Will’S LEGACY OF EVIL.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 April 1921, Page 3

Will’S LEGACY OF EVIL.

“GOD OF HIS THRONE.” EXTRAVAGANCES, SCANRAL, AND SENSUALITY. WICKED "LONDON. LONDON, Feb 28. The moral stato of the world—and particularly Great Britain —since the war is now often the theme of public men. It is again and again emphasised that thd high ideals which sustained the nation during tho war, and the groat hopes of a new world that followed its conclusion, have alike been betrayed. Tho latest to condemn the disastrous after-war spirit in trenchant words is General Booth. Speaking to a Press representative on the legacy of the war, the head of the Salvation Army said:—-

“The world is undoubtedly better for finding out that every selfish plot for supremacy is doomed, so long as there are races with the necessary heroism and energy to work out God’s purposes and supply the right resistance. “The grave question is whether the Master is satisfied that the world is putting the precious blessing of victory to the best uses. To .take our own land, for instance, we want not ' so much a League of Nations as a League of All Classes, in which the rich shall help the poor, and the poor shall teach tho wealthy what to learn to do without. “GOD OFF HIS THRONE.” “Statesmen are for ever arguing about the aims for which we waged war, ami wrangling about the bill to pay for it. But the war was won by the sacrifice of those who gave up everything, without a thought of self—and can we win the peace with anything less? “The Press and the pulpit and the poor law are, without doubt, doing their best, but the fact is that reform and retrenchment, without a renewal of spiritual life, are hut a cheating and postponement of death. “The Christian Rationalist” as he calls himself, may tear out Genesis from liis Bible, and preach God Almighty of His Throne into a sort off high-brow almshouse, hut is tho world any better for. that? All it gains is ■ a display of intellectual fireworks, with headache and heart-ache at tho end of j it'. j “One of the churches is resisting a campaign in favour of women preachers. )Ve have always held that the sox which God entrusted with the bearing and rearing of children is just the influence to counsel and bring us back to the virtues wo learned at our mother’s knee. T tell you without good women | reli fr ion would well-nigh perish.” I ' LONDON’S WICKEDNESS. ■ Asked what the mission of the Salvation Army would include to remedy the present state of things General Booth ; answered : “Wo will tackle the unemployed I rich, for they need salvation most of j all. ’ “Wealth and luxury are the last stronghold of the devil, and London is ; its pivot. I have often been asked j whether our experience about the world i is useful to us in dealing with London; and so it is; hut I would rather say it j is the wickedness of London that teaches us to recognise our quarry when we find it, however far afield. “1 grieve to have to .say it, hut the . state of London since the war makes one realise what may happen when so j many of the best and bravest perish. 1 “Society’s legacy seems little, so far, hut a welter of extravagance, frivolity, scandal, sensuality, and worse. The present riot of divorce looks to me like a flood-tide of passion sweeping over the land, where the homes that are. unhappily uprooted carry wreckage and destruction to all others in their way. “The poor have no such drug-sots and drunkards as the upper classes I harbour, nor it is possible for humble folk, familiar with work and privations, to sink so low in the social scale as do some of the idle rich.”