Scouting, Volume 35, Number 1, January 1947 Page: 2
32 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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ft TVeu. INEVITABLE
By the. cMo^toJ%aMe ^UomgA, £. ^jbew&y
Governor of New York
The invention of Scouting was inevitable. The more
civilized the world has become, the more it has
needed something like the Boy Scout Movement. Yet
Scouting owes its growth to more than one accidental
circumstance. For instance: General Baden-Powell
wrote his "Aids to Scouting" as a manual for soldiers.
He was the greatest authority on Scouting in the
British Army. Had he grown up on our own frontier,
♦Baden-Powell would have become a "Mountain Man"
of the calibre of Kit Carson, Daniel Boone, and Sam
Bridger.
Baden-Powell found to his astonishment that the
manual he had written for soldiers was immensely
popular with British youngsters. He learned that the
skill, excitement and self-reliance required in Scout-
ing appealed as much to a boy as to a grown soldier.
That led him inevitably to his big idea. He knew that
he was not the first in this field; he inquired into
Dan Beard's "Sons of Daniel Boone" and Ernest
Thompson Seton's "Woodcraft Indians." He studied
their ideas and those of other youth movements and
began his great work. Boy Scouting rapidly took hold
in England, and spread around the world.
It is a great inspiration-to realize that today there
are thirty-two other nations with Boy Scout organ-
izations. Among their populations are literally mil-
lions of men who have passed through Scout training
and are the better for it. All over the world sturdy
lads repeat and live up to the Scout Promise; all over
the world they obey the Scout Law. All this we owe
to Baden-Powell.
Its coming to America was another accidental cir-
cumstance. William D. Boyce of Chicago lost his way
in a London fog, but was guided through it by an
English lad. (A stout performance even for a Lon-
don-born boy.) Boyce tried to tip the boy and was
astonished to hear him refuse, saying "I am a Boy
Scout and we don't take tips for doing a good turn."
Soon Boyce was at Baden-Powell's headquarters,
learning all about Boy Scouting. And so it happened
that the Boy Scouts of America came into existence.
We think, by contrast, of the way in which totali-
tarian governments degraded and misused the idea
of organizing a nation's youngsters. We think of the
practices of the Hitler Youth Movement, young boys
trained in military drill and the goose step, inoculated
with hatred for the boys of other countries; taught
that all they were learning was a preparation for a
future of killing and destruction. Young boys taught
to suspect and spy upon their own parents and
friends; trained in the technique of the informer.
What a difference between slave states and the ideal-
ism of the Boy Scouts in free countries!
We have found that we do not have to train our
youngsters in brutality and espionage to make them
play an invaluable part in defending their country
when it becomes necessary — and God willing, it may
never be necessary again. In the last war, hundreds
of Scouts served in the armed forces of the nation,
and younger Scouts were a most useful factor on the
home front. They were able to use their enormous
energy and patriotism to the fullest extent without
ever departing one bit from the Scout Law, even in
spirit.
Now, as we look to the work of peace, we think of
the great tasks ahead of us in which the Scouts can
and will do so much. Conservation is one important
field. Every healthy boy likes the things and pastimes
of outdoors. He loves to get close to the soil. (Some-
times his mother thinks he never wants to get away
from it, not even by way of the scrubbing brush.)
But a love for the soil is one of the cleanest things
that can happen to a boy. A Boy Scout learns about
those things, learns to distinguish them and their uses
and beauties as many of us grown-ups unfortunately
do not. One result has been that Boy Scouts have
planted millions of trees which probably never would
have existed otherwise. They have developed a con-
sciousness of what our forests and streams mean.
They appreciate our parks, our woodlands and moun-
tain areas, and know how to use them.
Destructive fires don't start as a result of the pres-
ence of Scouts, and they have turned out to fight
many a great fire that might have been disastrous.
Again, some 25,000 acres of land in New York and
New Jersey are being used as training centers for
them — land which otherwise would have been idle
fExcerpts from an address at the Silver Anniversary Din-
ner of Region II, New York City, November 8, 1946.
2 SCOUTING
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 35, Number 1, January 1947, periodical, January 1947; New York, New York. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth313130/m1/4/: accessed May 22, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.