SALVATION ARMY

Southland Times, Issue 18846, 11 June 1920, Page 5

SALVATION ARMY

GENERAL BOOTH INTERVIEWED CONFIDENT OP THE FUTURE. (Special to the Times.) CHRISTCHURCH, June Ifi. In an interview to-day, General Booth said the future of the Salvation Army was, in his opinion, assured, and he could say so for two reasons: Firstly, there was a need for the Army. No movement, however great, could make any impression otherwise. Secondly, its interest and vitality justified his saying that it was now of the soil of every country. At present there were various signs of development which were to him very significant. During the past eight nr ten years, for example, he had been greatly encouraged by the increasing interest in the work among the heathen, an interest which was not merely intellectual but entirely practical, in producing mor* and more men and women who were ready to lay down their lives in the work. Thera bar! been the recent frightful world upheaval, yet the Army was rejoicing in the larger numbers of it.- people who were not only offering to go but, were going to those dark lands. Such enthusiasm was to the General a very .important factor in the development of the Army’s work. It waa saved from one peril that menaced so many movements, the settling flown t.o self-satis-faction and ease. He felt that it was something approaching a scandal that after 2000 years of Christianity the great communities of Christian people, a number of whom owned a large part of the wealth of the Western world, had done so little for the non-Christian nations. There were a thousand million of non-Christians, and Christianity had scarcely made a ripple on the vast ocean of misery and darkness which that figure represented. He hoped to find in New Zealand men and women ready to further the Christianising of the people of the East. Every class of worker was needed.