A COLONIAL TOUR.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXII, Issue 62, 15 March 1910, Page 3

A COLONIAL TOUR.

GENERAL BADEN-POWELL. BOY SCOUT MOVEMENT. LONDON, January 28. Lieut.-General Sir R. S. S. BadenPowell has resigned his commission in the Army in order that he may devote the whole of his mind to the perfection of the work he initiated two years ago, namely, the organisation of the Boy Scouts movement throughout the Empire. Since the General Wiginated this Imperial scheme, all manner of xmofficial offshoots have sprung into existence. "In some of the colonies, though the movement has caught on finely, there is, 3 he said, "no proper organisation. We are sending a large party of our boys over to Canada next August, and I myself will visit the Dominion during the summer. Later on I hope to travel throughout South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia, clinching our organisation in every part of the Empire. "In South Africa troops of boy scouts are in active operation as far inland as Bulawayo. Mafeking? Well, I cannot say definitely, but I should think there is one there. South Africa as a whole is working with us splendidly % _ Sir .Percy /Fitzpatrick lias given us 500 prizes to be competed for by patrols of eight boys in England and South Africa. The problem set the English boy is settlement in the African colonies on a capital of £IOO. He communicates with his colonial cousin regarding trade conditions in South Africa, thus bringing himself into amicable touch with the sons of Englishmen in our southern dominions. The English boys whose ultimate decisions are adjudged the best will be awarded prizes, and the colonial boys who have given the -wisest advice will also be included in the list of honors. FLAG FROM THE ANTIPODES. "In Australia, Lord Dudley is nominally at the head of the movement.

Quite recently our troop at Lewisham were presented with a big flay by the -boys of the Lowisluun troop in Australia." The father of the Toy Scouts smiled remiiiiscently. "»\ ;.en I think of the South African War and the work of the colonial troops all around mo, I am certain no truer bond of Empire can exist than that flag from the little chaps of Australia,", he said. "Possibly it is what I saw in that campaign that prompts me to make a model of the backblocks man from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, and every one of the boy scouts will learn how to cook his own 'grub/ to read the time by the sun, to fight his way through impenetrable scrub, and take whatever gruelling may come, so that he fights through to the end and gets there. Catch the boy and you make the man!"