The War Romance of the Salvation Army by Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

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[Illustration: William Bramwell Booth
General of the Salvation Army]

The War Romance of the Salvation Army

by

Evangeline Booth

Commander-in-Chief,
The Salvation Army in America

and

Grace Livingston Hill

Author of "The Enchanted Barn"; "The Best Man";
"Lo Michael"; "The Red Signal," etc.

Copyright 1919, by J. T. Lippincot Company

[Illustration: Evangeline Booth
Commander-in-Chief of the Salvation Army in America]

Foreword

In presenting the narrative of some of the doings of the Salvation Army
during the world's great conflict for liberty, I am but answering the
insistent call of a most generous and appreciative public.

When moved to activity by the apparent need, there was never a thought
that our humble services would awaken the widespread admiration that has
developed. In fact, we did not expect anything further than appreciative
recognition from those immediately benefited, and the knowledge that our
people have proved so useful is an abundant compensation for all toil and
sacrifice, for _service_ is our watchword, and there is no reward
equal to that of doing the most good to the most people in the most need.
When our National Armies were being gathered for overseas work, the
likelihood of a great need was self-evident, and the most logical and most
natural thing for the Salvation Army to do was to hold itself in readiness
for action. That we were straitened in our circumstances is well
understood, more so by us than by anybody else. The story as told in
these pages is necessarily incomplete, for the obvious reason that the
work is yet in progress. We entered France ahead of our Expeditionary
Forces, and it is my purpose to continue my people's ministries until the
last of our troops return. At the present moment the number of our
workers overseas equals that of any day yet experienced.

Because of the pressure that this service brings, together with the
unmentioned executive cares incident to the vast work of the Salvation
Army in these United States, I felt compelled to requisition some
competent person to aid me in the literary work associated with the
production of a concrete story. In this I was most fortunate, for a writer
of established worth and national fame in the person of Mrs. Grace
Livingston Hill came to my assistance; and having for many days had the
privilege of working with her in the sifting process, gathering from the
mass of matter that had accumulated and which was being daily added to,
with every confidence I am able to commend her patience and toil. How well
she has done her work the book will bear its own testimony.

This foreword would be incomplete were I to fail in acknowledging in a
very definite way the lavish expressions of gratitude that have abounded
on the part of "The Boys" themselves. This is our reward, and is a very
great encouragement to us to continue a growing and more permanent effort
for their welfare, which is comprehended in our plans for the future. The
official support given has been of the highest and most generous
character. Marshal Foch himself most kindly cabled me, and General
Pershing has upon several occasions inspired us with commendatory words of
the greatest worth.

Our beloved President has been pleased to reflect the people's pleasure
and his own personal gratification upon what the Salvation Army has
accomplished with the troops, which good-will we shall ever regard as one
of our greatest honors.

The lavish eulogy and sincere affection bestowed by the nation upon the
organization I can only account for by the simple fact that our
ministering members have been in spirit and reality with the men.

True to our first light, first teaching, and first practices, we have
always put ourselves close beside the man irrespective of whether his
condition is fair or foul; whether his surroundings are peaceful or
perilous; whether his prospects are promising or threatening. As a people
we have felt that to be of true service to others we must be close enough
to them to lift part of their load and thus carry out that grand
injunction of the Apostle Paul, "Bear ye one another's burdens and so
fulfill the law of Christ."

The Salvation Army upon the battlefields of France has but worked along
the same lines as in the great cities of the nations. We are, with our
every gift to serve, close up to those in need; and so, as Lieut.-Colonel
Roosevelt put it, "Whatever the lot of the men, the Salvation Army is
found with them."

We never permit any superiority of position, or breeding, or even grace to
make a gap between us and any who may be less fortunate. To help another,
you must be near enough to catch the heart-beat. And so a large measure of
our success in the war is accounted for by the fact that we have been with
them. With a hundred thousand Salvationists on all fronts, and tens and
tens of thousands of Salvationists at their ministering posts in the
homelands as well as overseas, from the time that each of the Allied
countries entered the war the Salvation Army has been with the fighting-
men.

