SCOUT MOVEMENT

Otago Witness, Issue 4048, 13 October 1931, Page 71

SCOUT MOVEMENT

GATHERING IN THE ALPS

LETTER FROM THE CHIEF. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, August 27. Lord Baden-Powell, while attending a conference and moot of the Rover Scouts in the Valley of Kandersteg, in the Swiss mountains, sent a letter to The Times. “ From where I sit,” he writes, in the flower decked balcony of the chalet, I can see the flags of 20 nations waving above the tents and camp fires of some 3000 young men gathered there. “ The days are long over,” the Chief Scout continues, “ when Scouting was looked upon as a useful game for keeping English boys out of mischief; parents and public have come to see in it a practical process of education for the use of both sexes, and with the wider growth of its brotherhood abroad its possibilities in the direction of human fellowship for developing the spirit of international goodwill are now becoming generally recognised. My recent tour of New Zealand, Australia and South Africa has shown me how firmly established is the movement in those countries and how fully appreciated by the education authorities, but my subsequent experiences at the International Conference at Vienna and at the Rover Moot here in Switzerland have given fresh promise of further world developments in the near future.” AN EXTRAORDINARY RECEPTION. Referring to the International Scout Conference at Baden, near Vienna, which lie attended, Lord Baden Powell writes: “Noticeable above everything else were the unanimity and good feeling • shown on all hands in the discussions. | Attention had been drawn to this on i a previous occasion by the member of the League of Nations deputed to watch I the proceedings, when he said that it j was refreshing to see men coming together from all parts of the globe, not as at Geneva, intent on representing the interests of their own particular country, but all inspired with the one common interest—namely, the good of the bov.”

After mentioning the visits of the President of Austria and the Prince Archbishop, Cardinal Piffel, to the Conference, the Chief Scout refers to one incident of that wonderful week which appealed to him and touched him profoundly. “ This,” he says, “ was the extraordinary reception accorded to me by the Boy Scouts themselves, both Austrian and German, when I visited them informally in their camps. It seemed impossible that these boys, looking like so many British Scouts, with their fresh, young faces and identical uniform, could he the sons of so-called enemy countries—more especially when, with whole-hearted enthusiasm, they ran cheering beside our departing car as if loth to let us go. It made one feel that here indeed is soil ripe for the sowing of the seed of universal goodwill and peace. FACE TO FACE WITH NATURE. “ Never during the whole fortnight in camp,” says Lord Baden-Powell, referring to the moot in the mountains, “ was there a suspicion of trouble or anything but cheery brotherly feeling among the many and varied elements which went to compose the gathering—Scandinavians, Rumanians, Japanese, Hungarians, Australians, Siamese, West Indians, East Indians, French, Cingalese, Poles, Armenians, etc., a polyglot lot, but good friends for all that. To myself possibly the most inspiring part of their varied programme was when one saw the endless succession of these splendid specimens of the young manhood of all nations setting out with heavy packs on their backs and ice axe in hand to tackle the neighbouring mountains in comradeship together. The moot might have been held with greater convenience in any large city, but this valuable side of it, namely, the breeding of mutual friendship, in healthy sport, would have been lost Aye, and something more and above all price, namely, the higher tone of thought which could not fail to have inspired the least imaginative among them in those wonderful surroundings of mountain scenery. Here among the eternal snows, face to face .with Nature in its grandest and most sublime form, they must have felt themselves in closer touch with the Almighty Creator and in a new atmosphere far, far above the man-made jazz and vulgar squalor of the town. “Yes, a wide and promising field lies yet before the Scout Movement.”