We are not easily affrighted by frowns of fortune. We do not change our
course because of contrary currents, nor put into harbor because of head-
winds. Almost all our progress has been made in the teeth of the storm. We
have always had to "tack," but as it is "the set of the sails, and not the
gales" that decides the ports we reach, the competency of our seamanship
is determined by the fact that we "get there."

Our service in France was not, therefore, an experiment, but an organized,
tested, and proved system. We were enacting no new role. We were all
through the Boer War. Our officers were with the besieged troops in
Mafeking and Ladysmith. They were with Lord Kitchener in his victorious
march through Africa. It was this grand soldier who afterwards wrote to my
father, General William Booth, the Founder of our movement, saying: "Your
men have given us an example both of how to live as good soldiers and how
to die as heroes." And so it was quite natural that our men and women,
with that fearlessness which characterizes our members, should take up
positions under fire in France.

In fact, our officers would have considered themselves unfaithful to
Salvation Army traditions and history, and untrue to those who had gone
before, if they had deserted any post, or shirked any duty, because
cloaked with the shadows of death.

This explains why their dear forms loomed up in the fog and the rain, in
the hours of the night, on the roads, under shell fire, serving coffee and
doughnuts.

This is how it was they were with them on the long dreary marches, with a
smile and a song and a word of cheer.