With them in the thatched cottage on the hillside, and in the humble
dwelling in the great towns of the homelands, when they faced the great
ordeal of wishing good-bye to mothers and fathers and wives and children.

With them in the blood-soaked furrows of old fields; with them in the
desolation of No Man's Land; and with them amid the indescribable miseries
and gory horrors of the battlefield. With them with the sweetest ministry,
trained in the art of service, white-souled, brave, tender-hearted men and
women could render.

[Evangeline Booth]

NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS SALVATION ARMY, NEW YORK CITY.

April, 1919.

From the Commander's Own Pen

The war is over. The world's greatest tragedy is arrested. The awful pull
at men's heart-strings relaxed. The inhuman monster that leapt out of the
darkness and laid blood-hands upon every home of a peace-blest earth has
been overthrown. Autocracy and diabolical tyranny lie defeated and crushed
behind the long rows of white crosses that stand like sign-posts pointing
heavenward, all the way from the English Channel to the Adriatic, linking
the two by an inseverable chain.

While the nations were in the throes of the conflict, I was constrained to
speak and write of the Salvation Army's activities in the frightful
struggle. Now that all is over and I reflect upon the price the nations
have paid I realize much hesitancy in so doing.

When I think of England-where almost every man you meet is but a piece of
a man! France--one great graveyard! Its towns and cities a wilderness of
waste! The allied countries--Italy, and deathless little Belgium, and
Serbia--well-nigh exterminated in the desperate, gory struggle! When I
think upon it--the price America has paid! The price her heroic sons have
paid! They that come down the gangways of the returning boats on crutches!
They that are carried down on stretchers! They that sail into New York
Harbor, young and fair, but never again to see the Statue of Liberty! The
price that dear mothers and fathers have paid! The price that the tens of
thousands of little children have paid! The price they that sleep in the
lands they made free have paid! When I think upon all this, it is with no
little reluctance that I now write of the small part taken by the
Salvation Army in the world's titanic sacrifice for liberty, but which
part we shall ever regard as our life's crowning honor.

Expressions of surprise from officers of all ranks as well as the private
soldier have vied with those of gratitude concerning the efficiency of
this service, but no thought of having accomplished any achievement higher
than their simplest duty is entertained by the Salvationists themselves;
for uniformly they feel that they have but striven to measure up to the
high standards of service maintained by the Salvation Army, which
standards ask of its officers all over the world that no effort shall be
left unprosecuted, no sacrifice unrendered, which will help to meet the
_need at their door_.

And it is such high standards of devoted service to our fellow, linked
with the practical nature of the movement's operations, the deeply
religious character of its members, its intelligent system of government,
uniting, and thus augmenting, all its activities; with the immense
advantage of the military training provided by the organization, that give
to its officers a potency and adaptability that have for the greater
period of our brief lifetime made us an influential factor in seasons of
civic and national disaster.

When that beautiful city of the Golden Gate, San Francisco, was laid low
by earthquake and fire, the Salvationists were the first upon the ground
with blankets, and clothes, and food, gathering frightened little
children, looking after old age, and rescuing many from the burning and
falling buildings.

At the time of the wild rush to the Klondike, the Salvation Army was, with
its sweet, pure women--the only women amidst tens of thousands of men--
upon the mountain-side of the Chilcoot Pass saving the lives of the gold-
seekers, and telling those shattered by disappointment of treasure that
"doth not perish."

At the time of the Jamestown, the Galveston, and the Dayton floods the
Salvation Army officer, with his boat laden with sandwiches and warm
wraps, was the first upon the rising waters, ministering to marooned and
starving families gathered upon the housetops.

In the direful disaster that swept over the beautiful city of Halifax, the
Mayor of that city stated: "I do not know what I should have done the
first two or three days following the explosion, when everyone was panic-
stricken without the ready, intelligent, and unbroken day-and-night
efforts of the Salvation Army."

On numerous other similar occasions we have relieved distress and sorrow
by our almost instantaneous service. Hence when our honored President
decided that our National Emblem, heralder of the inalienable rights of
man, should cross the seas and wave for the freedom of the peoples of the
earth, automatically the Salvation Army moved with it, and our officers
passed to the varying posts of helpfulness which the emergency demanded.

