LADY BADEN-POWELL ON MODERN GIRL

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 118, 12 February 1935, Page 8

LADY BADEN-POWELL ON MODERN GIRL

“Happiness—Not Pleasure” GUIDING MOVEMENT IN WORLD Dominion Special Service. Auckland, February 11. “You complain that you have no tradition in this country—that you are so young,” said Lady Baden-Powell, speaking to members of the Lyceum Club “To me you are new—gloriously new, without any of the faults that are a part of the tradition of older countries.". Lady Baden-Powell was the guest of the club at a morning tea, at which the president. Mrs. W. H. Parkes, presided. “The Modern Girl” was the subject of the address, but very little was said about the modern girl, and a great deal about the guide and scout movements throughout the world. The idea of scouting came to Lord Baden-Powell, she said, when he was a soldier, and it came with such conviction that it turned him from a man of war into a man of peace. Now he had the satisfaction of seeing the movement, built graduaffy on the solid foundations of moral and social uplift, becoming more far-reaching each day, and a greater force for good in the lives of the young generation. x The First Guides. “The first guides appeared at a gathering of 10,p00 scouts who assembled in the early days to meet my husband,” Lady Baden-Powell said. "In the forefront of the group there were six dreadful-looking girls, dressed in their brothers’ hats, shirts and trousers,, with billies and knives slung round their waists. Asked what they were, they replied that they were the ‘girl scouts.’ So the idea was born. “The guide and scout organisations in Europe were a great force in the lives of the young people, the speaker said. In Poland they were helping to rebuild a torn and shattered nation. In- France the movements were growing; in Germany and Italy as well. “The only countries in the world which do not seem to need these organisations are, to my mind, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland,” Lady Baden-Powell said. "There the people are well educated, athletic, fond of the out-of-door life, and they love animals and children. Consequently they take to scouting and guiding as a duck takes to water. The spiritual aspect, as well as the physical, makes a great appeal to them.” Breaking Down Barriers. In South Africa, also, among conditions more difficult than most people in this country were aware of, the organisations were doing their work. “As a result of the Boer War—which should never have been—barriers are slowly being built up in South Africa,” Lady Baden-Powell said. “The Africanders go to their own schools, live their own lives. This means a barrier between them and the Britishers, which is surely a retrograde step, As guides and scouts the young people are finding a common ground upon which they can meet, and so the barriers are being broken down. Many years hence historians may look back on these movements as the greatest factors in uniting a nation. “It was amazing to us that there should be guides, in India, and yet the growth in this country has been remarkable. India, with its love of the beautiful and the quiet, found much to its liking in the movement. Annual camps are held in that country, where caste' barriers are entirely disregarded.” “The Happiest People.” “The one message I have for the girls of to-day,Lady Baden-Powell said, ‘is that pleasure is only second cousin to the real thing—happiness. And the happiest people in the world are those who serve most. The aim of the guide movement is to be of supreme service to the world; to inculcate in the young people the true spirit of service; to teach them to do useful work, and thus to serve their country and the future.”