GIRL GUIDING

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12456, 26 May 1926, Page 5

GIRL GUIDING

TALK TO ROTARIANS. At the Rotary Club luncheon held yesterday in Kirkcaldie and Stains’ Tudor room, Lady Marjorie Dalrymple gave a talk to the assembled Rotarians on the Girl Gr/ide movement. The president, Mr E. W. Hunt, introduced Lady Marjorie, who, he said, had done a good deal of war work and had been decorated as Lady of Grace of the Order of St. John and 0.8. E. for her service. She had been travelling for some time organising the Girl Guide movement and had originated groups in Borneo and Malaya. Lady Marjorie said the guide movement was on parallel lines with that of the boy scouts. Their chief aim was service, and they were trying to teach girls to render service first in their own homes and then in the larger way of citizenship. Children had the wish to serve and the movement endeavoured to bring out that wish and train it along the right lines of fellowship, of doing something for others by means of games. These guides and scouts would form the first adult generation after the ■war, and to the present generation tho. war changed everything, so it was necessary that this new generation be trained to serve. Moreover by fostering good fellowship between children of all nations, colour, class and denomination, they were laying the foundations for world-wide understanding and world peace. There were over a million scouts in the organisation to-day, and 600,000 girl guides, so the movement was spreading rapidly. All promise loyalty to God* and King and Country, to help others and obey the scout law, that wa® their only pledge. Drill was taught because, without it, it was impossible to handle large numbers inconspicuously; uniform was worn to prevent any distinction of wealth in the movement ; there was no class or creed among guides or scouts; and the teaching of signalling was carried oiit largely because it helped the girls to concentrate. Lady Marjorie begged the Rotarians to find out something about girl, guides, to give definite answers to questions and to assist the movement. £. ew Zealand had a special responsibility for the movement, because all who came here felt they must uphold the spirit of the old pioneers. Their special need was for leaders because they could not enrol the girls without leaders. Mr Hunt assured Lady Mnnorie that the Rotarians would do all in their power to assist the Girl Guides. The following resolution re the nationality of married women, proposed bv the Wellington branch ot tile National Council of Women, lias been endorsed bv the Dominion executive and forwarded to the Government: that the New Zealand Government take steps to amend the existing law so that (a) New Zealand women marrying aliens he allowed to retain their British nationality after marriage should they continue to live within the British Empire, and provided they make a declaration in writing of their desiro to retain their own nationality, and do not after marriage acquire the nationality of their husbands; (b) that on the death of her husband or the dissolution of her marriage, should a New Zealand t woman elect to reside within, the British Empire, she should regain her full rights as a citizen .by a simple, declaraticm of her desire to do so. Nurse Kirkpatrick, a Red Cross scholarship holder, who has been taking a course of public health nursing at Bedford College, London,, returned to Wellington by the Ruapehu yesterday morning. She will proceed almost immediately to Dunedin to take up the position of public health nurse there under the Dunedin Red Cross Committee. Miss Freeman, well known in educational circles in Wellington and Christchurch, arrived from England by the Ruapehu yesterday, and will be the guest of Mrs E. R. Simms, at Wadestown.