Preface to Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw

Barbara's return to the colors may yet provide a subject for the / dramatic historian of the future. To go back to the Salvation Army with / the knowledge that even the Salvationists themselves are not saved yet; / that poverty is not blessed, but a most damnable sin; and that when / General Booth chose Blood and Fire for the emblem of Salvation instead / of the Cross, he was perhaps better inspired than he knew: such / knowledge, for the daughter of Andrew Undershaft, will clearly lead to / something hopefuller than distributing bread and treacle at the expense / of Bodger.

It is a very significant thing, this instinctive choice of the military / form of organization, this substitution of the drum for the organ, by / the Salvation Army. Does it not suggest that the Salvationists divine / that they must actually fight the devil instead of merely praying at / him? At present, it is true, they have not quite ascertained his / correct address. When they do, they may give a very rude shock to that / sense of security which he has gained from his experience of the fact / that hard words, even when uttered by eloquent essayists and lecturers, / or carried unanimously at enthusiastic public meetings on the motion of / eminent reformers, break no bones. It has been said that the French / Revolution was the work of Voltaire, Rousseau and the Encyclopedists. / It seems to me to have been the work of men who had observed that / virtuous indignation, caustic criticism, conclusive argument and / instructive pamphleteering, even when done by the most earnest and / witty literary geniuses, were as useless as praying, things going / steadily from bad to worse whilst the Social Contract and the pamphlets / of Voltaire were at the height of their vogue. Eventually, as we know, / perfectly respectable citizens and earnest philanthropists connived at / the September massacres because hard experience had convinced them that / if they contented themselves with appeals to humanity and patriotism, / the aristocracy, though it would read their appeals with the greatest / enjoyment and appreciation, flattering and admiring the writers, would / none the less continue to conspire with foreign monarchists to undo the / revolution and restore the old system with every circumstance of savage / vengeance and ruthless repression of popular liberties.