SALVATION ARMY

Hokitika Guardian, 12 February 1929, Page 5

SALVATION ARMY

INDICTMENT OF GENERAL BOOTH BY EVANGELINE BOOTH. (United Press Association. —By Electric Tclegraph.--Copyriglit.) LONDON, February 10. Evangeline Booth in a letter to American Salvationists, says: “How heart-breaking is the spectacle presented by the comparison of the unworthy actions of our General and his long hitherto honoured career. 1 grieve lor you even more than for myself. He has contravened the Army’s sacred principles embodied in the regulations tlu* Founder gave us and which the General himself taught and enforced during it half-century. Ho lias violated the letter and spirit of the Now Testa incut by hauling the brethren into the law courts. Would to God that I could have protected you and fellow Salvationists throughout the world lrotn the humiliation into which this dragging ol Salvationists into courts has involved us all. The General has done this despite. entreaties and prayers of the wisest, responsible officers.” SELFISHNESS ALLEGED. LONDON, February 10. Commissioner Evangeline Booth, oi America, in the course ol her letter to American Salvationists, says: “Wo cannot see in his action any purpose other than to preserve to himself amt his family the control of the heritage which tbe Founder bequeathed to tlu* world—not as the personal possession of si ll v individual or family—but as an instrument for the widest diflusion ol sacrificial service to he rendered the world by the Army its a whole, without which the skill and the devotion of the leaders would be fruitless. General Booth, by attacking the 1904 Deed Poll lias stinted a cruel, and heartless blow at the foundations of the Army’s Constitution laid under Divine guidance by the Founder. The Constitution rested upon two wsicly-devised deeds, one ol which the General seeks to destroy, because be discovers that the 190-1 Deed provides, in establishing the High Council, a single safeguard against an autocracy which might become it despot ism, and eventually a tyranny. All of the General’s specious pleas in the “War Cry” do not excuse justifying the invoking of the law to enable him to destroy the Deed, under which holms acted for twenty-four years. It is most significant and most, painful that a challenge to this Deed’s validity should be given only when its pto\isions react upon himself. Our duty is to go to our Calvary. The purpose mf the Amy is unchanged. Our love

is unchanged. Let us continue to quit ourselves like men, as soldiers of Christ, in the witness of a good conscience and the priceless peace of God.”