The "Times," December 27th, 1890
SIR,--In making use of the only evidence of the actual working of Mr. Booth's autocratic government accessible to me, I was fully aware of the slippery nature of the ground upon which I was treading. For, as I pointed out in my first letter, "no personal habit more surely degrades the conscience and the intellect than blind and unhesitating obedience to unlimited authority." Now we have it, on Mr. Booth's own showing that every officer of his has undertaken to "obey without questioning or gainsaying the orders from headquarters." And the possible relations of such orders to honour and veracity are demonstrated not only by the judicial deliverance on Mr. Booth's affidavit in the "Eagle" case, which I have already cited; not only by Mr. Bramwell Booth's admission before Mr. Justice Lopes that he had stated what was "not quite correct" because he had "promised Mr. Stead not to divulge" the facts of the case (the "Times," November 4th, 1885); but by the following passage in Mr. Hodges's account of the reasons of his withdrawal from the Salvation Army:--
"The general and Chief did not and could [281] not deny doing these things; the only question was this, Was it right to practise this deception? These points of difference were fully discussed between myself and the Chief of the Staff on my withdrawal, especially the Leamington incident, which was the one that finally drove me to decision. I had come to the conclusion, from the first, that they had acted as they supposed with a single eye to the good of God's cause, and had persuaded myself that the things were, as against the devil, right to be done, that as in battle one party captured and turned the enemy's own guns upon them, so, as they were fighting against the devil, it would be fair to use against him his weapons. And I wrote to this effect to the "General" (p. 63)."
Now, I do not wish to say anything needlessly harsh, but I ask any prudent man these questions. Could I, under these circumstances, trust any uncorroborated statement emanating from headquarters, or made by the General's order? Had I any reason to doubt the truth of Mr. Hodges's naive confession of the corrupting influence of Mr. Booth's system? And did it not behove me to pick my way carefully through the mass of statements before me, many of them due to people whose moral sense might, by possibility, have been as much blunted by the army discipline in the [282] use of the weapons of the devil as Mr. Hodges affirms that his was?
Therefore, in my third letter, I commenced my illustrations of the practical working of Boothism with the evidence of Mr. Redstone, fortified and supplemented by that of a non-Salvationist, Dr. Cunningham Geikie. That testimony has not been challenged, and, until it is, I shall assume that it cannot be. In my fourth letter, I cited a definite statement by Mr. Hodges in evidence of the Jesuitical principles of headquarters. What sort of answer is it to tell us that Mr. Hodges was dismissed the army? A child might expect that some such red herring would be drawn across the trail; and, in anticipation of the stale trick, I added the strong prima facie evidence of the trustworthiness of my witness, in this particular, which is afforded by the "Eagle" case. It was not until I wrote my fourth letter to you, Sir--until the exploitation of the "captains" and the Jesuitry of headquarters could be proved up to the hilt--that I ventured to have recourse to "The New Papacy." So far as the pamphlet itself goes, this is an anonymous work; and, for sufficient reasons, I did not choose to go beyond what was to be found between its covers. To any one accustomed to deal with the facts of evolution, the Boothism of "The New Papacy" was merely the natural and necessary development of the Boothism of Mr. Redstone's case and of the [283] "Eagle" case. Therefore, I felt fully justified in using it, at the same time carefully warning my readers that it must be taken with due caution.
Mr. Trotter's useful letter admits that such a book was written by a person with whom he had the "pleasure of an interview," and that a version of it (interpolated, according to his assertion) was published against the will of the author. Hence I am justified in believing that there is a foundation of truth in certain statements, some of which have long been in my possession, but which for lack of Mr. Trotter's valuable corroboration I have refrained from using. The time is come when I can set forth some of the heads of this information, with the request that Mr. Trotter, who knows all about the business, will be so good as to point out any error that there may be in them. I am bound to suppose that his sole object, like mine, is the elucidation of the truth, and to assume his willingness to help me therein to the best of his ability.
1. "The author of 'The New Papacy' is a Mr. Sumner, a person of perfect respectability, and greatly esteemed in Toronto, who held a high position in the Army. When he left, a large public meeting, presided over by a popular Methodist minister, passed a vote of sympathy with him."
[284] Is this true or false?
2. "On Saturday last, about noon, Mr. Sumner, the author of the book, and Mr. Fred Perry, the Salvation Army printer, accompanied by a lawyer, went down to Messrs. Imrie and Graham's establishment, and asked for all the manuscript, stereotype plates, &c., of the book. Mr. Sumner explained that the book had been sold to the Army, and, on a cheque for the amount due being given, the printing material was delivered up."
Did these paragraphs appear in the "Toronto Telegram" of April 24th, 1889, or did they not? Are the statements they contain true or false?
3. "Public interest in the fate or probable outcome of that mysterious book called 'The New Papacy; or, Behind the Scenes in the Salvation Army,' continues unabated, though the line of proceedings by the publisher and his solicitor, Mr. Smoke, of Watson, Thorne, Smoke, and Masten, has not been altered since yesterday. The book, no doubt, will be issued in some form. So far as known, only one complete copy remains, and the whereabouts of this is a secret which will be profoundly kept. It is safe to say that if the Commissioner kept on guessing until the next anniversary, he would not strike the secluded [285] location of the one volume among five thousand which escaped, when he and his assistant, Mr. Fred Perry, believed they had cast every vestige of the forbidden work into the fiery furnace. On Tuesday last, when the discovery was made that a copy of 'The New Papacy' was in existence, Publisher Britnell, of Yonge Street, was at once the suspected holder, and in a short time his book-store was the resort of army agents sent to reconnoitre" ("Toronto News," April 28th, 1889).
Is this a forgery, or is it not? Is it in substance true or false?
When Mr. Trotter has answered these inquiries categorically, we may proceed to discuss the question of interpolations in Mr. Sumner's book.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, T. H. Huxley.
[On the 26th of December a letter, signed J. T. Cunningham, late Fellow of University College, Oxford, called forth the following commentary.]
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