SALVATION ARMY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24418, 2 October 1940, Page 5

SALVATION ARMY

CHIEF SECRETARY’S VISIT LIEUT.-COLONEL EBBS Much variety of experience and diversity of responsibility have marked the career of Lieutenant-colonel W. Alex. Ebbs, the newly appointed chief secretary for the Salvation Army in New Zealand, who will arrive in Dunedin by the express train from the north this afternoon. In three crowded decades he bas served with distinction in capacities ranging from corps commanding officer to member of the first High Council of

the International Salvation Army. Indeed, his appointments have long since placed him among the international figures of the organisation, while his brilliance of achievement and quality of Christian leadership have set him in high place in the esteem and respect of Salvationists on two continents.

. To his life work William Alexander Ebbs brought rare inherent gifts of imagination, vision and artistry, and early in his career as an officer he exhibited a genius for expressing his unusual powers of thought and ongi-. nation in forceful speech, dynamic leadership and practical development. Colonel Ebbs filled field and staff appointments in England before his transfer to France, where he took charge of the Paris-Nord Division Then followed fruitful years in Belgium, where he was the aide de camp to the territorial commander, and five other difficult but progressive years in

Italy as territorial leader. Transferred to the United States in 1929 he commanded the Metropolitan and Hudson River Divisions and later, for nearly four years, the Western Pennsylvania Division, with headquarters at Pittsburg. Under his leadership the Army in the Western Pennsylvania Division advanced and held new strongholds in the Salvation war, and positions of higher esteem in the minds of the public as well as old-time Army friends. He was a director of the Rotary Club of Pittsburg and the Federation of Social Agencies of Pittsburg and Allegheny County, and a participator in all civic movements for the betterment of his fellow-men. Mrs Colonel Ebbs, as Lieutenant Louisa L. Moore, a Scotch “ lassie ” from Stirling, married Colonel Ebbs in Edinburgh in 1913. She possesses qualities which are the perfect complement to Colonel Ebbs's personality and gifts, while they have enshrined her in the affectionate memory of all who have known her.