SCOUT JAMBOREE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20031, 1 September 1939, Page 13

SCOUT JAMBOREE

CANCELLATION POSSIBLE SHOULD WAR OCCUR DUTIES IN EMERGENCY COMMISSIONER’S VIEWS (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, day. The centennial Boy Scout jamboree, planned to be held at Heretaunga, Hutt Valley, in December and January, will be cancelled if war breaks out before then. The organiser, Commissioner J. E. F. Vogel, Wellington, said yesterday that in time of national emergency the duties of Scouts lay elsewhere. He said there were three principal reasons why the jamboree should not take place during a war in which New Zealand was a combatant. First, the .young men on whom will fall the organisation and supervision of the camp would, in wartime, be serving their country in the field; secondly, the organisation of transport and equipment for the encampment of 5000 boys would be out of question in wartime, as whatever facilities were available would ,be turned to the training of military forces and other purposes; thirdly, the boys had a job to do elsewhere. The main tenet of the Scout movement was to teach boys to be useful citizens in a national emergency. They should offer thgir services in any capacity in which they might be useful —as cyclists or as messengers, for instance. In their own homes and among their neighbours, Boy Scouts would have an important part to play if the manhood of the nation was called away, and there were many everyday jobs which a boy could carry out.