Dynasty Restored

The world-wide Salvation Army last week ended a five-year interregnum. Its high officers refused to have continued truck with promoted grand viziers. By Booths they had been trained, and a Booth they would again have on the most autocratic throne of charity on earth. Enthroned was Evangeline Cory Booth, 69, who has been Commander of the Salvation Army in the U. S. for 30 years. She is the adoring seventh child and fourth daughter of its founder, General No. 1, William Booth, the critical sister of General No. 2, William Bramwell Booth, the implacable foe of General No. 3, Edward John Higgins, who in 1929 succeeded in breaking the reign of the Booth dynasty.

Last week General Higgins, 70, convoked the Salvation Army's cardinal commissioners in London's big, rambling Congress Hall. Miss Booth entered grimly. Grimly, too, entered Henry Mapp. Indiaborn chief of staff to General Higgins and aspirant for the Generalship. Sessions, redolent with oratory, were secret. Some said that Evangeline Booth became General Booth by presenting a mysterious letter by which her Founder-Father willed her his throne. Others said that she presented persuasive plans to revive the rich, lagging Salvation Army. But the commissioners insisted that Miss Booth could thank "divine guidance" for her elevation. Then, echoing the sweet sentiments she first used as an appealing 17-year-old in the London slums, the new world head of the Salvation Army declared: "We get compensation in rescuing poor beaten people in the name of God. We give them, first, food and drink. There is no use talking of the Spirit to a man with an empty stomach. And then we try to find them work, anything--piling up sticks, doing this or that little thing, to restore their self-respect."

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