Now, as I have said, in a certain state of affairs which we have noticed lies _this why_, and there, if we can only look well enough, we shall find it. The Salvation Army is, like everything else an organism. It has its seed, and all its stages of development up to its maturity and down into its decay, when it, too, like everything else, will go to form nutriment for other organisms, just as others have for its own.
Now, nothing will help us more in our search after this _why_ than a knowledge of the _how_, and, since this knowledge is, at any rate among the governing classes, wonderfully limited, I propose giving a short account of how the Salvation Army and its work has struck me personally. It seems almost needless to state that I am an unprejudiced observer. The Salvation Army, as the Salvation Army, is literally nothing to me: my only interest in it lies in the influence which it exerts, whether for good or evil, on the People. I have no cause to plead. If anyone can point out mistakes of mine, or even demonstrate to me that my whole view of this matter is an illusion, no one, I am sure, will be more pleased and grateful than myself. Those are our real benefactors who demonstrate to us an illusion and open the way to a better view of things.
I propose, I said, giving a short account of how the Salvation Army and its work has struck me personally. When I was in England I studied it, as I study all movements that are going on around me, with more or less care. Since I have been in Australia I have done the same, and, as I have found the differences between the English and Australian Salvation Armies to be immaterial ones, and as I am now addressing an Australian audience, I shall speak of the Salvation Army as I have seen it here, so that he who cares may go and see for himself whether I am correct or incorrect in my view of it. This, too, will enable him more easily, if he desires it, to point out my mistakes and even demonstrate to me that my whole view is an illusion, and make me his pleased and grateful debtor for life. First, however, let me just notice what these differences between the English and Australian Salvation Armies are. In one word the Australian is less exaggerative. The People in Australia breathes free: it does not feel the weight of the two great divisions of the Middle-class that is above it, the well-to-do and the gentlemen. Workmen here do not go slouching down the streets, as they do in England, crushed under the sense of their inferiority. This is a true republic, the truest, as I take it, in the world. In England the average man feels that he is an inferior: in America he feels that he is a superior: in Australia he feels that he is an equal. This is indeed delightful. It is the first thing that strikes a new arrival in this country, and although Australia’s sins—sins against true civilization, I mean—are as many as they are heinous, still a multitude of them, as it seems to me, is covered by this—namely, that here the People is neither servile nor insolent, but only shows its respect of itself by its respect of others. Nowhere else but in France is there, I think, anything quite like it.