ation Army since 1912; e.s. of
late General Booth; b. Halifax, 8 March, 1856; m. 5882, Florence
Eleanor; two s. four d. Educ.: Privately. Commenced public work 1874;
Chairman of the S.A. Life Assurance Society and the Reliance Bank; Chief
of Staff, Salvation Army, 1880-1912. Publications: _Books that Bless;
Our Master; Servants of All; Social Reparation; On the Banks of the
River; Bible Battle-Axes; Life and Religion;_ and various pamphlets on
Social and Religious Subjects.

[Illustration: GENERAL BRAMWELL BOOTH]

CHAPTER VIII

GENERAL BRAMWELL BOOTH

. . . _for the generality of men, the attempt to live such a life
would be a fatal mistake; it would narrow instead of widening their
minds, it would harden instead of softening their hearts. Indeed,
the effort "thus to go beyond themselves, and wind themselves too
high," might even be followed by reaction to a life more profane
and self-indulgent than that of the world in general._--EDWARD
CAIRD.

Because General Booth wears a uniform he commands the public curiosity;
but because of that curiosity the public perhaps misses his considerable
abilities and his singular attraction. His worst enemy is his frogged
coat. Attention is diverted from his head to his epaulettes. He
deserves, I am convinced, a more intelligent inquisitiveness.

To begin with, he is to be regarded as the original founder of that
remarkable and truly catholic body of Christians known as the Salvation
Army. His picturesque father and his wonderful mother were the humanity
of that movement, but their son was its first impulse of spiritual
fanaticism. The father was the dramatic "showman" of this movement, the
son its fire. The mother endowed it with the energy of a deep and
tender emotion, the son provided it with machinery.

It was Mr. Bramwell Booth, with his young friend Mr. Railton abetting
him, who, discontented with the dullness and conservatism of the
Christian Mission, drove the Reverend William Booth, an ex-Methodist
minister preaching repentance in the slums, to fling restraint of every
kind to the winds and to go in for religion as if it were indeed the
only thing in the world that counted. William Booth at that time was
forty-nine years of age.

Again, it was Mr. Bramwell Booth, working behind the scenes and pulling
all the strings, who edged his father away from concluding an alliance
with the Church of England in the early eighties. Arc