Socialists, as well as clergymen and leaders in Church work were
there, together with officials and working-men and women."

Nothing could be more impressive as to the ever-widening circles who
crowded to listen to The General than the following description of his
Meeting in Potsdam, the German Windsor, where the Emperor generally
resides. Says the local paper:--

"One could not cease to marvel at the crowded state of the
auditorium. The intelligent public, which generally keeps away from
popular demonstrations, was there in force. Jurists, state
officials, officers in uniform, doctors, and many ladies were
amongst the hearers of The General."

But some of the papers in smaller but not less striking reports gave us
a far fuller description of what The General's appeals brought home to
the hearts of his hearers everywhere.

"No laboured rhetoric," said a Leipzig paper, "distinguished the
speech, and applause was not won by catchy phrases. The speaker
talks like a plain man to plain people. Everybody listens
enthralled as he tells of his life's work, of the unbounded love
with which he would like to surround and lead to Salvation every
one who lives and moves. One gets to understand how this man could
gather around him such masses of disciples, and why, right and
left, many a lady deeply touched puts her handkerchief to her eyes
and many a man wipes a tear from his cheek."

Best of all, however, comes ever and anon in these reports the
testimony that The General has not been a mere talker, like so many
others of his day, but has raised up a real fighting force who have, by
gradual painstaking labour and endurance, won for him this unbounded
confidence in what he says of The Army's religion.

"I remember," writes one reporter, "how in the nineties, in Berlin,
no Soldier, much less a Sister, could appear in the street without
being laughed at at every step, made fun of, and even abused, and I
visited Meetings in which there was great disorder. But how the
picture was altered a few years later! Quietly and patiently the
Soldiers let scorn and even assaults pass, until the very rowdiest
of the Berliners were sick of it. And on the other hand every one
soon said that these people, after all, were doing nothing but to
go right at the deepest miseries of the great cities--that they fed
the hungry,