BOY SCOUT AND TERRITORIAL.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16034, 27 January 1920, Page 5

BOY SCOUT AND TERRITORIAL.

To the Editor. Sir, —Under the above heading you publish a report of an application by Scoutmaster Weir for exemption from Territorial duties. I have no time for shirkers; I was one of the first to join the National Defence League that worked for the present compulsory military training, and was responsible for a good few recruits to that League. I was proud to be on the same platform with the late Dr. McNab when he urgea the claim of that far-seeing soldier. Lord Roberts, for the young manhood of our Empire to be efficiently trained for National Defence. I was a Scoutmaster then, and did not then, and do not now, see the incompatibility of being at the same time a Boy Scout and a soldier. Whatever Lieut. Wales (who represented the Defence Department) meant when he said, “We want this man to learn to be a soldier; he wont do that if he remains a Boy Scout,” gets me heat. Scoutmaster Thomas, who did yeoman service with Lis troop of Scouts for the local Defence Department in the early days of the war, took my Scoutmaster’s badge with him to Gallipoli; it was buried with him there. 1 got another badge; Scoutmaster Birss, a brilliant Boy Scout and a soldier too, took that badge with him to France. That, too. was buried with him there. Sccutmsater Johns was a fine example of a Boy Scout and a soldier, and another young man, whose name I have forgotten he was on the staff of Dalgety’s—was, too, a brilliant Scoutmaster and soldier, and both made the supreme sacrifice. Soldier or sailor, tinker or tailor, a Boy Scout who loves his work and makes his ideal the Scout laws must inevitably be a better and more efficient fighter or craftsman for his Scout knowledge and experience. So much for Lieut. Wales’ unfortunate estimate of a Boy Scout. We should expect something better from Magistrate Wilson. In spite of his kindly and sympathetic eulogisms of the Boy Scout organisation, his Worship seems to have blundered by his remark that Scoutmaster Weir must “submit himself to discipline before he could discipline others.” Is discipline the regulating of conduct, the making of character, training according to rules or methods of regulations, honour and respect for authority, loyalty and devotion to country, keeping physically and morally fit to play the game, any game according to rule? If this is not discipline, what is discipline? If one parade a fortnight and one day parade a month are the determining factors of a disciplinarian, then school and college, church and laws, whether of State or municipality, civilisation or convention, to say nothing of Scout laws and customs, count for very little. Scoutmaster Weir should have been allowed his exemption. llis Worship can draw the line somewhere. It was drawn for special cases, and rightly so, during the war, under conscription. Weir is not only a Scoutmaster, hut District Secretary. His Worship surely can have no idea what that entails. When he leaves his Scout parade, or District Committee meeting, he takes a great deal more work homo with him than a lieutenant in the Territorials. The decision was neither fair to the young man, or to the local Scout organisation. Nor does it square with the conceptions of efficiency and discipline of, yours truly, J. BRINE.