‘Best Generation Ever’

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30955, 11 January 1966, Page 12

‘Best Generation Ever’

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, January 10. Young people today are the best generation ever, the Australian national scouting head, Chief Commissioner R. Nichols, believes. Mr Nichols said this on his arrival at the progress jamboree at Trentham today. He is on a three-week New Zealand visit. He was chairman at the last two world conferences —one at Rhodes, and the other at Mexico City—and the holder of the Bronze Wolf, the world’s highest scouting decoration.

Mr Nichols said statistics showed there was much less juvenile delinquency in Australia than 50 years ago. The increasing population meant more incidents which were given publicity. A similar situation was likely to exist in New Zealand. But the danger of an

affluent society tended to be overlooked, he said. Greater prosperity was posing new problems and new traps for unwary youth. The scout movement was countering those. “Scouting encourages the importance of thinking and doing for other people,” he

said. “As is often said, you can only find happiness in life by giving it away.” Scout methods were being adapted, he said. Scouting was being kept up to date, basically because of its patrol system. The scout movement throughout the world was growing rapidly and had more than 10 million members. Occasionally countries, such as Burma and Indonesia, were lost to scouting because of political influence. Mr Nichols will stay at the jamboree until it closes on Thursday, and then will go to the South Island with New Zealand’s Chief Executive Commissioner (Mr S. 0. Field) and Mrs Field.