How is it done? the reader may ask.  I answer by knowledge of human nature, by the power of sympathy, by gentle kindness.  A poor wretch staggers into a humble little room at the Salvation Army Headquarters in Queen Victoria Street.  He unfolds an incoherent tale.  He is an unpleasant and disturbing person whom any lawyer or business man would get rid of as soon as possible.  He vapours about self-destruction, he hints at dark troubles with his wife.  He produces drugs or weapons—­a point at which most people would certainly show him out.  But the Officers in charge do nothing of the sort.  They laugh at him or give him a cup of tea.  They bid him brace himself together, and tell them the truth and nothing but the truth.  Then out pours the awful tale, which, however bad it may be, they listen to quite unmoved though not unconcerned, for they hear such every day.  When it is finished, they ask coolly enough why, in the name of all that their visitor reverences or holds dear, he considers it necessary to commit suicide for a trifling job like that.  A new light dawns upon the desperate man.  He answers, because he can see no other way out.

Why, exclaims the Officer, there are a dozen ways out.  Let us find one of them.  You, A., have been faithless to your wife.  Well, when the matter is explained to her, I daresay she will forgive you.  You, B., have defrauded your employer.  Well, employers are not always relentless.  I’ll call on him this evening and talk the matter over.  You, C., are hopelessly in debt through horse-racing or speculation.  Well, at the worst you can go through the Court and start afresh.  You, D., have committed a crime.  Go and own up to it like a man, stand your trial, and work out your sentence.  I daresay it won’t be so very heavy if you take that course, and we will look after you when it is over.  You, E., have been brought into this state through your miserable vices, drink, or whatever they may be.  Cure yourself of the vices—­we’ll show you how—­don’t crown them by cutting your throat like a cur.  You, F., have been afflicted with great sorrows.  Well, those sorrows have some purpose and some meaning.  There’s always a dawn beyond the night; wait for that dawn; it will come here or hereafter.

And so on, and on, through all the gamut of human sin and misery.

Of course, there are cases in which the Army fails.  As I have said, there were about a dozen of these last year, six of which, if I remember right, occurred with startling rapidity one after the other.  The Suicide Officers of the Army always take up the daily paper with fear and trembling, and not infrequently find that the man whom they thought they had consoled and set upon a different path, has been discovered dead by drowning in the river, or by poison in the streets, or by whatever it may be.  But everything has its proportion of failures, and where intending suicides are concerned 1 or 2 per cent, or on the quarter basis that I have adopted as beyond question of sincerity of intent, 4 or 8 per cent is not a large average.  Indeed, 20 per cent would not be large, or even 50 per cent.  But these figures do not occur.