Now on all sides I am confronted with the question: _What is the secret
of the Salvation Army's success in the war?_

Permit me to suggests three reasons which, in my judgment, account for it:

First, when the war-bolt fell, when the clarion call sounded, it found
_the Salvation Army ready!_

Ready not only with our material machinery, but with that precious piece
of human mechanism which is indispensable to all great and high
achievement--the right calibre of man, and the right calibre of woman. Men
and women equipped by a careful training for the work they would have to
do.

We were not many in number, I admit. In France our numbers have been
regrettably few. But this is because I have felt it was better to fall
short in quantity than to run the risk in falling short in quality.
Quality is its own multiplication table. Quality without quantity will
spread, whereas quantity without quality will shrink. Therefore, I would
not send any officers to France except such as had been fully equipped in
our training schools.

Few have even a remote idea of the extensive training given to all
Salvation Army officers by our military system of education, covering all
the tactics of that particular warfare to which they have consecrated
their lives--_the service of humanity_.

We have in the Salvation Army thirty-nine Training Schools in which our
own men and women, both for our missionary and home fields, receive an
intelligent tuition and practical training in the minutest details of
their service. They are trained in the finest and most intricate of all
the arts, the art of dealing ably with human life.

It is a wonderful art which transfigures a sheet of cold grey canvas into
a throbbing vitality, and on its inanimate spread visualizes a living
picture from which one feels they can never turn their eyes away.

It is a wonderful art which takes a rugged, knotted block of marble,
standing upon a coarse wooden bench, and cuts out of its uncomely
crudeness--as I saw it done--the face of my father, with its every
feature illumined with prophetic light, so true to life that I felt that
to my touch it surely must respond.

But even such arts as these crumble; they are as dust under our feet
compared with that much greater art, _the art of dealing ably with human
life in all its varying conditions and phases_.

It is in this art that we seek by a most careful culture and training to
perfect our officers.

They are trained in those expert measures which enable them to handle
satisfactorily those that cannot handle themselves, those that have lost
their grip on things, and that if unaided go down under the high, rough
tides. Trained to meet emergencies of every character--to leap into the
breach, to span the gulf, and to do it without waiting to be told
_how_.

Trained to press at every cost for the desired and decided-upon end.

Trained to obey orders willingly, and gladly, and wholly--not in part.

Trained to give no quarter to the enemy, no matter what the character, nor
in what form he may present himself, and to never consider what personal
advantage may be derived.

Trained in the art of the winsome, attractive coquetries of the round,
brown doughnut and all its kindred.

Trained, if needs be, to seal their services with their life's blood.

One of our women officers, on being told by the colonel of the regiment
she would be killed if she persisted in serving her doughnuts and cocoa to
the men while under heavy fire, and that she must get back to safety,
replied: "Colonel, we can die with the men, but we cannot leave them."

When, therefore, I gathered the little companies together for their last
charge before they sailed for France, I would tell them that while I was
unable to arm them with many of the advantages of the more wealthy
denominations; that while I could give them only a very few assistants
owing to the great demand upon our forces; and that while I could promise
them nothing beyond their bare expenses, yet I knew that without fear I
could rely upon them for an unsurpassed devotion to the God-inspired
standards of the emblem of this, the world's greatest Republic, the Stars
and Stripes, now in the van for the freedom of the peoples of the earth.
That I could rely upon them for unsurpassed devotion to the brave men who
laid their lives upon the altar of their country's protection, and that I
could rely upon them for an unsurpassed devotion to that other banner, the
Banner of Calvary, the significance of which has not changed in nineteen
centuries, and by the standards of which, alone, all the world's wrongs
can be redressed, and by the standards of which alone men can be liberated
from all their bondage. And they have not failed.

A further reason for the success of the Salvation Army in the war is,
_it found us accustomed to hardship_.

We are a people who have thrived on adversity. Opposition, persecution,
privation, abuse, hunger, cold and want were with us at the starting-post,
and have journeyed with us all along the course.

