l their
contribution may be."

It has only been by clinging to this plan that the little Society, begun
in the East of London, has been able to spread itself throughout the
world and yet remain independent, everywhere, of local magnates. And The
General had the sorry satisfaction of seeing the structure tested by the
most cruel winds of slander and suspicion, with the result that the
total of contributions to its funds during the last years has been
greater than ever before. Part, indeed, of our greatest difficulty with
regard to money now is the large total yearly at our disposal, when all
the totals in every country and locality are added together. Any one can
understand that this must be so, and that it could not help us to
publish the amount all together. If in a hundred places only a thousand
pounds were raised, anybody can see that to cry aloud about the hundred
thousand in any one of those places could not but make everybody in that
place less capable of strenuous struggle such as is needed to get
together each thousand.

Therefore, whilst publishing every year the properly audited
balance-sheet referring to amounts received and spent in London, and
similar balance-sheets, similarly audited, in each other capital, we
have always refrained, and always shall refrain, from any such massing
of totals, or glorying in any of them, as could help our enemies to
check the flow of liberality anywhere.

When, in 1895, there seemed to be a general cry for some special
investigation into the use made of the Fund raised as a result of The
General's "Darkest England" Appeal, we were able to get a Commission of
some of the most eminent men in the country, whose Report effectively
disposed of any doubts at the time.

The Commission had for Chairman Earl Onslow, and its members were the
Right Hon. Sir Henry James (afterwards Lord James), Messrs. Sydney
Buxton, Walter Long, and Mr. Edwin Waterhouse, President of the
Institute of Chartered Accountants, the Right Hon. Hobhouse, M.P.,
acted as Secretary.

The Report of no Commission could, however, still any hostile tongue.
The cry for "investigation" has always been simply the cry of enmity or
envy, which no amount of investigation could ever satisfy. The General
perfectly understood this at the time, and wrote to a friend of the
discerning order:--

"How I feel generally with respect to the future is expressed in
one word, or rather two, 'Go forward.' The Red