SALVATION ARMY IN MILITARY CAMPS.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 November 1915, Page 8

SALVATION ARMY IN MILITARY CAMPS.

To tho Editor. Sir,—Some publicity having been given to the application of the Solvation Army for a grant from our local Patriotic Committee towards their camp institute jiyork, T desire to express my opinion that the Committee will make a serious blunder if that application is granted. I say this out of no antagonism to the religious body concerned. I contribute regularly to the Army's SelfDenial effort and the philanthropic causes it represents, and I appreciate fully the good work the Army does in its presentation of religion to many. What I cannot help feeling, however, is that if this grant is made similar amounts should bo paid to every other church doing institute work at the camps, and that such a series of grants would be a misuse of funds in the possession of the Committee.

I understand that in Hawera, after full deliberation, the Patriotic Committee refused to make a grant as asked, and recommended the Army to open a local fund there for private subscription, many of the Committee preferring to give liberal donations rather than expend any of the public's money entrusted to its care. Would that not be better here than the making of a grant open to obvious criticism, and would it not be better for tho Army to get its money by its usual energetic methods instead of by Jarge voted amounts easily caught in its extended cap? The Army's chief accountant declares: "The principle of self-support -lias an important bearing upon the work of the Salvation Army, the practical application of which has to do with all our operations." Let the Army follow that principle, including the active collection of small amounts from its own constituency among "soldiers" and sympathisers, in similar fashion to the other denominations.—l am, etc., CONTRIBUTOR.