removes from the world of religious and social activity the widely-respected leader of a great movement. In the East End of London and in similar quarters of every other great city in which vice and destitution chiefly abound, many will feel the loss of his personality, influence and help. For it was always the object of the Salvation Army and its leader to reach those who were untouched by other somewhat similar institutions.
The officers went into slums into which only they and Roman Catholic nuns were known to venture alone.
Yet their reception was seldom hostile. For their uniform was known everywhere, and they busied themselves with nothing save the object of their own calling.
If one were asked to define that object in the fewest possible words, it might be summed up as " the reinstatement of hope." The present writer remembers seeing the old "General" eight or nine years ago, as he was setting out on his famous tour from Land's End to John Groats. His face even then, when he was nearing eighty, was the face of a man full of energy, of hope and of plans for the future. Opinions have differed as to the methods employed by him to make religion attractive to the masses for whom he laboured. But the efficacy of his odal work has seldom been called in question, and Queen Alexandra was one of those to whom his
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.