The Dominion SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 1929. AN AUSPICIOUS MAJORITY

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 264, 3 August 1929, Page 10

The Dominion SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 1929. AN AUSPICIOUS MAJORITY

The coming-of-age "Jamboree” of the Boy Scout movement is an auspicious event. When Lieutenant-General Sir Robert BadenPowell in 1908 conceived the idea of making boys good citizens by first making them good Scouts, he inaugurated a movement which in its remarkable popularity and ramifications must have vastly exceeded his expectations. His first camp-fire has become a huge bonfire, the light of which can be seen throughout the world. ’ Great social movements, achieving world influence, have frequently begun in this way. The burning enthusiasm of a single individual has kindled the ardour of those around him, and fanned the flame into a conflagration. In such manner was the Salvation Army founded. Thus did Wesley create the vast world evangelical sect which is now known as Methodism. The success of all such movements would appear to rest on two factors —first, the belief of their founders in their aims and efficacy; and, second, their demonstrated value in social service. General Baden-Powell saw clearly that the best way to make boys good citizens was to harness their natural interests and activities and direct them into the right channels. A famous scout himself, he knew that the instincts of the average boy led him to the woods, to make-believe guerrilla warfare, to lighting fires, and “playing Indians.” He knew also that they had their own “Indian signs,” rituals, and. other manifestations of secret crafts and societies.. All he had to do was to systematise these various disconnected ideas, plan an effective organisation for the boys, cunningly interweaving with fantastic ritual a sound schooling in wood-craft, camp-lore, and creative activities, and the rest was easy. The remarkable thing about the movement has been its international appeal, which shows that boys are boys the world oyer. Be they British, American, Italian, German, Chinese, or aboriginal natives, each and all of them respond to the primitive appeal of Nature, the open fields, the woods, the running streams, in short, the great Out-of-Doors. Therein Baden-Powell has shown that he is a great teacher. Modern education is concentrating more and more upon the value of teaching through the natural creative activities of the child. It is recognising that the child would rather do than learn, and that the best principle of teaching is to learn, by doing. The future of the Boy Scout movement will largely depend upon the enthusiasm of those adult members of each community who may be described as boy-lovers. In a sense, they must be boys themselves, with an inextinguishable delight in the open-air activities which appealed to them as boys. The individual who undertakes the duties of a scoutmaster from a sense of social duty as a welfareworker is less likely to be as successful as he who attracts a crowd of eager boys around him by reason of his own enthusiasm for the activities in which they delight in. The strength of the movemeni rests upon the fact that its ethical results are incidental rather than of deliberate purpose, that those who go in for it do so in the first instance "for the fun of it.” The amazing success of the movement, in fact, has been that it is, from the boys’ point of view, "good fun,” and something to take a boyish pride in.