The second and more potent reason is to be found in the power of that loving sympathy which the Army extends even to the vilest, to those from whom the least puritanical of us would shrink.  It shows such men that they are not utterly lost, as these believe; that it, at any rate, does not mark them with a figurative broad arrow and consign them to a separate division of society; that it is able to give them back the self-respect without which mankind is lower than the beast, and to place them, regenerated, upon a path that, if it be steep and thorny, still leads to those heights of peace and honour which they never thought to tread again.

This is done not by physical care and comfort, though, of course, these help towards the desired end, but by its own spiritual means, or so it would appear.  Its Officers pray with the man; they awake his conscience, which is never dead in any of us; they pour the blessed light of hope into the dark places of his soul; they cause him to hate the past, and to desire to lead a new life.  Once this desire is established, the rest is comparatively simple, for where the heart leads the feet will follow; but without it little or nothing can be done.  Such is the explanation I have to offer.  At any rate, I believe it remains a fact that among the worst criminals the Salvation Army often succeeds where others have failed.

Another point that should not be overlooked in this connexion is that it must be a great comfort to the sinner and an encouragement of the most practical sort to find, as he sometimes will, that the hands which are dragging him and his kind from the mire, had once been as filthy as his own.  When the worker can say to him, ’Look at me; in bygone days I was as bad as or worse than you’; when he can point to many others whose vices were formerly notorious, but who now fill positions of trust in the Army or outside of it, and are honoured of all men; then the lost one, emerging, perhaps, for the fifth or sixth time from the darkness of his prison, sees by the light of these concrete examples that the future has promise for us all.  If they have succeeded why should he fail?  That is the argument which comes home to him.

There remains a matter to be considered.  Let us suppose that as time goes by the Authorities become more and more convinced of the value of the Army’s prison work, and pass over to its care criminals in ever-increasing numbers, as they are doing in some other countries and in the great Colonies, what will be the effect upon the Army itself?  Will not this mass of comparatively useless material clog the wheels of the great machine by overlading it with a vast number of ex-prisoners, some of whom, owing to their age or other circumstances, are quite incapable of earning their livelihood, and therefore must be carried till their deaths?  When I put the query to those in command, the answer given was that they did not think so, as they believed that the Army would be able to turn the great majority of these men into respectable, wage-earning members of society.