leads the feet will follow; but without it little or nothing can be
done. Such is the explanation I have to offer. At any rate, I believe
it remains a fact that among the worst criminals the Salvation Army
often succeeds where others have failed.

Another point that should not be overlooked in this connexion is that
it must be a great comfort to the sinner and an encouragement of the
most practical sort to find, as he sometimes will, that the hands
which are dragging him and his kind from the mire, had once been as
filthy as his own. When the worker can say to him, 'Look at me; in
bygone days I was as bad as or worse than you'; when he can point to
many others whose vices were formerly notorious, but who now fill
positions of trust in the Army or outside of it, and are honoured of
all men; then the lost one, emerging, perhaps, for the fifth or sixth
time from the darkness of his prison, sees by the light of these
concrete examples that the future has promise for us all. If _they_
have succeeded why should _he_ fail? That is the argument which comes
home to him.

There remains a matter to be considered. Let us suppose that as time
goes by the Authorities become more and more convinced of the value of
the Army's prison work, and pass over to its care criminals in
ever-increasing numbers, as they are doing in some other countries and
in the great Colonies, what will be the effect upon the Army itself?
Will not this mass of comparatively useless material clog the wheels
of the great machine by overlading it with a vast number of
ex-prisoners, some of whom, owing to their age or other circumstances,
are quite incapable of earning their livelihood, and therefore must be
carried till their deaths? When I put the query to those in command,
the answer given was that they did not think so, as they believed that