The War Romance of the Salvation Army | Page 3

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