One advantage of the cosmopolitan nature of the Army is that we have Officers in almost every country in the world.When this Scheme is well on the way every Salvation Officer in every I and will have it imposed upon him as one of the duties of his calling to keep his eyes open for every useful notion and every conceivable contrivance for increasing the yield of the soil and utilising the employment of waste labour.By this means I hope that there will not be an idea in the world which will not be made available for our Scheme.If an Officer in Sweden can give us practical hints as to how they manage food kitchens for the people,or an Officer in the South of France can explain how the peasants are able to rear eggs and poultry not only for their own use,but so as to be able to export them by the million to England;if a Sergeant in Belgium understands how it is that the rabbit farmers there can feed and fatten and supply our market with millions of rabbits we shall have him over,tap his brains,and set him to work to benefit our people.
By the establishment of this Farm Colony we should create a great school of technical agricultural education.It would be a Working Men's Agricultural University,training people for the life which they would have to lead in the new countries they will go forth to colonise and possess.
Every man who goes to our Farm Colony does so,not to acquire his fortune,but to obtain a knowledge of an occupation and that mastery of his tools which will enable him to play his part in the battle of life.
He will be provided with a cheap uniform,which we shall find no difficulty in rigging up from the old clothes of London,and it will go hardly with us,and we shall have worse luck than the ordinary market gardener,if we do not succeed in making sufficient profit to pay all the expenses of the concern,and leave something over for the maintenance of the hopelessly incompetent,and those who,to put it roughly,are not worth their keep.