TIIE BOYS' BRIGADE. [COMMUNICATED.]
THE Royal review at Glasgow. on Saturday last of the Glasgow Battalion of the Boys' Brigade, and of representative boys from other battalions and companies throughout the country, marks something of an epoch in the history of a quiet and unostentatious movement which deals in altruistic spirit with the problem of boy life, its guidance and development. A parade strength of ten thousand six hundred drilled and :well-disciplined .boys, inspected in cele- bration of its setni-jubilee by iprince Arthur of Connaught is an event of more than passing interest, for the boys then on parade represented not only the sixty-Biz thousand Officer* and boys at present enrolled in the United.Kingdom, but also the thousands of boys, now grown men, who have ,passed through its ranks in the twenty-five years which have elapsed since its inauguration. If to these figures there be, added forty-nine thousand five hundred :representing the Boys' Brigade in the Greater Britain beyond the seas, and in the United States of America, there is shown a total enrolled strength throughout the world of a hundred and fifteen thousand five hundred. In estimating, however, the growth of the movement there might fairly be added thereto probably another eighty-five thousand boys representing the Church Lads' Brigade, the London Diocesan Ladi3' Brigade, the Catholic Boys' Brigade, and the Jewish .Lad' Brigade, all offshoots of the original .organisation, kindred societies working independently, but on parallel liner. For the potentialities of the movement were, and are, too apparent to all practically interested in the life of the young not quickly to find ready and friendly imitators; and to-day Japan, always alert to assimilate whatever of Western origin may tend to her material development, has accepted the idea of the Boys' Brigade; and in China, even, the movement is falling into line. The grand total, therefore, originating in and arising from the Boys' Brigade throughout the world, is at present not less than two hundred thousand, officers and men.
That boys should elect to .join an organisation in which strenuous work and bard training are the rule and not the exception itself speaks for: the virility of the movement. To understand fully what is implied by the training of these boys, one must see, not a review, only, but something of the everyday working life of the separate companies ; for the, reel strength lies in individual rather than collective effort. No one who has . met a well-appointed company, at its Sunday morning Bible-class, each member as a rule clean, smart, well set up, and who is told that many of the boys have been working in shops or running errands, some of them. late into the Saturday night, will doubt the excellence and the attractive force of the work being done, or fail to recognise its value.
Officered largely by men who have been Volunteers, or who are now Territorials, the same boys during the drill season turn out at least one night each week, smartly uniformed in cap, belt, and haversack, and, with a rifle well adapted for all ordinary purposes of drill except only shooting, go through an hour's steady work. On another night of the same week most companies put in an hour's gymnastics; some on yet another night an hour's ambulance work, practical and theoretical ; others a band practice. Football, cricket, and swimming clubs are in their season encouraged ; sometimes also an annual flower show, the exhibits being grown by the boys in their homes. Sometimes a club, or a reading-room is an appendage; and, yearly or hi-yearly, for those who can find time and money, a summer camp. All this work, and more, has been quietly and unostentatiously accomplished, and few movements have been so successful in helping boys to tide over the critical period of adolescence ; to build up for themselves a healthy manhood, and for their country a useful life and trustworthy citizenship.
While many wise people have been talking and thinking seriously, the Boys' Brigade has all the time been quietly working towards a. definite and carefully thought out end ; and if any desire to know more of the internal economy of the movement, a study of the Boys' Brigade Manual, its Gazette, and other publications may safely be commended.* This at least it is allowable to say, that the Boys' Brigade is an as yet almost unrecognised national asset of value,, training and improving as it does the physique of growing lads, bringing them under wise discipline and into a clean atmosphere. It helps boys morally and spiritually in a manly, straightforward way that they respond to and understand. It has received ho distinctions, and it grants no honours save its badges and stripes, its medal for heroism, its officer's cap and cane. Innocent of Government grant or control, from lusty .birth to strenuous manhood it has quietly and, sturdily forged ahead.
• Headquarters Office, 162 Buchanan Street, Glasgow. London Office: 34 Paternoster Bow, B.C.
Finding its own funds, flrawitig upon its Own resources, and relying mainly upon the enduring virtue of self-help, it has from its inception been fortunate in the guidance of sound heads and stout hearts.
