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Press, Volume LVI, Issue 16858, 11 June 1920, Page 6

Practical Christianity. In speaking to the newspaper reprcfientatives yesterday, General Bramwell Booth declared himself an optimist, with great hopes for tlso future. No other attitude of mind would be possible for the head of tho Salvation Army, which is in itself the miraculous outgrowth of the profound optimism of one man, its founder. Forty years ago, as will no doubt bo within the recollection of many of our readers, the Salvation Anny then at the very outset of its career, was the object of general scorn. Its early recruits were subjected tp derision and to personal abuse and attacks; superior persons thought to kill it with a sneering phrase —"corybantic Christianity." But the first General of tho Salvation Army was not to I>3 deterred by physical violence or contempt. He had one fixed purpose in life—the fulfilment of the Divine commission, to go out into tho highways and hedges, and into the gutters,, if necessary, and there to rescue the derelicts of humanity whom the Pharisees had passed by. No conventional methods were of any service in such a task, and grotesque though the Army's methods might appear, they proved most effectual. To preach Christ was General Booth's mission, but he realised that it was waste of time to try to save a man's soul when he was cold and hungry, and so, as time went on, the Salvation Army became not merely a great religions force in the life of England, and, later on, of .the world, but a vast philanthropic force as well, which aimed at first rescuing men from vice and degradation and want, and teaching them self-respect and self-restraint, and then leading them to think of the higher things of the soul. Yesterday General Bramwell Booth, who, on thb, death of hie great father, succeeded to the huge inheritance of responsibility that devolves upon the leader of the Salva- J tion Army, declared that "Christianity " with its head screwed on right, with "its essential demand upon men for " service," is what the world wants. It is because of the wide-world recognition that the Army's policy represents in the best and highest sense ''Christ- " ianity with' its head screwed on "right," that it now stands so high in public favour, and that its General is the honoured guest-of any community in the world which ho chooses to visit, as ho is of Christchurch to-day. From being the butt of the humourists, London's slums and clubs, the Salvation Army has in littlo more than a generation become a world-power, with its organisation for uplifting the weak and fallen, and helping the helpless in every land, and its leaders tho trusted coadjutors of rulers and governments in carrying out that task. An institution that is at onco a vast religious, philanthropic, and immigration agency, that spent £3,000.00 p on,war work, that has been entreated by the Chineee Government to take control of the 20,000 beggars of Peking, and by the Dutch Government to look after 2000 lepers in the Dutch West Indies, that sent to Canada in tho three years before the war 140,000 emigrants, with only H per cent, of failures among them —such an institution desires all tho help and encouragement that can be given it. General Booth may have it in his mind during his present visit to talk to tho people and the Government, as - his father did before him, about immigration from the Old Oountry to New Zealand. Whatever he has to say on such a subject will be worth listening to. and his hearers should bear m mind that ho has one inviolable" rule in connexion with tho matter —lie'never sends.anyono to a placo to which he is not welcome.