Therefore, whilst publishing every year the properly audited balance-sheet referring to amounts received and spent in London, and similar balance-sheets, similarly audited, in each other capital, we have always refrained, and always shall refrain, from any such massing of totals, or glorying in any of them, as could help our enemies to check the flow of liberality anywhere.

When, in 1895, there seemed to be a general cry for some special investigation into the use made of the Fund raised as a result of The General’s “Darkest England” Appeal, we were able to get a Commission of some of the most eminent men in the country, whose Report effectively disposed of any doubts at the time.

The Commission had for Chairman Earl Onslow, and its members were the Right Hon. Sir Henry James (afterwards Lord James), Messrs. Sydney Buxton, Walter Long, and Mr. Edwin Waterhouse, President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, the Right Hon. Hobhouse, M.P., acted as Secretary.

The Report of no Commission could, however, still any hostile tongue.  The cry for “investigation” has always been simply the cry of enmity or envy, which no amount of investigation could ever satisfy.  The General perfectly understood this at the time, and wrote to a friend of the discerning order:—­

“How I feel generally with respect to the future is expressed in one word, or rather two, ‘Go forward.’  The Red Sea has to be crossed and the people rescued from Hell here and Hell hereafter.  We must stick to our post.

     “I am quite aware that I may now, probably shall be, more
     misunderstood than ever.  But God and time will fight for me.  I must
     wait, and my comrades must wait with me.

“I need not say that the subject has had, and still has, our fullest consideration; but I cannot say more until I see clearly what position the country will take up towards me during the next few days.”

Need I say that this Report never checked for one day the ferocity of the attacks upon the General or his Army.  Had public opinion been deluded by the babblings of our critics in any country we should not only have lost all support, but been consigned to jails as swindlers and robbers.  But the fact that we get ever-increasing sums, and are ever more and more aided by grants from Governments and Corporations, or by permissions for street-collecting, is the clearest demonstration that we are notoriously upright in all our dealings.

So many insinuations have been persistently thrown out, year after year, with regard to the integrity of The General’s dealings with finance, that I have taken care not merely to consult with comrades, but to give opportunity to some who were said to “have left in disgust” with regard to these matters, to correct my own impression if they could.

Having been so little at Headquarters myself since I left for Germany, in 1890, I knew that my own personal knowledge might be disputed, and my accuracy questioned; therefore, I have been extra careful to ascertain, beyond all possibility of dispute, the correctness of the view I now give.