"Those who have been daily conversant with the army's machinery are
well aware how entirely and radically the whole system has changed,
and how, from a band of devoted and disinterested workers, united in
the bonds of zeal and charity for the good of their fellows, it has
developed into a colossal and aggressive agency for the building up of
a system and a sect, bound by rules and regulations altogether
subversive of religious liberty and antagonistic to every (other?)
branch of Christian endeavour, and bound hand and foot to the will of
one supreme head and ruler.... As the work has spread through the
country, and as the area of its endeavours has enlarged, each leading
position has been filled, one after the other, by individuals strangers
to the country, totally ignorant of the sentiments and idiosyncrasies
of the Canadian people, trained in one school under the teachings and
dominance of a member of the Booth family, and out of whom every idea
has been crushed, except that of unquestioning obedience to the
General, and the absolute necessity of going forward to his bidding
without hesitation or question" (p. 6).
[266] "What is the result of all this? In the first place, whilst
material prosperity has undoubtedly been attained, spirituality has
been quenched, and, as an evangelical agency, the army has become
almost a dead letter... In seventy-five per cent of its stations its
officers suffer need and privation, chiefly on account of the heavy
taxation that is placed upon them to maintain an imposing headquarters
and a large ornamental staff. The whole financial arrangements are
carried on by a system of inflation and a hand-to-mouth extravagance
and blindness as to future contingencies. Nearly all of its original
workers and members have disappeared" (p. 7). "In reference to the
religious bodies at large the army has become entirely antagonistic.
Soldiers are forbidden by its rules to attend other places of worship
without the permission of their officers... Officers or soldiers who
may conscientiously leave the service or the ranks are looked upon and
often denounced publicly as backsliders... Means of the most
despicable description have been resorted to in order to starve them
back to the service" (p. 8). "In its inner workings the army system is
identical with Jesuitism... That 'the end justifies the means,' if
not openly taught, is as tacitly agreed as in that celebrated order"
(p. 9).
Surely a bitter, overcharged, anonymous libel, is the reflection which
will occur to many who read [267] these passages, especially the last.
Well, I turn to other evidence which, at any rate, is not anonymous.
It is contained in a pamphlet entitled "General Booth, the Family, and
the Salvation Army, showing its Rise, Progress, and Moral and
Spiritual Decline," by S. H. Hodges, LL.B., late Major in the Army,
and formerly private secretary to General Booth (Manchester, 1890). I
recommend potential contributors to Mr. Booth's wealth to study this
little work also. I have learned a great deal from it. Among other
interesting novelties, it tells me that Mr. Booth has discovered "the
necessity of a third step or blessing, in the work of Salvation. He
said to me one day, 'Hodges, you have only two barrels to your gun; I
have three'" (p. 31). And if Mr. Hodges's description of this third
barrel is correct--"giving up your conscience" and, "for God and the
army, stooping to do things which even honourable worldly men would
not consent to do" (p. 32)--it is surely calculated to bring down a
good many things, the first principles of morality among them.
Mr. Hodges gives some remarkable examples of the army practice with
the "General's" new rifle. But I must refer the curious to his
instructive pamphlet. The position I am about to take up is a serious
one; and I prefer to fortify it by the help of evidence which, though
some of it may be anonymous, cannot be sneered away. And I shall [268]
be believed, when I say that nothing but a sense of the great social
danger of the spread of Boothism could induce me to revive a scandal,
even though it is barely entitled to the benefit of the Statute of
Limitations.
On the 7th of July, 1883, you, Sir, did the public a great service by
writing a leading article on the notorious "Eagle" case, from which I
take the following extract:--
"Mr. Justice Kay refused the application, but he was induced to refuse
it by means which, as Mr. Justice Stephen justly remarked, were highly
discreditable to Mr. Booth. Mr. Booth filed an affidavit which appears
totally to have misled Mr. Justice Kay, as it would have misled any one
who regarded it as a frank and honest statement by a professed teacher
of religion."
When I addressed my first letter to you I had never so much as heard of
the "Eagle" scandal. But I am thankful that my perception of the
inevitable tendency of all religious autocracies towards evil was
clear enough to bring about a provisional condemnation of Mr. Booth's
schemes in my mind. Supposing that I had decided the other way, with
what sort of feeling should I have faced my friend, when I had to
confess that the money had passed into the absolute control of a
person about the character of whose administration this [269]
concurrence of damnatory evidence was already extant?
I have nothing to say about Mr. Booth personally, for I know nothing.
On that subject, as on several others, I profess myself an agnostic.
But, if he is, as he may be, a saint actuated by the purest of
motives, he is not the first saint who, as you have said, has shown
himself "in the ardour of prosecuting a well-meant object" to be
capable of overlooking "the plain maxims of every-day morality." If I
were a Salvationist soldier, I should cry with Othello, "Cassio, I
love thee; but never more be officer of mine."
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
T. H. Huxley.
V