“We rejoice that the great Captain of Salvation continues to lead the Organisation, of which you are the head and heart in one, to great victories over the forces of evil, and assure you that in this land we recognise The Salvation Army as a powerful force for the spiritual and social uplift of the people.  It is always a pleasure for the Churches we represent to render any aid in our power to an Organisation for whose members and whose work we have the deepest regard.

“It is the earnest prayer of the Council that your visit may be full of blessing to your community, that it may result in a fresh infusion of hope and enthusiasm into the hearts of your fellow-workers, and that God may abundantly fill you with spiritual and physical energy in the fulfilment of the great enterprise on which you have entered.

     “August 26, 1908.”

The address of the Bloemfontein Town Council very carefully avoids any reference to the proposed Over-Sea Colony.  Perhaps the whole secret of South Africa’s indifference to it is revealed in the following extract from a paper, whose name we omit, lest any appearance of hostility to any locality or any element in that enormous country should seem to have crept into our feelings here.

After half a column of compliments as to his good work and intentions the editorial gentleman, not of Bloemfontein, goes on with his great “But” as follows:—­

“But the social elevation, or the spiritual conversion of the boozy scum of a European nation may not be advanced at the cost of the well-being of our own people.  We protest most earnestly against that at once.  It does not matter whether he has fixed his eye upon Rhodesia or the Kalahari desert—­these lands belong geographically to South Africa, and we need it for its own peoples.  True, we have plenty of territory, even for others who may wish to come and settle amongst us, and wish to be of us.

     “But we have no room for the ‘submerged tenth’ of any other nation
     whatever.”

In vain did The General keep explaining in every land he visited that he had never thought of, or made any plan for, “dumping” crowds of wastrels on any country, but only such people as had been tested and proved fit for such an opportunity as they could not get in overcrowded countries.  There was always the same loud and continued applause for “his noble work,” and, then, almost everywhere—­not often with the honest outspokenness of that newspaper—­the same “I pray thee have me (my country) excused from receiving this Colony.”

And then the old man would give the tiny handfuls who, thanks to insane constitutionalism, have been left to monopolise vast areas of the earth, warnings of the future that may be remembered by generations to come.  Whilst in South Africa he was gladdened by receiving the following report as to the multitudes he was sending out to Canada:—­