GENERAL BOOTH'S WONDERFUL YEAR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 14 August 1907, Page 4

GENERAL BOOTH'S WONDERFUL YEAR.

The '-Grand Old Man" of the Salvation Army is back from his remarkable crusade in the Far Fast, where lie was received by the Mikado and welcomed by the Japanese, IV Togo anil Oyaina downwards. General Booth returns jproudly impressed with the future before the yellow races. "They are like a rising, mighty tide," he says. The West |is is so busy that it has no time or inclination to consider what their new purpose means. China, now reasserting herself, hopes to see every yard of her territory taken by foreigners regained. All foreigners may yet be [given notice to quit, from there j "The Western world must look to Japan as a new and powerful, competitor in trade anil commerce. She is no longer trammelled by old ideas as to the degrading character of trade. It is only a question of time when her industries will he tutored with the most expert direction and packed with the finest machinery taken ir„ m ~|[ the nations of the world. ] cannot see what can prevent her from producing the finest articles at the cheapest possible price." General Booth is now seventv-eight years old. and his activities seem' to increase rather than diminish. Since June. 11)0(1, lie has addressed S»() indoor gatherings and countless open-air meetings. His public addresses have averaged over one a day. Ho has written and published during the year something like 200,000 words; he'has travelled 30,500 miles by land and sea, including a motor ton- of 1300 miles, within the year. He has been received bv four Sovereigns, and has conferred with eminent men of all kinds. And he has throughout the year, in addition to all his other activities, continued the daily supervision and control of his world--wide Army. Truly. General Booth is the most wonderful old man in the world.

Method and will-power are the secrets of his enormous output of work. Everything he has to do is systematise'd. -Minor details are left to his assistants, the General himself dealing only .with essentials. His day begins at 7.30 with a breakfast of tea and toast, and sometimes an egg. He is a vegetarian, a non-smoker and a teetotaller. By eight o'clock in the morning ho is at work writing, dictating, or interviewing. After the mid-day dinner he invariably rests for fifteen or twenty minutes, lying in a darkened room Then work begins again, and continues, with intervals for tea and supper, bread and milk, until 11 p.m. If unable to sleep at night, the old man calls up his shorthand writer and dictates. Even when travelling in train or steamer he fills in his time by working. On his way back from Japan he dictated 30,000 works of a book. He finds time for reading, also, and is a close student of history, ancient and modern. Much of his' work is done from an overwhelming sense of duty rather than from inclination. "The old General," says a writer in the Daily Mail, "is highly strung and sensitive. Recently, in a moment'of self-illuinina-tion, he explained how he had to do violence to his feelings and personal desires in parading himself before the World. Those who depict him as hardened an insensitive under the strain of his life, mistake' the man. Quick to 'move, lie is also quick to be moved. 'I canont sleep for thinking of these poor I wretches,' he once exclaimed when talk- [ ing of the misery in one quarter of London. Misery touches him genuinely."