V " DARKEST ENGLAND " SCHEME 243 



1920, shall not be a replica of what the Franciscan 

 order had become in the year 1260 ? 



The personal character and the intentions of 

 the founders of such organizations as we are 

 considering count for very little in the formation 

 of a forecast of their future ; and if they did, it is 

 no disrespect to Mr. Booth to say that he is not 

 the peer of Francis of Assisi. But if Francis's 

 judgment of men was so imperfect as to permit 

 him to appoint an ambitious intriguer of the 

 stamp of Brother Elias his deputy, we have no 

 right to be sanguine about the perspicacity of Mr. 

 Booth in a like matter. 



Adding to all these considerations the fact that 

 Mr. Llewelyn Davies, the warmth of whose 

 philanthropy is beyond question, and in whose 

 competency and fairness I, for one, place implicit 

 reliance, flatly denies the boasted success of the 

 Salvation Army in its professed mission, I have 

 arrived at the conclusion that, as at present 

 advised, I cannot be the instrument of carrying 

 out my friend's proposal. 



Mr. Booth has pithily characterised certain 

 benevolent schemes as doing sixpennyworth of 

 good and a shilling's worth of harm. I grieve to 

 say that, in my opinion, the definition exactly fits 

 his own project. Few social evils are of greater 

 magnitude than uninstructed and unchastened 

 religious fonaticism ; no personal habit more 

 surely degrades the conscience and the intellect 



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