The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1898-01-03
While the Salvation Army and
the American Volunteers
Fight Each Other as Partisans
of the Booths.
PEOPLE GROW TIRED
Of Giving Money With Which to
Fight the Devil
And Having it Squandered in a
Family Row.

Chicago. Jan. 3-The Tribune prints
the following regarding the fight among
the Booths:
From combating satan and sin to
fighting among themselves is the rec
ord made last year by the Salvation
Army and Volunteers of America.
The banner of the Iowly Nazarene
seems to have fallen from the hands of
these nineteenth century crusaders, and
in its place they are parading a stand
ard on which is not inscribed anything
which bears the slightest resemblance
to the divine command to love ones en-
emies.
The spirit of charity has been ousted
by that of recrimination. Peace has
ned and diScOrd prevails. The noble
work performed in the Sluu1S seems to
have imbued the Iaborers with the
manners and way! ways Of the dwellers
therein. The War Cry has become
entirely too realistic.
Just what particular difference it
makes what Ballington Booth promised
his dying mother or what was the
cause of his wife's illness does not ap-
pear to the average citizen, and when
1t comes to affect the return he is get
ting for his charity offerings it becomes
a nuisance and an outrage. 1t is one
thing to pay out money for rescue mis-
slons and the spreading of the gospel
in the dark and narrow places and an
other to pay for the issuing of pamph-
let's of invective and tours of denuncia-
ton when the cause of it all is a family
row and the object a kindred organiza-
t1on-an association for the spread of
the gospel and peace and good will
The business man has stopped to think
and he is wondering why he should be
called upon to support this campaign,
which is directed, not against the devil,
but really against whatever good has
been accomplished by those who wage
it.
1t is charming to see portraits of
Booth-Tucker arrayed in the pictures
que costume of the Hindoo and listen
to good tales OF him and the consul as
they overturned the @'builded on the
rock mysteries of Brahmin philosophy
and religion, supplanting the magic of
the Yogi with the tambOurine of the
Salvationist and the peculiarly civil
lied dread of grease for the army ra-
lions. 1t may recall to the prOfane
mind the dissolute and Christianized
HindOO of KipIing's story, ION the City
Wall" who idled in Lalun's parlor and
talked of all the creeds to which he had
been converted and of which he had
retained none, but it is none the less
praiseworthy from a missionary stand
point. But the ordinary mortal is con-
strained to forget all this as he sees
the picturesque Booth-Tucker, wearing
the Warlike red of his army uniform,
fguratively, at least, wiping up the
mud of his pet SIumS with the meta
phoricaI body of his brother-in-law
On the other hand Ballington Booth
is magnetic, powerful figure of force
full modern Christianity as he stands on
the platform before some vast audience
appealing for money for the poor that
they may be comforted, and for the
sinners that they may be saved.
1t is a pleasing sight to see his de-
mure and pretty wife, as she sits be-
side him on those conspicuous and
worthy platforms or adds her sweet
voice to his resonant tones in a joint
supplication for help in a worthy
cause. But the picture loses it's beauty
and the idea it's significant purity when
its figures seek to saddle an unwilling
world with their private affairs and re-
vive an unpleasant family quarrel for
the purpose of attacking a like Organi-
cation which is surely to be commended
in the same words.
"A plague on both your houses" is
the thought of a bewildered and dis
gusted public.
And on this rock of discord will both
SalVationists and Volunteers be wreck
ed just so surely as the fight continues.
The Salvation Army has worked long
and well for the good of the world with
out more noise than the sound of open
has caused them to be universally ad-
mired and respected. The soldiers have
worked hard, amid a multitude of dis
cOuraSementS and Inconvenience. The
good of their work has been incalcula-
BILE. Their reward has been small and
their Self-sacrifice great. A world, too
busy to look after it's own duties I
toward Christianity and charity in the
submerged TENTH has been glad to
help them 1t has given them praise
and money, it has set them up on a
pedestal, and it is from this pedestal
they are hanging out their dirty linen.
The history of the Volunteers has
been similar. 1t was formed by people
whose lives had been devoted to the
good which the army had accomplish
ed. 1t was an offshOot of the older
body, with it's avowed principles, such
that a patriotic American people well
coined and accepted them. BallingtOn
Booth was justly popular; his wife even
more acclaimed. The movement was
given instant and ready support and
the prospects for the darker half of the
world seemed bright indeed, with two
organizations to look after it.
From a business standpoint it was
wrong. It cost money to support two
corps of general officers, but there were
reasons for it, and the public poured it's
money into the newly made Golfers and
signified it's praise and encouragement.
The days of that division OF the Saliva
ton Army began the line of perSecu-
ton, fighting, and accusation which the
public now is beginning to disavow.
Maud Booth sped from England to
this country. her passage paid with
money that had been contributed by
poor but generous people at street cor
ner meetings to weep upon public plat
forms and denounce a brother in the
name of her dead mother. Bad faith,
treason and betrayal were openly charg-
ed against BallingtOn Booth
Through those trying times, when the
whole work was almost forgotten in the
flood of inVective and effort to hold to-
gether the fast melting army of the old
organization, and the work of forming
the new, Ballington Booth was modest
in his defense and admirable in his ST
lence concerning a private matter. The
world applauded and respected him for
it.
Now,with the illness of his wife as an
excuse, he has broken forth with de-
nunciation of the army and a stream
of accusations which have. revived the
old bitterness and widened the breach