There is no doubt, although it
cannot guarantee success in every case, that the Salvation Army is
peculiarly successful in its dealings with hardened criminals.
Why this is so is not easy to explain. I think, however, that there
are two main reasons for its success. The first is that the Army takes
great care never to break a promise which it may make through any of
its Officers. Thus, if a man in jail is told that his relatives will
be hunted up and communicated with, or that an application will be
made to the Authorities to have him committed to the care of the Army,
or that work will be found for him on his release, and the like, that
undertaking, whatever it may be, is noted in the book which I have
mentioned, and although years may pass before it can be fulfilled, is
in due course carried out to the letter. Now, convicts are shy birds,
who put little faith in promises. But when they find that these are
always kept they gain confidence in the makers of them, and often
learn to trust them entirely.
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.
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