THE SALVATION ARMY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5426, 20 May 1929, Page 2

THE SALVATION ARMY.

DOINGS OF THE HIGH COUNCIL. (By Loyalty.) Mob psychology and the science of common ignorance reveal to the educated mind the deplorably low ebb of any intelligence or weighed judgment in our’ present social fabric. Not long since the whole of the Salvation Army from the lowliest ranks of the soldiery up to the serried ranks of officership throbbed with leyalty and love for “its beloved leader,’’ General William Bramwell Booth and now, to-day, after a period when the rank and file has been most undemocratically shut into a background of grave uncertainty and un-Christian uneasiness, some fifty men of high rank are giving a belated account of their doings, behind guarded doors, to their so-called “comrades” in every quarter of the globe. These 50-odd men have, totally unauthorised by the two million rank and file forced the issue—and this in the age of demo-

cracy ! Worse features, however are revealed. The Salvation Army has its own publication, the “War Cry,” but though this has been scanned for any jot of' news on the vital question, members of the Salvation Army have been shamefully kept in the dark. The Press reports have had to be depended upon ; and, mark this, as they have throughout favoured the Booths, members of the Salvation Army are being advised to disbelieve them. Still further marked is the fact that the reasons justifying the actions of the High Council which are being at present administered to the Army’s adherents in New Zealand are different from those being published in the Australian “War Cry” for the digestion of the Australians.

And yet the great mob swings like a huge pendulum—l say pendulum because it is a fitting simile without the implication that it works by a small amount of power and has neither intelligence nor reason in its make-up-swings so completely across that any member of the Salvation Army who dares .to express loyalty to Bramwell Booth receives scathing sarcasm and runs the risk of being suspended from the ranks. The writer ha£ never heard a prayer offered up for Bramwell Booth, but has heard; from all quarters, un-Christian references of a derogatory nature against the General, his mentality, his attitude, and his devoted family. This attitude is in itself sufficient to show right-minded men and women which side of the question is the right one.

Let us take the black-and-white, printed reasons for the disposal of Bramwell Booth. I quote from Commissioner Sowton’s remarks in the Australian “War Cry,” the only authority we have in writing : “During recent years misgivings and unrest arose amongst leading officers throughout the world because of the General’s undue advancement of members of his own family in the life and affairs of the organisation. Some were promoted to rank and position far beyond their standing and abilities, and that to the displacement of able and experienced officers. In these and other signs leading officers discerned ‘a design on the part of the General to form something in the nature of a dynasty.’ Obviously the next generation would see the Army staffed by young officers, under the generalship of a member of .General Bramwell Booth’s family, with other members in key positions of leadership. Officers who had the temerity to expostulate with the General concerning such evidences and portents were promptly dealt with in ways which aimed at the curtailing'of their influence and making them an example that the General’s methods must not be questioned.”

A man with half a brain could infer the rest, and some questions will remain unanswered for a long time. If these things had been causing misgiving for years, why had they waited until the General whs down to hit him ? Does any right-thinking person believe in the idea that the humble, saintly Bramwell Booth would ever dream of forming a dynasty ? Can an ordinary soldier of the Salvation Army reason his point of view with one of the common, everyday officers of the organisation without incurring petty autocracy ? Then what right has an .officer to object to his being put in his place by the General ? And then the other side reiterates : Could such high and noble officers of this wonderful religious body judge wrongly ? Must we not place our confidence in their judgment and follow blindly ? The so-called and deeply concerned religious leaders of the world persuaded the mob that they were justified in crucifying the Christ —He who was and is the Light of the world, the meek and lowly victim of Calvary. They said He spoke blasphemies—and they lied ; they said he was a usurper —and they lied ; they said anything and everything to justify their getting rid of Him—and they were liars deceiving even themselves. And Judas went out into the night and hanged himself ; and Pilate not long after fell in for all he had tried to avoid by betraying the Christ, and had to fling himself in his demented frenzy over a precipice ; and Caesar, the spectre that had hunted Pilate into his action, is long since crumbled into the dust. And so puny man, “drest in a little brief authority,” shakes his miserable fist in the face of eternity and lays his finite hand on the machinery of the ages and thinks he has turned the course of the universe. God help him.