It was at a time when, as he writes:-- "In some Corps half, and in some more than half, of our Soldiers have been for months without any income at all, or at most with just a shilling or two.

In addition, many of our regular contributors, as owners of land or of manufacturing houses, have suffered from the depression, and have not been able to assist us further.
"The rapid extension of The Army has necessitated an increased expenditure.

Our friends will see that our position is really a serious one.
"What is to be done?
Reduction, which means retreat, is impossible.
To stand still is equally so.
"We propose that a week be set apart in which every Soldier and friend should deny himself of some article of food or clothing, or some indulgence which can be done without, and that the price gained by this self-denial shall be sent to help us in this emergency.
"Deny yourself of something which brings you pleasure or gratification, and so not only have the blessing of helping us, but the profit which this self-denial will bring to your own soul." This effort, which in the year of its inauguration only produced 4,280, has in twenty-six years grown till it totalled in Great Britain in 1911, L67,161, and has so taken hold of the people's minds and hearts everywhere as to produce even in poor little Belgium last year 7,500 f.
Perhaps it need hardly be explained that the system of special effort and special begging near the entrance to railway stations, and in all the most prominent places of the cities, which has grown out of this week, with the approval of Governments and Press everywhere, has done more than any one could have dreamt of to increase interest in the needs of others, and holiness and self-denial in attending to them.
And it is, after all, upon that development of practical love for everybody that The Army's finance depends.
Merely to have interested so many rich people in The Army might have been a great credit to The General's influence, but to have raised up everywhere forces of voluntary mendicants who, at any rate, for weeks at a time are not ashamed to be seen begging in the streets for the good of people they have never seen, is an achievement simply boundless in its beneficent value to all mankind, and limitless in the guarantee it provides for the permanent maintenance and extension of our work.
Do let me beg you to realise a little of the intense interest taken in our finances locally by all our Soldiers.

Did you ever get to know one of our Corps Treasurers?
If not, believe me, that your education is incomplete.

Whether he or she be schoolmistress in the mining village of Undergroundby, shopkeeper in Birmingham, or cashier of a London or Parisian bank, you will find an experienced Salvation Army Treasurer generally one of the most fully-developed intelligences living.