But to return to General Booth.  Again I hear him explaining to me vast schemes, as yet unrealized, that lurk at the back of his vivid, practical, organizing brain.  Schemes for settling tens of thousands of the city poor upon unoccupied lands in sundry portions of the earth.  Schemes for great universities or training colleges, in which men and women might be educated to deal with the social problems of our age on a scientific basis.  Schemes for obtaining Government assistance to enable the Army to raise up the countless mass of criminals in many lands, taking charge of them as they leave the jail, and by regenerating their fallen natures, saving them soul and body.

In the last interview I had with him, I read to him a note I had made of a conversation which had taken place a few days before between Mr. Roosevelt and myself on the subject of the Salvation Army.  Here is the note, or part of it.

MR. ROOSEVELT:  ’Why not make use of all this charitable energy, now often misdirected, for national ends?’

MYSELF:  ’What I have called “the waste forces of Benevolence.”  It is odd, Mr. Roosevelt, that we should both have come to that conclusion.’

MR. ROOSEVELT:  ’Yes, that’s the term.  You see the reason is that we are both sensible men who understand.’

‘That is very important,’ said General Booth, when he had heard this extract. ’"Make use of all this charitable energy, now often misdirected for national ends!” Why not, indeed?  Heaven knows it is often misdirected.  The Salvation Army has made mistakes enough.  If only that could be done it would be a great thing.  But first we have got to make other people “understand” besides Roosevelt and yourself.’

That, at least, was the sense of his words.

Once more I see him addressing a crowded meeting of City men in London, on a murky winter afternoon.  In five minutes he has gripped his audience with his tale of things that are new to most of them, quite outside of their experience.  He lifts a curtain as it were, and shows them the awful misery that lies often at their very office doors, and the duty which is theirs to aid the fallen and the suffering.  It is a long address, very long, but none of the hearers are wearied.

At the end of it I had cause to meet him in his office about a certain matter.  He had stripped off his coat, and stood in the red jersey of his uniform, the perspiration still streaming from him after the exertion of his prolonged effort in that packed hall.  As he spoke he ate his simple meal of vegetables (mushrooms they were, I remember), and tea, for, like most of his family, he never touches meat.  Either he must see me while he ate or not at all; and when there is work to be done, General Booth does not think of convenience or of rest; moreover, as usual, there was a train to catch.  One of his peculiarities is that he seems always to be starting for somewhere, often at the other side of the world.