In both of these moments there is no pretence.  The two manners represent two genuine aspects of his soul in its commerce with mankind.  He believes that the world likes to be clapped on the shoulder, to be rallied on its manifest inconsistencies, and to have its hand wrung with a real heartiness.  Also he believes that the heart of the world is sentimental, and that an authentic appeal in that quarter may lead to friendship—­a friendship which, in its turn, may lead to business.  Business is the true end of all his heartiness.

It is in his business manner that one gets nearer to the innermost secret of his nature.  He is before everything else a superb man of business, far-seeing, practical, hard-headed, an organiser of victory, a statesman of the human soul.  You cannot speak to him in this practical sphere without feeling that he is a man of the most unusual ability.

He can outline a complicated scheme with a precision and an economy of words which, he makes you feel, is a tribute to your perspicacity rather than a demonstration of his own powers of exposition.  He comes quicker to the point than nine men of business out of ten.  And he sticks to the main point with a tenacity which might be envied by every industrial magnate in the country.

Moreover, when it comes to your turn to speak he listens with the whole of his attention strung up to its highest pitch, his eyes wide open staring at you, his mouth pursed up into a little O of suction, his fingers pressing to his ear the receiver of a machine which overcomes his deafness, his whole body leaning half across the table in his eagerness to hear every word you say.

No sentiment shows in his face, no emotion sounds in his voice.  He is pure mind, a practical mind taut with attention.  If he have occasion in these moments to ring the bell for an adjutant or a colonel, that official is addressed with the brevity and directness of a manager giving an order to his typist.  Instead of a text over his mantelpiece one might expect to find the commercial legend, “Business Is Business.”

Here, as I have said, one is nearer to the truth of his nature, for General Booth is an organiser who loves organisation, a diplomatist who delights in measuring his intelligence against the recalcitrance of mankind, a general who finds a deep satisfaction of soul in moving masses of men to achieve the purpose of his own design.

But even here one is not at the innermost secret of this extraordinary man’s nature.

At the back of everything, I am convinced, is the cold and commanding intensity of a really great fanatic.  He believes as no little child believes in God and Satan, Heaven and Hell, and the eternal conflict of God and Evil.  He believes, too, as few priests of orthodox churches believe, that a man must in very truth be born again before he can inherit the Kingdom of Heaven; that is to say, before he can escape the unimaginable agonies of an eternal dismissal from the Presence of God.  But more than anything else he believes that sin is hateful; a monstrous perversion to be attacked with all the fury of a good man’s soul.