FIRST GUIDE JUBILEE

Taranaki Daily News, 20 July 1935, Page 6 (Supplement)

FIRST GUIDE JUBILEE

25 YEARS’ WORK FOR GIRLS. INSPIRER OF GREAT MOVEMENT. May was jubilee month twice over, for it marked not only the 25th anniversary of the King’s accession, but also the silver jubilee of Agnes Baden-Powell, First. Guide and First President of the Guides. When Scouting came into being it was meant for boys only but there was no keeping the girls out of it. They would spend their whole savings to buy the Scout Book, invent uniforms, arid carry out such/Scout work as they could pick up for them Selves. In spite of the fact that they received no encouragement from anyone, 6000 Girl Scouts sprang into being. Girls were determined to play the Scout game on their own, if need be. The sensible thing was to give them a lead. Miss Agnes Baden-Powell, at her brother’s suggestion, undertook to adapt Scouting principles to the needs and interests of girls. The first Handbook of the Girl Guides, which came out in 1912, was her work.

Miss Baden-Powell was wonderfully fitted for the task her far-seeing younger brother laid upon her. Sharing his vision of a nation regenerated by the sound characters of its boys and girls, she could do anything with her hands, and was the master of a number of arts and crafts. Further, she. was a devoted and painstaking naturalist,, passionately fohd of flowers, and never tired of studying the ways of the birds, butterflies and bees she kept at the house. If ever her son or her daughter had doubts as to the future of the Girl Guides, their mother encouraged them. She was a truly faith-full lady. “Push on with it,” she urged them. “Suggest it to the girls, and they with their spirit will do the rest.’’ Few people of her generation took this view, and Miss Baden-Powell had great opposition to contend with. It was all .wrong, people said; it would only turn girls into tom-boys and make them unfit for home life. Guides were jeered at in the streets. One of the early captains writes: “We were an excellent target for the throwing of stones and. tomatoes that had seen better days.” Even the' Girl Scouts resisted the efforts of the Chief Scout and his sister to give them a lead. They did not want to be Guides; they felt that the change of name and emblem was a come-down. But the Chief Scout had given the matter much thought, and the name Guides was selected for definite reasons. On and on the movement went, and Miss Baden-Powell not only carried the Guiding scheme through its first difficult years but also inspired her able young sister-in-law (Lady Baden-Powell) to throw her Self heart and soul into the movement, until now she is Chief Guide. Though the brunt of responsibility has passed to younger shoulders, Miss BadenPowell goes on working as eagerly as ever for this dream she held to in the face of ridicule and apathy a quarter of a century ago. She has lived to see it realised beyond her wildest hopes in a world-wide sisterhood, uniting girls *of 32 countries in a family numbering well over a million and increasing at the rate of 25,000 a year.