have given them a training in
discipline and unity which does not contemplate bloodshed.

We are now beginning both in India and Africa, as well as in the West
Indies, to find experienced native Officers capable of taking Staff
positions; that is, of becoming reliable leaders in large districts
where we are at work. These men have not merely all the advantages of
language and of fitness for the varieties of climate which are so
trying to Westerners, but they show a courage and tenacity and
tact--in short, a capacity for leadership and administration such as
no one--at any rate, no one that I know of--expected to find in them.
Here is opened a prospect of the highest significance.

More than can be easily estimated has been done in spreading
information about us for some years past by Salvationists belonging to
various national armies and navies. We encourage all such men to group
themselves into brigades, so far as may be allowed, in their various
barracks and ships. Thus united, they work for their mutual
encouragement, and for the spreading of good influences among others.
It was such a little handful that really began our work in the West
Indies, and we have now a Corps in Sierra Leone, on the west coast of
Africa, formed by men of a West Indian regiment temporarily quartered
there. The same thing has happened in Sumatra by means of Dutch and
Javanese soldiers.

For British India we naturally felt ourselves first of all, as to the
heathen world, under obligation to do something. And no inconsiderable
results have followed the efforts which were first commenced there
twenty-eight years ago. Our pioneers, though they greatly disturbed
the official white world, won the hearts of the people at a stroke, by
wearing Indian dress, living amongst and in the style of the poorer
villages. Soon Indian converts offered themselves for service, and
after training; were commissioned as Officers, and it was at once seen
that they would be far more influential than any foreigners. From the
point at which that discovery was really made, the work assumed
important proportions, passing at once in large measure from the
position of a foreign mission to being a movement of the people
themselves.

The vastness of the country and the difference of language have led to
our treating it as five separate commands, now under the general lead
of one headquarters. Incidentally, this has helped us in dealing with
some of the difficulties conne