Booth's Cinder

A flame starting thin and blue at the corner of a sealed envelope, then spurting up yellow, crawling to the other corners, leaving a big curly cinder, transfixed the attention and curiosity of three high officials of the Salvation Army in a London barrister's office last week. The envelope was the one in which, last year, the late General William Bramwell Booth enclosed the name of the person whom he had chosen to succeed him as worldwide commander of the Army. None dared open the envelope for the dissension it might cause. Some think he named his daughter Catherine, but, as Lawyer Gavin Simmonds declared just prior to last week's burning: "People may guess, may hope and fear, but they cannot know."

The General's dynastic gesture, in which he copied the procedure by which he had received the Command from his father, the late great General William Booth, met with stout resistance from overwhelming Army factions opposed to the Booth dynasty. Then began the battle of the Booths, which raged for months, in which Booths fought Booths, anti-Booths fought all Booths (TIME, Nov. 26, 1928, et seq.). Ultimately Commissioner Edward John Higgins, International Chief of Staff, anti-Booth, was elected General by the Army's High Council.

Last week's burning was symbolic of the final, legalized defeat of the Booths. Shortly before, a high court had ordered the Booth executors to turn over Army trust properties valued at $5,000,000 to General Higgins as representative of the new regime.*

*This decision did not affect Army property in the U.S., which is vested in a board of five U.S. citizen trustees.

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