GUIDES AND SCOUTS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 62, Issue 7, 20 October 1941, Page 6

GUIDES AND SCOUTS.

RECONSTRUCTION after war. ADVICE BY LADY NEWALL. (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Oct. 18. “It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of these twin movements, the Girl Guides and the Boy Scouts, for they have a vital part to play in the reconstruction of the world which must follow victory,” said her Excellency Lady NefWall, speaking as Dominion president of the Girl Guides’ Association at the annual meeting of tho Wellington. Provincial Association. “Constant care must be taken,” she said, “to see that the children of to-day shall be brought up to recognise the value of freedom, and, since true freedom demands self discipline, they must be given a sensei of responsibility to the community as a whole if democracy is to succeed.

“We must somehow help them to withstand the constant battering of the waves of propaganda and corruption which will inevitably surge from strongholds of German youth thirsting for revenge,” Lady Newall went on. “If we do not prepare our children and our people fully to play their part, our victory will be a greater failure than that of 1918, and we shall be to blame.” There was no doubt as to the power which education wielded', either for good or evil. What Hitler had done in Germany proved how immense that power was. Since the beginning of his rule he had concentrated on the youth of his country. Ho had hvtorked on their imagination and educated them to his own ends. If Hitler could do so much by preaching paganism and by ridiculing that which was held sacred, liow much more could a free people do who knew their aims were just and Christian?

Lady Newall said that in the Girl Guide "and 'Boy Scout movements there was a system ready made to carry out this object. ’These movements bad been banned in Germany because, their ideals were the opposite of Nazi oppression. Every child in New Zealand should be a Scout, Guide, Wolf Cub, or Brownie, and that ideal must be the association’s aim.