Sea has to be
crossed and the people rescued from Hell here and Hell hereafter.
We must stick to our post.

"I am quite aware that I may now, probably shall be, more
misunderstood than ever. But God and time will fight for me. I must
wait, and my comrades must wait with me.

"I need not say that the subject has had, and still has, our
fullest consideration; but I cannot say more until I see clearly
what position the country will take up towards me during the next
few days."

Need I say that this Report never checked for one day the ferocity of
the attacks upon the General or his Army. Had public opinion been
deluded by the babblings of our critics in any country we should not
only have lost all support, but been consigned to jails as swindlers and
robbers. But the fact that we get ever-increasing sums, and are ever
more and more aided by grants from Governments and Corporations, or by
permissions for street-collecting, is the clearest demonstration that we
are notoriously upright in all our dealings.

So many insinuations have been persistently thrown out, year after year,
with regard to the integrity of The General's dealings with finance,
that I have taken care not merely to consult with comrades, but to give
opportunity to some who were said to "have left in disgust" with regard
to these matters, to correct my own impression if they could.

Having been so little at Headquarters myself since I left for Germany,
in 1890, I knew that my own personal knowledge might be disputed, and
my accuracy questioned; therefore, I have been extra careful to
ascertain, beyond all possibility of dispute, the correctness of the
view I now give.

One who for many years had the direction of financial affairs at the
International Headquarters, and who retired through failing health
rather than become a burden upon the Army's ever-strained exchequer,
wrote me on November 28, 1910:--

"The General has always taken the keenest interest in all questions
bearing upon The Army's financial affairs, and has ever been alive
to the necessity for their being so administered as to ensure the
contributing public's having the utmost possible value for the
money contributed, at the same time rendering a careful account
from year to year of his stewardship.

"Carefully prepared budgets of income and expenditure are submitted
to him year by year in connexion wit