GIRL GUIDE MOVEMENT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21265, 20 February 1931, Page 8

GIRL GUIDE MOVEMENT.

ONE MILLION STRONG. ARRIVAL OF LADY BADEN-POWELL (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, February 19. Accompanying the Chief Scout to New Zealand is Lady Baden-Powell, Chief Guide, who during the past 12 years has controlled the destines of the wide-flung Girl'’Guide movement, and to-day -watches over the welfare of nearly 1,000,000 girls in every quarter of the globe. Lady Baden-Pow'ell is one of the busiest Voman in the world, and shares with her famous husband the hero-worship and devotion of thousands of young New Zealanders. Lady Baden-Powell smiled charmingly as she greeted the official visitors from the shore on ’the deck of the Rangitata this evening. The passengers _on the liner spoke ■ admiringly of her immense enthusiasm and irrepressible energy, referring to her as the most popular woman on the ship.” In addition to her own duties in connection with the Girl Guide movement, she helped her husband with his work as Chief Scout, yet always had a few moments and a kind word for her fellow passengers. “ I have been very busy helping my husband with his book,” Lady Baden-Powell said. This volume, which is to embody an account of the Chief Scout’s life, is in an advanced stage of completion, and during the voyage from England Lady BadenPowell has been typing from her husband’s dictation. The Chief Guide referred enthusiastically to the romantic growth of the Girl Guide movement, which, from small beginnings in 1910, had growm into the widest of all organisations for girls, embracing to-day 800,000 young people in nearly every country in the world. “ Our membership leaps up by an average Of 50,000 every year,” she said. “ The movement has been extended recently to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. It has gone to Palestine, and we are now very strong in Egypt. In India the movement has taken on wonderfully, and we have the highest expectations of the good it will do in that huge country, whose women are now waking up from the backward state in which they have lagged so long. The Girl Guide movement in India,” she said, “was applying much the same methods as those used in European countries.” as Lady Baden-Powell remarked, “ a girl is a girl the world over.” _ “As an English w r oman,” she added, _ I am naturally most interested in the girl* of the overseas dominions. They are doing a great work in Canada, and the movement is particularly strong in South Africa. That is very significant, because we hope it will exert an influence in bringing the women of the two races, British and Dutch, closer together. One of the things we are most keen about is a healthy development of children. I could say quite a lot about that, but I understand New Zealand is an exceedingly healthy country, and your children are brought up healthy.” As a matter of course. Lady Baden-Powell said she was looking forward immensely to meeting the Guide* of New Zealand for the first time, aiid she also expected to gain much pleasure by renewing the acquaintance of a large number of New- Zealand women whom sh# had met in England.