The Chief Scout.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20176, 3 March 1931, Page 8

The Chief Scout.

If Christchureh had to choose between meeting the defender of Mafeking and> honouring the Chief Scout it would find itself in a difficulty. It is still, after thirty years, capable of being excited by the first, but-is not quite sure that ,honouring heroes is now permissible. On the other hand it knows that if its guest had not been a military hero before .he became a nori* 'military Scout his present, mission' would have been impossible. It is so many years since the sword was beaten into a jack-knife that many of those yrho will to-day throw up "their hats havo forgotten how it happened. The encyclopedias will tell theixi when-the transformation began, and the 'social and educational histories, each in its own way, say why, They do not say why one man's enthusiasm swept the whole Empire, and before long the Whole: worlds but it is certain that the story begins long before 1908, when the Boy Scouts were first organised, and that it would have been an entirely different story if the author of >it had alwayß been a civilian. The soldier has perhaps seen his most honoured days; nobody knows. But when the sword is as completely robbed of glamour as a policeman's baton or a black man's club it will still be open to. soldiers to say that one of- their number founded the Scouts. They could indeed go farther and say that defending himself vi et armia was orte only of this warrior's early sins. He was a currency inflater for several weeks, and did the deed with such diabolical cleverness that his "paper" still runs and sells. It is all on record against him in the history of the Siege of Maf eking, though blackmailers are warned that history can lie.