The War Romance of the Salvation Army Part 1

The War Romance of the Salvation Army.

by Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill.

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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.sistance; and having for many days had the privilege of working with her in the sifting process, gathering from the ma.s.s of matter that had acc.u.mulated 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 grat.i.tude 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 t.i.tanic 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 grat.i.tude 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 Pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 quant.i.ty than to run the risk in falling short in quality.

Quality is its own multiplication table. Quality without quant.i.ty will spread, whereas quant.i.ty 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 coa.r.s.e 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."