BOY SCOUTS FOR FOXTON.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1506, 5 February 1916, Page 3

BOY SCOUTS FOR FOXTON.

Mr G. A. Hurley, of Wellington, Financial Organiser for the Dominion Boy Scouts organisation, who is on an organising tour throughout the Dominion, yesterday addressed the boys and girls attending the local State school upon the alms and methods of the movement. In the course of his address he said that the movement was not of a military nature, but dealt rather with the boys and girls as parts of a complicated social and industrial system. The boys were helped towards the acquisition of useful handicrafts, and to become expert in habits of observation, to be loyal to their God, their King and country, their officers and their employers, to be useful and help others, to be friends to all and brothers to every other scout no matter to what social class they may belong, to be courteous, friends to animals, to obey orders, to smile and whistle under all difficulties, to be thrifty, and to be clean in thought, word and deed. A scout’s honour is to be trusted under all circumstances, and the greatest emphasis was laid upon the fact that each boy’s own conscience was to be trained so that the truthfulness practised would not be such as would satisfy the person spoken to so much as the boy’s own sense ot right. Nothing short of perfect trust in the honour of each boy would be aimed at by the scoutmaster, and encouraged among the boy’s comrades until a lie would be regarded as a disgrace to the uniform. Speaking broadly, he could say that a scout’s word was good gold all over New Zealand, and it was a rare thing for a scout to descend to a lie even to save his own, skin. Mr Hurley referred at length to the importance attached to the boy’s promise that he would as far as possible do a kind action every day. He was very hard indeed upon the scouts who would do kind actions tbr all and sundry strangers but would see their mother cutting and carrying in the day’s supply of wood, and said that until the boy felt in his own conscience that he was beginning his kind actions with his mother he must always feel that such other actions as he might perform were useless. His kind actions must be done only from a sense of duty, and not from the hope of thanks, reward or approval of any kind. This is a hard way to start scouting, but it would ultimately result in the boy reaping the richest rewards for duty done from pure motives. He hoped that each boy would put up a good fight to win through in the struggle against himself. He instanced cases in which boys were regularly hunting out cases of hardship and doing their little bit to ease pain, and were doing it practically unknown to their mates. In scouting in the fields on Saturday afternoons the scoutmaster came into close personal touch with every boy, and a strong attachment sprang up between each member. Boys would sink their own pleasuie in order to contribute to that ot the troop. They would always stand up tor their comrades, and in bad reports and severe trouble would do their best to help the one in trouble. Boy Scouts are always courteous, first to their own mother and sisters and then to all others, and are courageous in fighting, when the need comes, lor the weak against the strong. A boy scout must be a man, and a true man at that.

It is understood that there is a good prospect ot a troop being formed in Foxton.