MORE REAR-M MIR RRO OR
A MOTORISED EVANGELIST General John Larsson (Retired) shares fascinating glimpses of the early Army
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ARELY a fortnight after the close of the third international congress in 1904, William Booth set out on what the War Cry described as ‘one of the most daring exploits of his career’. Taking hold of the latest technology, still in its infancy, he boarded an open motorcar at Land’s End, Cornwall, and set out on a journey of 1,200 miles to Aberdeen, visiting 62 towns on the way and conducting three, sometimes four, meetings a day for a month. So successful was this first motorised campaign that it became an annual feature for the next five summers, with William Booth’s motorcade of six cars criss-crossing Britain from north to south and east to west. His routes were announced in advance, so people gathered by the roadside to wave him on. And in the towns where he was due to stop, they gathered in their thousands – in Oldham, in their hundreds of thousands – to hear him speak from the car or in the largest hall of the town. As the motorcade bounced along Britain’s rutted roads, William Booth, in his ankle-length green coat and peaked
motoring cap, was often covered in white dust or drenched with rain. With the local papers covering each stage of his journeys, he almost became a national treasure. Aged 75 at his first campaign and 80 by his last, William Booth’s stamina was extraordinary. During these tours, some of them lasting six weeks, he spoke on average for three hours each day. He slept in a different bed each night, except at weekends, when he stayed two nights. He ate almost every meal under a new roof – breakfast in one house, dinner in another, tea elsewhere, and supper late at night at his sleeping billet. But William Booth was in his element as an itinerant evangelist and described the tours as ‘a rush, a whirl, an excitement, a happiness, a hallelujah, a taste of Heaven’. He left an imprint on every town he visited. In Fleetwood they remembered how thousands of servicemen had blocked the highway because they wanted to hear the General. In another place they recalled how his car was halted by factory workers who had
playfully blocked the road with a rope, and how William Booth had them mesmerised when he rose from his seat and said, ‘Some of you men never pray… but I am going to say to you, won’t you pray for your children, that they may be different?’ Within minutes the street was an unending vista of bared heads as 700 men knelt in silent worship. The novelist H Rider Haggard described in 1910 how he was waiting at one of William Booth’s destinations on a miserable, wet afternoon when the motorcade was late because of the weather. ‘At length,’ he wrote, ‘the motors dash up through the mud and wet, and out of the first of them he appears, a tall, cloaked figure. Already that day he has addressed two such meetings beside several roadside gatherings, and at night he must speak to a great audience in a city 14 miles away… ‘Five minutes later he has been assisted on to the platform… and for nearly an hour pours out a ceaseless flood of eloquence, telling the history of his organisation, telling of his life’s work and of his heart’s aims, asking for their prayers and help. He looks a very old man now… but there is no weariness in his voice or gestures; and, as he exhorts and prays, his darkening eyes seem to flash. ‘It is over. He bids farewell to the audience that he has never seen before, and will never see again, invokes a fervent blessing on them, and presently the motors are rushing away into the wet night, bearing with them this burning fire of a man.’ But the impact lives on, and will never be forgotten. Salvationist 3 October 2020
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