informed me that during the past seven years the Army has emigrated
about 50,000 souls, of whom 10,000 were assisted out of its funds, the
rest paying their own way or being paid for from one source or
another. From 8,000 to 10,000 people have been sent during the present
year, 1910, most of them to Canada, which is the Mecca of the
Salvation Army Emigration policy. So carefully have all these people
been selected, that not 1 per cent have ever been returned to this
country by the Canadian Authorities as undesirable. The truth is that
those Authorities have the greatest confidence in the discretion of
the Army, and in its ability to handle this matter to the advantage of
all concerned.

That this is true I know from personal experience, since when, some
years ago, I was a Commissioner from the British Government and had
authority to formulate a scheme of Colonial land-settlement, the Prime
Minister of Canada, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, told me so himself in the
plainest language. Indeed, he did more, formally offering a huge block
of territory to be selected anywhere I might choose in the Dominion,
with the aid of its Officers, for the purposes of settlement by poor
folk and their children under the auspices of the Salvation Army.
Also, he added the promise of as much more land as might be required
in the future for the same purpose.[3]

Most unhappily, as I hold, that offer was not accepted by the British
Government. If this had been done, by now hundreds of English families
would have been transferred from conditions of want at home in the
English towns, into those of peace and plenty upon the land abroad.
Moreover, the recent rise in the value of Canadian land has been so
great that the scheme would not have cost the British taxpayer a
halfpenny, or so I most firmly believe.