Now the Man to whom the country is indebted for this institu- tion is Mr. W. A. Smith, Lieutenant-Colonel of the 5th Scottish Rifles. He it was who conceived the idea, and founded the Boys' Brigade twenty-five years ago,—to be exact, it was on October 4th, 1883, that he formed his first company of three officers and thirty boys. It was a veritable grain of mustard-seed, and from the moment of its planting in the Mission Sunday-school of the Free Church College, Glasgow, that city has been alike the nursery and the head- qttarters of the organisation. As secretary of the Sunday- school, Mr. Smith early recognised the difficulty of controlling boys possessed by the spirit of anticipatory and often premature ideas of manhood, unchastened by its experience; but by working on lines closely approximating to those of strict military drill and discipline, backed up by humour and sound sense, the problem was solved. Of all classes, boys are intuitively the quickest to pounce upon unreality, to deride subterfuge and sham ; but they are also the most generous in applying their energies to any enter- prise they believe in, and according loyal support to a man they trust.
That Mr. Smith is a man to trust absolutely would seem obvious. Patient, quiet, persistent, strong, and determined, he knew early what he wanted, and he went straight for it. As the movement grew, he set aside his own business prospects, and gave his energies wholly to the child of his heart and brain. But while this is the case, he would probably be the first to admit that without the support of loyal comrades and coadjutors the movement would not have been possible. Throughout the entire Brigade, what most strikes one, and what, after all, is perhaps the initial and impelling force of the movement, is the youthfulness, the boyishness almost, of spirit animating all ranks in command. And it is just this buoyancy, this ineradicable hopefulness, that enables them to understand and enter into those inexplicable sources of boy mind and boy imagination which gives them the power they have. Truly, the men who laid the foundations of the move- ment built better than they knew, for the Boys' Brigade is a world-wide source of influence and power, uniting men and not dividing, bridging over that which tends to separate. It is undenominational, non-political, *holly universal. To-day in South Africa it is playing its small part in welding together a people, in helping to build a nation; and this perhaps most earnestly of all because many of its former members fought through the war. From at least one small company went out two officers, besides many old boys ; and in the ranks of those who volunteered and stood by their country in that time of stress and need they abounded. With a pride in the Boys' Brigade as great and as deep as that animating a boy of another class in his public school, they in the main honestly try to carry with them abroad as at home that spirit of honour and loyalty which the Brigade seeks to teach,—in a word, to fear God and honour the King.
To what altitude, to what pinnacle of effort towards good- will and brotherhood among men the Boys' Brigade may yet attain, who may say ? But those who know it best hope for most; and the sanity and sober sense that have hitherto characterised its efforts speak also with hope for the future. That it has accomplished much will surely be admitted ; that there is room for it to do more is abundantly manifest in the youthful " hooliganism " of many cities ; and the discipline, the training, the freedom given to a boy at times to let himself go in healthy effort and under wise restraint, are just what are
• needed to meet and help, perhaps to eradicate, the lawlessness, the lack of respect, the wantonness, which characterise much of the younger life of the times. Wisely handled, it is held by its supporters to be an almost illimitable factor for good among boys ; and perhaps its healthiest line of after development lies in the direction of maintaining the interest, and conserving to the Brigade as far as may be the energies, of those who pass from its ranks. This is being fostered by the formation of old boys' clubs, by the attendance of old boys at the Sunday morning Bible-class, by- correspondence and other means of keeping in touch with, and especially, boys abroad ; but most directly, by the retention for a limited
period of exceptionally useful boys over seventeen years of age as Staff-sergeants, and by the enrolment, after the necessary abseuce for a few years, of former members as officers, in their own or other companies.
The official returns for the past year show, in the United Kingdom alone, a total of nineteen hundred and ten Staff-sergeants, and not fewer than fifteen hundred and forty-three old boys, at present serving as officers. Much of its best material is thus being retained, or reabsorbed, by the organisation, which is itself in part training and pro- viding for its own support and continuance. If even a little of this spirit of self-help, of loyalty to the Brigade, of individual responsibility, can be maintained and carried forward into the wider and broader life of citizenship, a leaven of sound quality will be added to the forces that make for the country's security and well-being.
Essentially a religious movement, the Boys' Brigade is not tied by creed or hampered by dogma. Conducted almost wholly by laymen, it is a loyal coadjutor rather than an appendage of the Churches. Its faith, for creed it has none, rests upon the Apostolic premisses, "Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ," surely broad enough and sufficiently enduring upon which to rear a fair superstructure. Upon that foundation the Boys' Brigade seeks to build; upon it to lay stone by stone what it may that is single in heart, pure in thought, sound in word and deed. Its effort and its aim, it would seem, have been and are well expressed by the Brigade motto: "The advancement of Christ's kingdom among boys, and the promotion of habits of ol.o hence, reverence, disci- pline, self-respect, and all that tends toward a true Christian manliness."
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