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THE HISTORY OF THE SALVATION ARMY, VOL. III. SOCIAL REFORM AND WELFARE WORK. By Colonel Robert Sandal'. (Nelson, 15s.)
ALTHOUGH William Booth was always at pains to reject the idea of the Salvation Army as merely a social welfare organisation it is this aspect of the movement that has chiefly en- gaged the public eye, and which is the subject of Colonel Sandall's volume. The intrepid Sal- vationists marched into Mayhew country, at grips with the `dis-homed, nomadic, hungry multitude,' expecting at the very least baptism with winkle-shells and tea-slops and, at the worst, gross physical violence from the sinister Skeleton Army. As before, one is struck by Booth's ability to graft on to his organisation features of almost narrowly contemporary secular interest such as brass bands, popular music-hall songs and Jingoism.
Colonel Sandall's honest and factual ap- proach is well suited to his account of work for the unemployed, prisoners, criminals, lepers and so forth. One would, however, welcome a challenge of such typical nineteenth-century theses as that all decent women prefer honest drabness to sin and glitter. Also he is plainly disconcerted by attacks on the movement. of the T. H. Huxley variety who thought he saw in Booth an arrogant theocrat with totalitarian claims over his officers and soldiers. 'A general must not be afraid to spend his troops to carry a position,' declared Booth, but there are prob- ably more defenders in our own time for the militant saint who spares others no more than he does himself.
A. PARRY
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