144 



Fakir Singh: Harold Begbie's Saint. 



M 



one who has landed at his 

 a man with a personality, a 



R. HAROLD nEGBIE is one oi the com- 

 ing men, if indeed he may not already be 

 described as 

 destination. He is 



message, and a following. He has written several 

 books of late which have achieved an almost 

 unprecedented success, both in this country and 

 in America. His latest, entitled " Other Sheep," 

 describes the impressions produced upon his mind by 

 his recent visit to India. He saw the country and 

 the people that dwell therein, and he Iwd the great 

 advantage, during part at 

 least of his tour, of being 

 accompanied by Mr. 

 Commissioner Booth 

 Tucker, who for many 

 years was a distinguished 

 member of the Indian 

 Civil Service, and who 

 since 1881 has devoted 

 the whole of his life to 

 preaching the Gospel, ac- 

 cording to the Salvation 

 Army, to the people of 

 India. 



The picture that Mr. 

 Harold Begbie gives of 

 Mr. Booth Tucker, whose 

 native name is Fakir 

 Singh, is extremely at- 

 tractive, and has fasci- 

 nated a great many 

 people who have read 

 the book. 



" Other Sheep," take it 

 all in all, is a great tribute 

 to a great man ; and that 

 being so, I was deliglited 

 to seize the op[)ortunity 

 of Mr. Booth Tucker's 

 presence in London to 

 ask him to come round 

 to my Sanctum and have 

 a talk. 



Fakir Singh responded 

 to the invitation, and then, as his manner was, he 

 forgot all about Harold Begbie, and set himself with a 

 whole heart to interest me in the work that the Salva- 

 tion Army is doing for the redemption of the outcasts 

 of India. When I listened to Fakir Singh's account 

 of the multifarious eflforls which the Salvation Army 

 is- making for the amelioration of the condition of the 

 ]jeo]jle of India, it seemed to me that tliey arc attempt- 

 ing to achieve salvation by silkworms which dark 

 saying, being interpreted, means tiiat they have con- 

 ceived the idea that millions of the Indian people 

 may be snatched from deadly poverty, the like of 



I'lnlof, 



Mr. Harold Begbie. 



wliich is inconceivable to the Western world, by 

 training them to manage silkworms. 



The Indian silkworm produces eight crops of siik 

 a year, whereas his French brother only produces 

 one. France has, indeed, almost forsaken the grow- 

 ing of silk for the breeding of silkworms or silkworms' 

 eggs. Fakir Singh gave me what seemed almost 

 fabulous figures concerning billions of silkworms' eggs 

 which are exported from France every year. A 

 thousand tons of silkworms' eggs, which are sold at 

 varying prices from 3s. to 4s. an ounce, represent 



innumerable billions of 

 active workers, each of 

 which is no sooner 

 hatched out than it sets 

 to work to convert mul- 

 berry leaves into silk. At 

 first the experiments were 

 not successful ; they put 

 the wrong sort of cater- 

 pillar upon the wrong 

 sort of tree, wi'h the 

 result that the caterpillar 

 killed the tree, and the 

 tree killed the caterpillar. 

 However, by long and 

 patient experiments they 

 now know how to fit the 

 caterpillar to the bush, 

 with the result that the 

 supply of silk from India 

 is steadily increasing, and 

 in time Fakir Singh and 

 ( leneral Booth may be 

 the greatest silk-producers 

 in the world. At the 

 present they are modestly 

 engaged in pioneer work, 

 and do what they can to 

 act as middleman be- 

 iween the peasants who 

 act as shepherds to the 

 silkworm flocks and the 

 great silk manufacturers 

 of Europe and America. 

 But the silkworm industiy is only one of the multi- 

 farious economic activities which absorb so much of 

 his energies. The Salvation Army did a noble work 

 in India in agitating for the establishment of land 

 banks, which before that time were i)ractically non- 

 existent in India. They acted as jjioneers and the 

 Govenuuent followed in their wake. There are few 

 institutions so much appreciated by the [leople as the 

 land banks. It is very largely the work of the 

 Salvation .Xrmy to find out a good thing, to turn theljl-; 

 energy and enthusiasm and intelligence of their { 

 people loose upon it so as to carry on experiments 



\t'rniaft^ Ipswich. 



