laid their lives upon the altar of their country's protection, and that I
could rely upon them for an unsurpassed devotion to that other banner, the
Banner of Calvary, the significance of which has not changed in nineteen
centuries, and by the standards of which, alone, all the world's wrongs
can be redressed, and by the standards of which alone men can be liberated
from all their bondage. And they have not failed.

A further reason for the success of the Salvation Army in the war is,
_it found us accustomed to hardship_.

We are a people who have thrived on adversity. Opposition, persecution,
privation, abuse, hunger, cold and want were with us at the starting-post,
and have journeyed with us all along the course.

We went to the battlefields _no strangers to suffering_. The biting
cold winds that swept the fields of Flanders were not the first to lash
our faces. The sunless cellars, with their mouldy walls and water-seeped
floors, where our women sought refuge from shell-fire through the hours of
the night, contributed no new or untried experience. In such cellars as
these, in their home cities, under the flicker of a tallow candle, they
have ministered to the sick and comforted the dying.

Wet feet, lack of deep, being often without food, finding things different
from what we had planned, hoped and expected, were frequent experiences
with us. All such things we Salvationists encounter in our daily toils for
others amid the indescribable miseries and inestimable sorrows, the sins
and the tragedies of the underworlds of our great cities--the
_underneath_ of those great cities which upon the surface thunder
with enterprise and glitter with brilliance.