HOW GIRLS CAN HELP TO BUILD UP THE EMPIRE.* "
THE aim of the Girl Guides organization is the training of character, to teach girls to be women—self-helpful, happy, prosperous, capable of keeping good homes and of bringing up good children. Its methods are those of teaching by games and by recreative exercises which lead the girls on to learn for themselves." (We condense from Miss Baden.
Powell's Foreword.) A noble character—we are led by every instinct and by every logical reflection to believe this truth— is the essential factor of happiness. Without strength and
integrity of character, riches, health, and genius will, we are all secretly aware, avail us nothing ; and we know in our
hearts that if we can but attain to character we can truly boast ourselves masters of our fate and superior to the worst blows of ill-fortune.
We have most of us had practical and personal experience of the very real effect which the discipline of the Boy Scout organization has had upon the characters of the hobbledehoys of this country. But the Girl Guide organization, if it can but succeed in its object of training the characters of girls to that standard of honourable independence or of self-sacrificing esprit de corps which has been so largely attained by the boys, will, in our opinion, have performed an even greater service to the Empire. But the problem is much more difficult of solution with girls than with boys. Though they learn to cook, to nurse the sick, to sew, or to care for little children, if they forget to be men of honour " they have attained nothing. We are sure, however, that Miss Baden-Powell is well aware of the dangers which beset her path, and is deter-' mined that the Girl Guides shall be like Wordsworth's " Happy Warrior "-
"Who, with a natural instinct to discern What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn, Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, But makes his moral being his prime care."
Knowing that she sets out with the necessity of character training always held firmly before her, we wish her every success in her admirable movement.
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