To Whom Honor is Due

The 27th anniversary of the founding of the Volunteers of America was celebrated in a meeting which packed the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan, and brought in thousands of testimonials from friends of the organization. (The Volunteers are led by General and Mrs. Ballington Booth, and are not to be confused with the Salvation Army, started in 1865 in London by General William Booth.)

Former Ambassador John W. Davis presided at the meeting, and declared that the most real tribute to the services of the Volunteers came from the unknown men and women who could say "We were hungry and you fed us; thirsty and you gave us to drink; naked and you clothed us; sick and in prison and you visited us." President Harding, who was prevented from speaking by pressure of official business, wired: "There are few parallels in history where husband and wife have jointly and severally made such a notable contribution to human uplift."

The work which the Volunteers have done for fallen women and for ex-convicts is most real, and Mrs. Booth disclosed that "her boys in Sing-Sing" had not forgotten her when she appeared on the platform with their bunch of flowers as her corsage. The unfortunate rivalry which exists between this organization of Volunteers and the Salvation Army does not blind men to the fact that they are both doing a work which the churches do all too little, and in this celebration honor has been given where honor is due.