Advice from the General to his Officers

In honour of Founder’s Day (July 10), reprinted for your reading pleasure is an article from the August 1898 edition of “The Officer”. It is advice from the Founder to his estimated 25,000 officers, worldwide, who flocked to Booth’s banner in creating “The Salvation Army”. Enjoy.

1.  “I don’t like to see officers who, while professing to be publishers and examples of the religion of love, make it evident to all around them in their every day conduct, that they live to please themselves.”

2.  “I don’t like to see officers, shambling about with their heads down…their clothes unbrushed, their hands in their pockets, and looking generally as though they were on their way to be enrolled as able-bodied paupers…look everybody…in the eyes as much as to say, ‘I am the son of a King, and an officer of the conquering Army of Jesus Christ.’”

3.  “I don’t like to see officers doing the lady or the gentleman or the ministerial…respectability has been the ruin of almost every religious organization that the world has known since the days of Laodicea.  I don’t plead for vulgarity.  I hate it.  I love to see simple, natural, sanctified men and women, but I hate to see the ‘would if I could’ pretentious kind of people.”

4.  “I don’t like to see officers without ambition, who don’t aspire to make something of themselves for God and the Army.”

5.  “I don’t like to see officers who are full of their own performances and the results thereof, and have not a word to say in praise or thanksgiving for the toil or successes of their comrades, and I especially don’t like to hear officers reflect on the work of their predecessors.”

6.  “I don’t like to see officers too proud or too stupid or too heartless to do anything fresh to attract to the halls the crowds that throng the way to destruction.”

7.  “I don’t like to see an officer cherishing any grudge or malice against any other officer.”