We went to the battlefields _no strangers to suffering_. The biting
cold winds that swept the fields of Flanders were not the first to lash
our faces. The sunless cellars, with their mouldy walls and water-seeped
floors, where our women sought refuge from shell-fire through the hours of
the night, contributed no new or untried experience. In such cellars as
these, in their home cities, under the flicker of a tallow candle, they
have ministered to the sick and comforted the dying.

Wet feet, lack of deep, being often without food, finding things different
from what we had planned, hoped and expected, were frequent experiences
with us. All such things we Salvationists encounter in our daily toils for
others amid the indescribable miseries and inestimable sorrows, the sins
and the tragedies of the underworlds of our great cities--the
_underneath_ of those great cities which upon the surface thunder
with enterprise and glitter with brilliance.

We are not easily affrighted by frowns of fortune. We do not change our
course because of contrary currents, nor put into harbor because of head-
winds. Almost all our progress has been made in the teeth of the storm. We
have always had to "tack," but as it is "the set of the sails, and not the
gales" that decides the ports we reach, the competency of our seamanship
is determined by the fact that we "get there."

Our service in France was not, therefore, an experiment, but an organized,
tested, and proved system. We were enacting no new role. We were all
through the Boer War. Our officers were with the besieged troops in
Mafeking and Ladysmith. They were with Lord Kitchener in his victorious
march through Africa. It was this grand soldier who afterwards wrote to my
father, General William Booth, the Founder of our movement, saying: "Your
men have given us an example both of how to live as good soldiers and how
to die as heroes." And so it was quite natural that our men and women,
with that fearlessness which characterizes our members, should take up
positions under fire in France.

In fact, our officers would have considered themselves unfaithful to
Salvation Army traditions and history, and untrue to those who had gone
before, if they had deserted any post, or shirked any duty, because
cloaked with the shadows of death.

This explains why their dear forms loomed up in the fog and the rain, in
the hours of the night, on the roads, under shell fire, serving coffee and
doughnuts.

This is how it was they were with them on the long dreary marches, with a
smile and a song and a word of cheer.

This is how it is the Salvation Army has no "closing hours." "Taps" sound
for us _when the need is relieved_.

Three of our women officers in the Toul Sector had slept for three weeks
in a hay-stack, in an open field, to be near the men of an ammunition
train taking supplies to the front under cover of darkness. The boys had
watched their continued, devoted service for them--the many nights without
sleep--and noticing the shabby uniform of the little officer in charge,
collected among themselves 1600 francs, and offered it to her for a new
one, and some other comforts, the spokesman saying: "This is just to show
you how grateful we are to you." The officer was deeply touched, but told
them she could not think of accepting it for herself. "I am quite
accustomed to hard toils," she said. "I have only done what all my
comrades are doing--my duty," and offered to compromise by putting the
money into a general fund for the benefit of all--to buy more doughnuts
and more coffee for the boys.

Salvation Army teaching and practice is: Choose your purpose, then set
your face as flint toward that purpose, permitting no enemy that can
oppose, and no sacrifice that can be asked, to turn you from it.

Again, a reason for our success in the war is, _our practical
religion_.

That is, our religion is _practicable_. Or, I would rather say, our
Christianity is practicable. Few realize this as the secret of our
success, and some who do realize it will not admit it, but this is what it
really is.

We _do_ worship; both in spirit and form, in public and in private.
We rely upon prayer as the only line of communication between the creature
and his Creator, the only wing upon which the soul's requirements and
hungerings can be wafted to the Fount of all spiritual supply. Through our
street, as well as our indoor meetings, perhaps oftener than any other
people, we come to the masses with the divine benediction of prayer; and
it would be difficult to find the Salvationist's home that does not regard
the family altar as its most precious and priceless treasure.

