Bluebirds
By VIRGINIA GRAHAM
IT must not surprise the inhabitants of the British Isles too much if, during the month of July, they meet a flushed Girl Guide with a dedicated look in her eye roller-skating down Watling Street or an equally flushed and dedicated Brownie bumping through Newcastle on a donkey. For the country will be bursting with girls of every age and size progressing to Oxford by every means of locomotion known to man.
On. July 29th the Girl Guides' Thirteenth World Conference draws to a close, and on that day the twenty-seven representatives of twenty-seven foreign countries will each be given a scroll bearing a message of good-will to take home with them. Conferences, of course, are only attended by grown-ups, by women who wear cockaded hats and have, most probably, never tied a bowline or hopped a figure of eight on one leg ; so:it was decided that, as this was a memorable occasion, it would be amusing for the children to have a chance to join in the proceedings. So a scheme has been evolved whereby, somewhat in the manner of the Olympic torch marathon, messages shall be handed from one Guide to another along twenty-seven different routes. Orice the seed of the scheme was planted in the fertile soil of youthful imagination, it grew with alarming rapidity, and now, one feels, has burgeoned into something not unlike a conjuror's bouquet, beautiful but a little mad.
One of the main features, however, of this gargantuan relay race is that it should be fun ; having solemn splendid moments, of course, but on the whole light-hearted. It is adventurous ; it has various moral implications ; but chiefly it is fun. A secondary feature is that the routes should lie across the loveliest or, if these are not available, the most interesting portions of these islands. The scrolls themselves are to be signed at every point along the line, but it was thought, and with an accuracy that experience will hardly dare to refute, that they might, what with the fatigue and excitement of the journey, get somewhat grubby. Even the Mayor, hastily summoned from his Parlour to greet a Guide on a fire-engine, might be pardoned for over-flourishing his signature, and when a scroll has been down a mine or lain in the watery recesses of a Brownie. engined punt, it is bound to lose its initial crispness. Therefore a larger, more solid log-book is being compiled for each route, and in this not only will the geography but also the history of Great Britain, its industries, its famous men and women, its traditions and peculiarities be noted and illustrated for the benefit of Girl Guides overseas.
It is hoped that such information may also be instructive to our own Guides, although it would seem that what with bicycling, catch- ing trains, leaping on to horses, releasing pigeons and running, not to mention boating, riding in farm-tractors and cadging lifts on ambulances, they will be too busy for much culture at the moment. Here, for instance, is what they are up to in Lanarkshire. Received from Glasgow by a Rally of Guides at Garrowhill, the scroll is to be carried by farm-tractor, then to move on by the early milk-cart to Coatbridge, where it will take to the Monkland Canal in a canoe and have a ride on a shunting-engine in the local steel-works. Brought to Cadzow Castle to visit the famous herd of white cattle— these, one presumes, will not be mounted—the scroll will visit Garrion Mill, one of the oldest working mills in the country, and will end its day in Morgen Glen guarded by three fairy rings of Brownies, who will discourse on Greece, the scroll's final destination, to an assembled group of dignitaries. At Corsham, on the other hand (or other foot), the scroll will be run in panting relays to the Fosse Way ; then take to horses and arrive in Malmesbury on a bicycle. York is being somewhat exhibitionist in a hansom cab, Sussex extremely dashing in a series of aeroplanes, and Ulster has had the charming idea of dancing its scroll to Oxford. That she who runs may also read seems very unlikely.
The Guide§ are quiet people. For forty years they have been with us making a generous contribution to the ethical standards of the race, but making no noise at all. Like all people who do good and who practise the virtues, they have provided many oppor- tunities for mirth, and no comedian worthy of the name, either male or female, has not appeared at some time on the stage in Girl Guide uniform. That they continue to spread in ever-widening circles over the face of the globe proves that they have something vital to offer, something, perhaps, which needs no advertising. But it is nice, once in a while, to catch them in the open, as it were, and pounce on them. Not that, in this particular instance, they are being particu- larly virtuous. Although no doubt a Guide would dismount from her penny-farthing should she see a lame dog struggling to get over a stile, and, as has always seemed the most sensible plan, direct the animal to limp under it, she is not ostensibly out to succour.
Nevertheless, she is the very essence, the very apotheosis, of loving- kindness, and as she rolls, canters, floats or zooms by us, we should be glad to remember that there are, at this moment, thousands of young girls bent on sending theiflove to the Philippines and Mexico, determined to bless Bogota and Haiti, bursting their lungs to smile on South Africa.
Men have sought out many inventions whereby they may live in peace with one another, and they have sent many messages of
friendship in their time ; but inasmuch as their expressions of good- will are flavoured with expediency, with politics and the price of bananas, they must always, alas, be taken with a pinch of salt. The Guides have no axes to grind, and the hands they are now extending across the seas, though possibly trembling from their owners' exertions, seek only the liurest relationship, that of brotherly Jove. And love is a most infectious thing.
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