, at Quaker Street.

Here the room was filled by about 150 men, all of whom had been
rescued, and were then working in the various Shelters or elsewhere. I
may say that I have seldom seen a congregation of more respectable
appearance, and never one that joined with greater earnestness in a
religious service.

I will take this opportunity to observe that the Salvation Army
enforces no religious test upon those to whom it extends its
assistance. If a man is a member of the Church of England or a Roman
Catholic, for instance, and wishes to remain so, all that it tries to
do is to make him a good member of his Church. Its only _sine qua non_
is that the individual should show himself ready to work zealously at
any task which it may be able to find for him.

The rest of that afternoon I spent in interviewing ex-criminals who
were then in the charge of the Salvation Army. To give details of
their cases in this book is impossible. Here I will only say,
therefore, that some of these had been most desperate characters, who
had served as much as thirty or forty years in various prisons, or
even been condemned to death for murder. Indeed, the nineteen men whom
I interviewed had, between them, done 371 years of what is known as
'time.'

I cannot honestly report that I liked the looks of all these gentry,
or believed everything that they told me. For instance, when such
people swear that they have been wrongly convicted, an old lawyer and
magistrate like myself, who knows what pains are taken by every
English Court to safeguard the innocent, is apt to be sceptical.
Still, it should be added that many of these jailbirds are now to all
appearance quite reformed, while some of them are doing well in more
or less responsible positions, under the supervision of the Army.

The Salvation Army Officers have authority from the Home Office to
visit the various prisons, where the inmates are informed that those
who are desirous of seeing them must give in their names. Then on a
certain day, the Officer, who, under Commissioner Sturgess, is
responsible for the Prison work of the Army in England, appears at the
Wandsworth or the Pentonville Prison, or wherever it may be. There he
finds, perhaps, as many as 150 men waiting to see him, the total
number of ex-prisoners who pass through the hands of the Army in
England averaging at present about 1,000 per annum. He interviews
these men in their cells privately, the prison officials remaining