a time of progress offers.  He has altogether modern views.  He does not hold fast with the reluctance of old age to old things, except to the old faith.

“In the Meetings The General seemed to me rather severe; but that disappears when you get at him personally, especially when you have got used to his way of speaking.  He almost flings each sentence out.  Every phrase, accompanied by some energetic gesture, is like a war cry.  ‘I will, and I carry out what I will,’ seems to breathe in all about him; and who can complain of this will, this iron resoluteness with which he works at the raising up of men.  He is in his kingdom an unlimited ruler, but one with a benevolent look who sees for the benefit of the blind.  He must be all that for his extraordinary work.

“The General asks us to put questions.  I could not manage it.  It seemed to me to be so useless in the presence of this important man.  So he said, ’We are never satisfied with the progress we make in view of what still remains to be done.’  He spoke of the progress made by the Social Work of The Army in Germany, and of his plans.

     “I never heard The General speak without his having plans, upon the
     carrying out of which he was at work with all his might.  He puts
     his whole body and soul into whatever he is engaged in.

     “‘The Salvation Army is the most interesting thing under the sun,’
     said The General at the close of this earnest talk, and then added,
     jokingly, ‘next to the Hamburg Press.’

“On the Sunday I saw him again as he spoke to a Meeting of thousands, a curiously mixed public, where there were many of the foremost gentlemen and ladies of society and many very common people.  All, however, were equally enthused.  I will only mention a couple of sentences out of the speech:  ’The Army wants to come into competition with nobody, only to be a friendly helper—­nobody’s enemy, but the friend of everybody.  It will gladly be an inspiration and example.  It has become the almsgiver for many Governments.  It is not British because it was born in Britain, just as little as Christianity is Jewish because it came into the world in Judea.’”—­Else Meerstedt.

Now that we see it all but completed, we think this book singularly wanting in reference to The General’s frequent merriness of mood.  We have thought it needless to insert any of the amusing anecdotes that could have been so abundantly culled from any of his visits to any country had we not been so anxious to select from the small space at our disposal what was most important.

Nor have we wished to present the reader with the portrait of an infallible genius, or a saint who never said or did anything that he afterwards regretted.  A victim almost all his life to extreme indigestion, it is indeed to all who knew him best marvellous that he could endure so much of misery without more frequently expressing in terms of unpleasant frankness his irritation at the faults and mistakes of others.  But really after his death as during his life we have been far too busy in trying to help in accomplishing his great lifework to note these details of human frailty.