SCOUTS ALMOST OF APE

Taranaki Daily News, 8 October 1928, Page 15

SCOUTS ALMOST OF APE

THE FIRST CAMP RECALLED. I I HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT. London, Aug. 2. Last Saturday Sir Robert BadenPowell, the Chief Scout, entertained at his home at Pax Hill all the available members of the first boy scout troop. It was the 21st anniversary of the first experimental camp which was held during the last week of July and the first week of August, 1907. Mr. P. W. Everett, now commissioner for equipment and chairman of general purposes committee of the Boy Scouts’ Imperial Headquarters, who helped Sir Robert to organise the first camp, described in an interview that memorable camp on Brownsea Island, off the coast of Poole, in Dorsetshire. “It happened,” he said, “that Sir Robert, having, as we all know, organised the boys of Mafeking during the siege into something very like boy scout troops, and whose own boyhood had been spent in scouting and scouting games, had in 1907 already discussed ' with educationists and others the scheme that he was beginning to formulate. But before actually launching any scheme he decided to run an experimental camp on scouting lines, so that he might be able to judge by actual experience whether his schemes would work in practise. “Then he gathered together twenty boys. They were boys from all strata of society, boys from Eton and boys from the East End. Most of them were friends of Sir Robert’s friends. Three were chosen from the Bournemouth Boy’s Brigade. Except Sir Robert, there was no grown-up person in the camp.” FIRST FOUR PATROLS. The camp seems in almost all respects to have been the same as any boy scouts’ camp of to-day. The mornings were spent in tracking—learning how to .distinguish a fat man’s trail from a thin man’s, and which way a bicycle or a car was going by the way the dust was thrown. There was plenty of swimming. There was, too, some eraft-work, such as mattress-making. The boys learned for the first time scout games which are now popular the world over. There were four . patrols —the Curlews, the Rhvens, the Wolves, and the Bulls. One night there Was a night attack on the eamp, the Curlews defending. And. of course, there was a camp fire. Mr. Everett has written of the camp fire he attended when he went down to visit the camp One night:—“Round the camp fire the chief told us thrilling yarns, himself led the Eengonyama chorus, and in his inimitable way held the attention and won the hearts of all. I can see him still as he stands in the flickering light —an alert figure, full of the joy of life, now grave, now gay; answering all manner of questions, imitating the calls of birds, showing how to stalk a wild animal, flashing out a little story, dancing and singing round the fire, pointing a moral not in actual words but in such an elusive yet convincing way that everyone present, boy or man, was ready to follow him wherever he might lead.”

The Chief Scout, writing in the Daily Mail about the camp, said: “It was a rough-and-ready experiment. In the hands of ‘boy men’ — that is, of leaders with sympathy and understanding —it panned out a success.

“A eheap explanatory handbook was next produced. Before many months were passed boys in different parts of the kingdom had been reading it and had taken up scouting for themselves. Thus the start was automatic. Arrd girls, too, took it up to the extent that we had to form a special organisation, the Girl Guides, for them. “Thus from the one acorn there grew up untended a plant with two stems; and the girl stem grew almost faster than the other. So that her tree is to-day bigger by 90,000 than that of the boys. “The tree has spread its branches far and wide, until, in addition to the British Empire, they overshadow some 42 foreign countries and embrace a brotherhood numbering to-day a million and three-quarters of active members. It is a brotherhood in something more than name, since the boys interchange correspondence and visits. Over 7000 British Scouts are visiting their friends across the Channel this summer, and troops from five different countries are at present in England.

“And this means millions more of men in the population who have been trained as scouts in the same ideals of mutual peace and goodwill. These again are backed by the Girl Guides with like aims among the women voters and nation-leaders of the future. “One may see here a true League of Nations in the making. A league where the spirit of goodwill from the heart prevails, and not one brought about for protection through fear —the dread of war.” SOME SURVIVORS. The sole representative of the Curlew Patrol last Saturday was Mr. Percy Medway. The Woles Patrol had three representatives in Messrs. B. Watts, A. Vivian, and T. E. Bonfield, all of whom belong to Bournemouth. The Raven Patrol was represented by Mr. A. Primmer, who is now the Registrar of Marrigaes at Poole, and Flight-Lieutenant the Hon. James H. B. Rodney, D. 5.0., while the Bull Patrol was represented by Captain Humphrey Noble, who is now on the staff of one of the best known British engineering firms. In addition, Mr. Donald Baden-Powell, of Oxford, who acted as orderly at the original camp, was present. Of those who were at the original camp, Mr. R. Wroughton, who was patrol leader of the Curlews, Mr. R Grant of the Wolves, and Messrs. B. Blandford and M. Noble of the Ravens, were killed during the war; while Mr. B. Collingbourne, of the Wolves died from the after effects of gas-poisoning. Messrs. B. Tarrant and W. Rodney, of the Wolves, have since passed away. Lord Rodney, who was patrol leader of the Wolves; Mr. C. I. Cartels, and Captain John Evans-Lombe, M.C., who were members of the Curlews’ patrol, and Mr. T. B. Evans-Lombe, of the Raven patrol, are all abroad at the present time.

Although this is the twenty-first anniversary of the experimental camp which the Chief Seout held, it Is not, of course, the coming-of-age of the boyscout movement itself, which did not start until a year later. Great preparations are being made for this. What is to be known as a world jamboree is to be held from 30th July to 13th August next year at Arrowd Park, Birkenhead. There .will, be 30,000

scouts in camp from forty-two different countries (counting the British Empire as one country). There will be 15,000 scouts from foreign countries. Each country will have its own camp and maintain the customs of its own particular nationality. The camp will publish its own newspaper. It will have a street of shops, and its own bank. All the foreign boys will go on tour after the camp, and will visit the industrial centres of the north of England, and also a number of the country seats. At the present time the headquarters of the organisation are looking for a central place in London where the visitors can be accommodated during their stay here. Doubtless there will be a large contingent of scouts from Australia, and a number from New Zealand.