We do preach. We preach God the Creator of earth and heaven, unerring in
His wisdom, infinite in His love and omnipotent in His power. We preach
Jesus Christ, God's only begotten Son, dying on Calvary for a world's
transgressions, able to save to the uttermost "all those who come unto God
by Him." We preach God the Holy Ghost, sanctifier and comforter of the
souls of men, making white the life, and kindling lights in every dark
landing-place. We preach the Bible, authentic in its statements,
immaculate in its teaching, and glorious in its promises. We preach grace,
limitless grace, grace enough for all men, and grace enough for each. We
preach Hell, the irrevocable doom of the soul that rejects the Saviour. We
preach Heaven, the home of the righteous, the reward of the good, the
crowning of them that endure to the end.

Even as we preach, so we practice Christianity. We reduce theory to
action. We apply faith to deeds. We confess and present Jesus Christ in
things that can be done. It is this that has carried our flag into sixty-
three countries and colonies, and despite the bitterest opposition has
given us the financial support of twenty-one national governments. It is
this that has brought us up from a little handful of humble workers to an
organization with 21,000 officers and workers, preaching the gospel in
thirty-nine tongues. It is this that has multiplied the one bandsman and a
despised big drum to an army of 27,000 musicians, and it is this-our
practice of religion-that has placed _Christ in deeds_.

Arthur E. Copping gives as the reason for the movement's success-"the
simple, thorough-going, uncompromising, seven-days-a-week character of
its Christianity." It is this every-day-use religion which has made us of
infinite service in the places of toil, breakage, and suffering; this
every-day-use religion which has made UB the only resource for thousands
in misery and vice; this every-day-use religion which has insured our
success to an extent that has induced civic authorities, Judges, Mayors,
Governors, and even National Governments-such as India with its Criminal
Tribes-to turn to us with the problems of the poor and the wicked.

While the Salvationist is not of the generally understood ascetic or
monastic type, yet his spirit and deeds are of the very essence of
saintliness.

As man has arrested the lazy cloud sleeping on the brow of the hill, and
has brought it down to enlighten our darkness, to carry our mail-bags, to
haul our luggage, and to flash our messages, so, I would say with all
reverence, that the Salvation Army in a very particular way has again
brought down Jesus Christ from the high, high thrones, golden pathways,
and wing-spread angels of Glory, to the common mud walks of earth, and has
presented Him again in the flesh to a storm-torn world, touching and
healing the wounds, the bruises, and the bleeding sores of humanity.

That was a wonderful sermon Christ preached on the Mount, but was it more
wonderful than the ministry of the wounded man fallen by the roadside, or
the drying of the tears from the pale, worn face of the widow of Nain? Or
more wonderful than when He said, Let them come--let them come--mothers
and the little children--and blessed them?

It has only been this same Christ, _this Christ in deeds_, when our
women have washed the blood from the faces of the wounded, and taken the
caked mud from their feet; when under fire, through the hours of the
night, they have made the doughnuts; when instead of sleeping they have
written the letters home to soldiers' loved ones, when they have lifted
the heavy pails of water and struggled with them over the shell-wrecked
roads that the dying soldiers might drink; when they have sewn the torn
uniforms; when they have strewn with the first spring flowers the graves
of those who died for liberty. Only _Christ in deeds_ when our men
went unarmed into the horrors of the Argonne Forest to gather the dying
boys in their arms and to comfort them with love, humam and divine.

That valiant champion of justice and truth; that faithful, able and
brilliant defender of American standards, the late Honorable Theodore
Roosevelt, told me personally a few days before he went into the hospital
that his son wrote him of how our officer, fifty-three years of age,
despite his orders, went unarmed over the top, in the whirl-wind of the
charge, amidst the shriek of shell and tear of shrapnel, and picked up the
American boy left for dead in No Man's Land, carrying him on hie back over
the shell-torn fields to safety.

It is this _Christ in deeds_ that has made the doughnut to take the
place of the "cup of cold water" given in His name. It is this _Christ
in deeds_ that has brought from our humble ranks the modern Florence
Nightingales and taken to the gory horrors of the battlefields the white,
uplifting influences of pure womanhood. It is this _Christ in deeds_
that made Sir Arthur Stanley say, when thanking our General for $10,000
donated for more ambulances: "I thank you for the money, but much more for
the men; they are quite the best in our service."

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