MESSAGE FROM KING

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 79, 13 January 1949, Page 4

MESSAGE FROM KING

Interest in Boy Scouts in Dominion (P.A.) AUCKLAND, Jan. 12. “Tell the Boy Scouts of New Zealand I am greatly interested in their progress and activities, and how sorry I am that I am unable to see them in the meantime.” This message, from the King, who is patron of the Boy Scouts, was sent to Lord Rowallan, Chief Empire Scout, while he was on his present Empire tour, and when the King was ill. Lord Rowallan said to-day that New Zealand Scouts had frequently caught his eye, especially at the jamborees in France and Australia.

Scouting, which had been labelled by both Hitler and Stalin regimes as Public Enemy No. 2, had increased in strength by nearly 50 per cent, since the war, said Lord Eowallan. He attended the Pan-Pacific jamboree in Victoria 'and will spend five weeks in the Dominion, meeting as many members of the movement as possible. Now totalling 440,000, the number of Scouts and" Cubs in the United Kingdom was the highest in history, said" Lord Eowallan. Throughout the world there were about 4,500,000 in registered associations but there were many more who, by necessity, were not registered in countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, where the movement had been suppressed. Scouting had been the first of the free institutions to be suppressed in all totalitarian countries, he said. It had been placed by Hitler as Public Enemy No. 2 after Communism and by the Soviet as Public Enemy No. 2 after Fascism. It was a tribute to a great movement which preserved the principles of freedom and democracy. The growth of Scouting in all countries while they had been occupied by the enemy during the war was quite phenomenal because in those, countries it became an adventure with. a. risk attached to it that provided a challenge to every boy, he continued. The countries included Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and Norway. As a consequence of the service rendered by Scouts during the war, the movement had a place in the national life of such places which was almost incredible. Its strength had doubled in France during the conflict and in all occupied countries, both in Europe and Asia, Scouts were among the foremost in the resistance movements.

Lord Eowallan said the venue of the next world jamboree.to beheld in 1951 would oe decided at the Rover Moot, or conference, to take place in Norway, in August next. He was delighted to learn New Zealand would be represented.