The same principle of adaptation to local conditions and requirements will, I doubt not, quickly ensure success for the small detachment of Officers we have just sent to commence operations in Russia.

In Dutch India we have not only a growing Missionary work amongst both Javanese and Chinese, but Government Institutions have been placed under our care, where lepers, the blind, and other infirm natives, as well as neglected children, are medically cared for and helped in other ways.

In South Africa, both English and Dutch-speaking peoples are united under one Flag, and give themselves up to work amongst the native races round them—­races which constitute so grave a problem in the eyes of all thoughtful men who know anything of the true position in South Africa.  One of the latest items of news is that an Angoni has accepted salvation at one of our settlements in Mashonaland, and on return to his own home and work—­lying away between Lake Nyassa and the Zambezi—­has begun to hold meetings and to exercise an influence upon his people which cannot but end in the establishment of our work amongst them.

But, to my mind, one of the most important features of our work in all Eastern and African lands is our development of the native power under experienced guidance to purely Salvationist and therefore non-political purposes.  Surely the most potent possible corrective for the sort of half rebel influence that has grown or is growing up in Africa under the name of Ethiopianism, as well as for much of the strange uneasiness among the dumb masses of India, is the complete organization of native races under leaders who, whilst of their own people, are devoted to the highest ethical aims, and stand in happy subjection to men of other lands who have given them a training in discipline and unity which does not contemplate bloodshed.

We are now beginning both in India and Africa, as well as in the West Indies, to find experienced native Officers capable of taking Staff positions; that is, of becoming reliable leaders in large districts where we are at work.  These men have not merely all the advantages of language and of fitness for the varieties of climate which are so trying to Westerners, but they show a courage and tenacity and tact—­in short, a capacity for leadership and administration such as no one—­at any rate, no one that I know of—­expected to find in them.  Here is opened a prospect of the highest significance.

More than can be easily estimated has been done in spreading information about us for some years past by Salvationists belonging to various national armies and navies.  We encourage all such men to group themselves into brigades, so far as may be allowed, in their various barracks and ships.  Thus united, they work for their mutual encouragement, and for the spreading of good influences among others.  It was such a little handful that really began our work in the West Indies, and we have now a Corps in Sierra Leone, on the west coast of Africa, formed by men of a West Indian regiment temporarily quartered there.  The same thing has happened in Sumatra by means of Dutch and Javanese soldiers.