So many of our people in Guzerat were weavers that one Officer set himself specially to the task of improving their loom.  He was soon able to make one with which they could double their daily product.  The making of these looms created a new industry, also, so that we have been able thus to help many.  In India we have also commenced in three of our Territories medical work, making it, after first cost of buildings, equipment, and Staff, largely self-supporting, as we found that the people really appreciated help more for which they were called upon to make ever so small a return.

In the same way, respecting all our work, The General has always urged the importance of applying, as far as possible, our general rule of self-support; for though the people may have very little to give, the very least they can do helps to protect us from the prejudice created by the term “rice Christians,” applied to those who are believed to have made professions of Christianity for the sake of the food they hope to receive.

And now the Government, having seen the practical effect of our work, are beginning to give us opportunities such as we never had before.  The Doms, a tribe systematically trained to live by thieving, were placed under our special care, and the result was such as to lead to our having other unmanageables likewise given over to us.  In fact, we are barely now beginning to reap in India what in twenty-eight arduous years had been sown.

Does some one ask, Where does The General’s own hand appear in much of this?  Is it not all rather due to his having from the beginning, had so able a helper, acquainted with the languages and mental habits of the country, and other exceptionally able Officers both here and there?

Even if it were so, I should ask how all these people of ability placed themselves so absolutely at The General’s disposal as to wish to spend all their lives under his direction in the greatest poverty in that far-away land?  And I should inquire, further, how it came to pass that British, French, American, Swedish, Swiss, Dutch, and others could be got to submit, not only to work in union under the same “iron” regulations, but often under the leadership of women, and often under that of Indian Staff Officers?  Who else but General Booth has ever attempted to place under command of a woman a missionary work, carried on largely by men, over a territory larger and more populous than the United Kingdom?  Yet, undoubtedly, nothing has more contributed to the success of our work in a country where women have been so largely repressed, as the fact that The Army has thus demonstrated its confidence in God’s power to lift up the weakest to the uttermost degree.

Nobody who reflects on these things will dispute that whatever The Army has done for India has been due most of all to its first General.  And so surely as the knowledge of what is already done grows, shall we be allowed to do more and more to show India what Christ really desires, and so to capture it for Him.