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Hokitika Guardian, 2 June 1932, Page 4

In connection with the celebration held throughout th e Empire on Sunday last in connection with the Girl Guide, movement, a speaker at a Wellington function said—“ This day we are celebrating not only in Wellington, Christchurch, and other centres of New Zealand, but throughout the British Empire, is the 21st. anniversary of the Girl Guide inovement. I gather that this Girl Guide movement arose spontaneously among children. The fathers and mot libra, the grown-ups, gave no encouragement at the start; in fact, they rather frowned on it. And the whole movement depended, and was thrown upon youthful enthusiasm. But gradually the fathers and mothers were drawn into the game. It- <sccmed somehow after a time to grin the fathers and mothers, and the result was that the older i got together and formed rules for the guidance of the younger folk. But when it started. the first appearance on the streets of girls and women in costume such a* | you have to-day, provoked some | ridicule, but public opinion hnP changed, an ! the Girl Guide movement is looked up in difTorenlly. Nowadays there is no <'lurch, no Sunday school, no organisation of nnv kind lik" that that has rot tret <| Girl Guide company attached to it.” If he understood it correctly, the aim of the girl-guiding Wilts to give eve; v girl it series of healthy, happy, jolly activities, It

wa!s a course of education outside all that was obtained in daily schools. In four particular ways it supplied training for which there was the greatest need. It developed character and intelligence, ability in handicraft, the study of health, and health knowledge, and lastly the ideal of service for others. In addition to this, guides had to promise to be loyal to God and the King, to do a good turn daily, and to be obedient to the Guide laws. The religion of guiding was, to put it as a Scout ha© put it, to help every girl to attain the highest development of which she was capable. Guides must do all work , themselves, trying to stimulate every girl to develop to the full her own capacity, in body, mind and soul. “You girls who are young now, are going some day to be wives and mothers. What you are, so will those who are to be born into the world he. Your leaders must guide you so as to develop that quality in you which will make fine men and women. As Benjamin Kidd has written let the cry be: ‘0 you wise men who would re-construct the world, give us the young! Do what you will with the world, only give us the young. It is the Utopias which we conceive for them, it is the thoughts which we think for them which will rebuild the world. Give us the young before the evil has held them, and we will create a new heaven and a new earth!’. We all hope that you will grow up to take vour place, in the world, and a,s you have developed in yourselves so as mothers you will develop in our children those characteristics and qualities which will make this world brighter, happier, and better.”