A SUGGESTION FOR 1.111a BOY SCOUTS.
WHEN a new movement has had an extraordinarily rapid and unexpected development it is time to watch it carefully lest the same unforeseen impulses which helped it should also procure its degeneration or collapse. Every one is talking of the Boy Scouts because one sees them everywhere, and because, in short, nothing succeeds like success. The question is no longer whether there is room to add another corps to such organisations as the Boys' Brigade, the Church Lads' Brigade, and the rest, but what direction shall be given to the new and triumphantly existing body of Boy Scouts. We hear it said that it already numbers over a quarter of a million boys. At this rate it promises to invade the province of some of the older corps, and perhaps even to engulf one or two of them. In the current number of Country Life there is a suggestion by Sir Percy FitzPatrick for the future of Boy Scouts which is well worth considera- tion. Sir Percy FitzPatrick is a kind of grown-up Boy Scout himself, and edbry boy who knows him or his book (need we say in this connexion that we mean "Jock of the Bush- veld " and not " The Transvaal from Within"?) will certainly listen to his advice with respect. Like most observers, he has no doubt of the vitality of the Boy Scout movement. General Baden-Powell has indeed made the discovery of a generation, and has presented to the boys of the nation the machinery for putting into effect those things which they us tcl only te read about. How much better to act Fenimore Ccoper than only to read him ! "It is great !" says Sir Percy FitzPatrick, who has watched the movement grow. "It was the sight of Boy Scouts singly, in pairs, and in small lots, practising their profession without visible instructors and without any 'gallery' that always brought me to a standstill to watch with some amusement, it may be, but with far more interest in the lads themselves and the serious side of a great movement."
That word " gallery " touches a question of importance. Some of the best and most thoughtful Scout leaders protest that the very element of which Sir Percy FitzPatrick noted the absence in Richmond Park is tainting, and threatens to spoil, the movement as a whole. The boys, it is said, are encouraged to live in an atmosphere of spectacularism and sensation ; they are encouraged to do things, not because they appeal to the natural instincts of a boy and are worth doing in themselves, but because they bring notoriety or a harvest of prizes to the corps. It is said that each step the Boy Scout takes in equipping himself with a uniform and the implements of his craft is attended by incitements to an undesirable commercial spirit. The apparatus of " coupons " which in so many ways has lowered the standard of popular journalism has been presented to the notice of the Boy Scouts. Some- body makes money out of this system, no doubt, and the boys' character is probably less considered than the prosperity of a commercial scheme. Moreover, it is said that public displays are made a much more important element than is at all wholesome for boys.
Counsel, in fact, seems to be divided as to what ought to be the function of the Boy Scouts. Some zealous and amiable persons would like to turn them into a sectarian agency for this or that religious body. Others would be content if, while the corps remained undenominational, they had a broad religious basis such as is provided in schools by the Cowper-Temple clause. Others, again, do not desire that they should have any special religious connexion so long as they serve the high moral purpose of good citizenship. The stipulation that every Scout shall do a good turn to somebody every day certainly contains in itself the greater part of the
religion of one's duty to one's neighbour. But we cannot say that General Baden-Powell himself seems to be perfectly clear as to the future of the Scouts. When lie started the movement he described it as "Peace-Scouting for Boys" Cm other words, a mere game to develop the faculty of observation); but at the grand rally at the Crystal Palace recently the Scouts were playing the part of young soldiers, and, so far as we remember, the chief prize of the day was a held-gun. Thus the movement was given- a military bias which General Baden-Powell apparently did not have in mini at the beginning. We are very far from complaining of this ourselves, for military drill and discipline are highly attractive to boys, and as to the contention that they feed irresponsible and Chauvinistic instincts, we can only describe it as nonsense. At the same time, the facts we have mentioned do suggest that there is some uncertainty as to what part the Boy Scouts shall play among the great number of organisations for calling forth the resources of the nation. Whatever else may be thought, decent people will all agrRe that advertisement should not be one of the ends to be kept deliberately in view. General Baden-Powell himself does not perhaps perceive very accurately the difference between the right and the wrong uses of publicity. The initial letters of the Boy Scouts' motto, "Be Prepared ! " happen to be the initial letters of his own name, and yet, although the country connects—and gratefully connects—the Boy Scouts inseparably with him, when im- portant questions were asked lately about the methods of the organisation, he forbore to sign his name to a letter in the Times answering those questions. That excess of modesty was surely inappropriate to the occasion, and suggested the possibility of equal inappropriateness in other, and perhaps contrary, directions.
