BOY SCOUTS.

Hokitika Guardian, 27 September 1923, Page 1

BOY SCOUTS.

(Contributed)

After being rather out of the limelight for a number of years the Boy Scouts of Westland have at last a promise of a visit from the Chief Commissioner for the Dominion—BrigadierGeneral A. W, Andrew— who is due on the Coast shortly after Christinas. It is hoped that it will be possible by then for Hokitika to have attained a position worthy of itself in the scouting world, both in numbers and efficiency. At tin 1 moment there is only cue

“troop” (a troop is a unit of about 20 or 30 hoys), in the town, hut another is in course of formation and ultimately each will have attached a “pack” ol the junior branch of the movement known by the title of Wolf Cubs. Even this is utterly below what the boy population of Hokitika demands, out the trouble has always been a scarcity of officers.

Under a now scheme from their Dominion Headquarters, each troop is about to call meetings of their boys’ parents in order to elect troop committees and as these will undoubtedly bring the aims and methods of scouting to some extent before the town, it "'is to he hoped that men may he found to start other troops or to assist those already formed. 'I he qualifications required are not very exceptional, really consisting of one’s own boyhood.

At a time when big programmes are being mapped out for the future of the district, it is curious how the most essential point of all. the character of our future manhood, seems to have been overlooked. The average ciLi■/,en’s opinion of the Boy Scouts’ Association seems to be that it is an exec Rent institution for keeping little boys out. of mischief in their spare time with a sort of suli-conscions suspicion that it has some sort of connection with the Army. As a matter ol fact it has been acclaimed in Europe and America by University professors. Ministers of Education and world-fam-ous headmasters as the greatest educational discovery of the age; it is in practice a League of Nations, with a million and a quarter active members in over forty different nations; it has effected peaceful revolutions m social outlook, which ought to make -Moscow green with envy, and is probab y the only organisation in the world which has the declared support of every important religious body. Christian ami otherwise. In short it is well worthy of careful study by men and women with an outlook beyond their own garden fence.