SCOUT JAMBOREE

Hokitika Guardian, 17 September 1929, Page 2

SCOUT JAMBOREE

WHAT IT MEANS. (By SIR ROBERT BADEN POWER) \ • LONDON, July 26.

This World Jamboree at Arrowe Park, Birkenhead, which the Duke of Connaught is formally to open next Wednesday and the Prince of Wales to attend during the following two days marks the coniing-of-age of the Boy Scout movement that was born of the experimental camp held on Brownsea Islet in 1907.

The 25 Scouts—the world’s first Boy Scouts—in that camp were roused each morning by the call of the kudu horn.

The kudu bull—first cousin to the antelope and found in South Africa and elsewhere —is a fine fellow, standing some five feet high and ranging 'from rufus to grey and almost blue, with a white streak running along the chest and white stripes running transversely across the body. Most beautiful of all are the magnificent spiral horns capping the noble head. He is a difficult animal to capture, owing to his quick hearing, keen sight and sense of smell. In 1896, when as a colonel 1 was puc in charge of a column during, the Matabele campaign, we were much puzzled by the way news of alarm spread among the Matabeles until one of our fellows found that the enemy were using a kudu horn of great carrying power. By the use of the horn the rallying cal.] for the tribe was sounded right and left, whenever an enemy came near, and the call .was thus carried many miles in a very few minutes. The horn failing to give its warning in time, we came upon the Matabele before they were ready lor us, and as they fled the chief dropped both his horns and his stafF. That staff to-days adorns the walls of my museum but the horn, like the swords of the poem which became beaten into ploughshares, has been turned to a more peaceful use. From lieraiding the birth of scouting in Brownsea, the horn has found a new home in our Scoutmaster’s Training Centre around the old hunting lodge at Gill well Park, near Chingofrd, in Essev. There it rouses the Scoutmasters, who come from all parts of the world to further their scouting knowledge for the good of boyhood and their kind.

Ibis yea’* that same horn will usher in our. 21st birthday Jamboree, the coming-of-age celebrations of the Boy Ccouts, which are to be attended by no fewer than 50,C00 Scouts from 71 parts of the world, 41 of them outside the British Empire. Many excellent movements have been thought of- and urged upon the world for all they are worth, but in spite of the pressing they have not appealed so widely as was imagined and hoped—and have ended in smoke. Other move ments have sprung up, almost of their own accord, to meet some need and have grown and flourished exceedingly Nearly two million boys and men and almost eight hundred thousand girls and women know of two movements at any rate that have done so—the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. In both of these it is a case of the natural as opposed to the artificial. It is this natural automatic growth of these movements that speaks of their vitality and their possibilities. Nations differ in their characteristic to a marvellous degree, considering their relationship with the human family, and although modern communication, with its consequent interchange of literature, manufactures, personal visits, etc. ,ought to have made a vast difference by now, it has not done so We are still very much strangers to each other.

The League of Nations has been form ed to make us better friends through force of law. I hope it may, but in the brotherhood of scouting we have another league of nations now emerging from the chrysalis stage of boyhood into the more settled stage of manhood. This brotherhood is growing up automatically throughout every nation of the world, and since its growth is entirely natural, and not forced in any way, there is immense promise about it.

To-day “the balance of power” for war seems to be just as great a fetish as it was before the Great War. The “balance of power” for peace is hardly beyond the talking stage.. x’he secret of success in dealing with the problem off international peace lies not in force of arms but in statesmanship founded on good will. Such is essential to the peace of the world and to the success of the League of Nation It is essential, too, for the prosperity of well-being of every nation. It depends on the principle of working through love and fellowship in national and international disputes.

.It is not impossible, but to be successful it must be applied equally by both parties to the dispute with the same intensity with which up to now they have been accustomed to apply force or ill-will. From tradition and habit the human family invariably thinks in terms of war directly any matter of dispute arises between its members.

Witfr comparatively recent object-les-sons before us and the disastrous re: suits of habit both in war and in political and trade disputes, is it not time that we started to impress on the next generation the better way? It certainly is, and that is why we in the Scout movement, through this World Jamboree and through the exchange of visits between Scouts of different nations, are trying to point the way by working in a spirit of good

will and comradeship one with another and not in the way of either martial command, religious intolerance, or lios tile criticism.

The scout spirit is the outward expression of the above ideal, and where its enthusiasm appeals to the rising generation there is no.need, and indeed no place, for self. Self-determination is one of the shibboleths of the day, whether for States or individuals, but people often forget tliat self-determination has in it besides the element of right, the danger of going too far. in the direction of self exploitation. And don’t we sec it every day? The freedom to act in the cause that we have at heart is a just ambition but we have to see to it that it does not run so that we forget the cause and the rights of others in pushing our own rendering of it.

Liberty with love can work wonders Force against force is the devil’s work but peace through good will one with another is the work.ng <.f Divine will in the world.

It is this peace and good will which is the first care of the Jamboree at Arrowe Park this month.

Is it too much to expect that the horn which heralded the birth of the Scout movement on Brownsea Islet may. through this world gathering of vouth from more than 70 parts of the world, sound the new re T, eille of worldwide peace and good will ?