A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
I T is too soon still to assess fully or finally what Lord Baden- Powell did, first for the British Empire and then for the world, when he founded the Boy Scout movement thirty-two years ago, but on a sober estimate of his achievement it would, in my judgement, be hard to think of any single contemporary of B.-P.'s who has conferred on the social life of this country benefits comparable with those that have flowed from the institution of the Boy Scouts, followed so rapidly by that of the Girl Guides. This generation, of course, takes Boy Scouts for granted, for the first scouts are now men of over fifty. But those of us who can remember pre-scout days realise how urgent was the need for a movement that would combine camaraderie, discipline, initiative and unselfishness. B.-P. was the ideal leader, for his experience as a scout himself in South Africa had been crowned by the defence of Mafeking through a siege of seven months—an achievement which drove a nation that had not known a serious war since 1855 wild with celebration. The creation of the scouts was an inspiration which forms a landmark in this country's social history. B.-P. will have a successor, no doubt fully equal to the task, as Chief Scout. But there is only one founder of the Scout Movement. Therein it can be said, or could have been till totalitarianism grew up to throttle freedom, in every country of the world, "si monumentum requiris, circumspice." It will yet be said again everywhere.
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