There are plenty of reasons why it is undesirable that the role of the Boy Scouts should be left in any sense to chance. General Baden-Powell's genius in invention is proved, and at least an equal genius is now required in guidance. The boys would not be likely to be deaf to any call, however serious, which fitted in with the forms of their delightful craft. "I watched the boys in Richmond Park," writes Sir Percy Fitz- Patrick, "crawling through bracken or dodging behind trees; came across them further afield in twisting lanes and shady woods, peering through hedges or over gates, and sometimes statuesquely posed on a green hillside intently surveying, under a shading hand, the roads and fields below. It was the intense earnestness—the life and death seriousness -of the scout, and the undisguised admiration and envy of those of his age and many much older who saw him, that made one wonder what the movement may not grow to." Sir Percy Fitz- Patrick goes on:—" When the impulse to take off my hat' to Baden-Powell was gratified, it was almost inevitable that one should try to realise or forecast the effect of this training on the boy and of the movement on the naticm. One could see the boy alive with the awakened faculty and habit of observa- tion, quickened in his reasoning, broadened in his outlook ; self-reliance, self-restraint and discipline fed into him in a diet of his own choosing. One could see him rough-schooling younger brothers and companions, and conscious of being more a man than the elders who 'knew no better.' One could see him grown to man's estate—which usually means, old enough to work and looking for a job. What will he do?"
Sir Percy FitzPatrick is certainly right in picking out as a noticeable point the "rough-schooling of younger brothers and companions" ; the Boy Scout movement will introduce among thousands who did not know its meaning before the great Arnoldian principle of delegating authority among the boys themselves. But what will the Boy Scout do ? Sir Percy FitzPatrick's suggestion is, of course, only one of many that are possible; but it has the advantage of offering, as it were, a continuation of scouting for life. "It was while looking at the boys," he writes, "that there came the thought : 'The best material in the world to uphold a country or to make one.' And then the idea : 'Why not help to make ours, South Africa ? ' Of the present two hundred thousand alone, many will surely look longingly to the countries where the individual counts for more and the chances are greater, and as the years go by and the numbers grow, so too will the healthy non-contents increase. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand will have their share; and we want for our South Africa.
her share too Rhodesia more than any requires white population, and can well bear it. In all the wide world it is only there and in.British East Africa that the conditions exist which make the life of 'Jock of the Bushveld' possible; and it is the writer's hope that when the Boy Scouts , of the British Isles come to be men they will not forget the land of opportunity." One might go on, indefinitely imagining the possibilities of Sir Percy FitzPatrick's excellent proposal. To become an emigration agency should never be the whole frmction of the Boy Scouts, but to prepare boys for the life of the Colonies, and to inform theni of the history and character of the Colonies, might well be one of the offices of the organisation,
,and a very important one too. And would it not be delightful if there were to be a communicating connexion between the Boy Scouts who had advanced their craft from play to reality in other lands of the Empire, and those who were still at home and had their choice to make P
To make good citizens, and above all citizens capable of the supreme sacrifice for their country—British Samurai—is no doubt the ultimate object, but consistent with this great aim 'are many minor aims, and that which Sir Percy FitzPatrick -singles out, the colonisation of Rhodesia by a contingent of picked British lads, is by no means among the least worthy or least practical.
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