THE BOY SCOUTS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 20 July 1929, Page 11

THE BOY SCOUTS

INTERNATIONAL JAMBOREE

On 31st July the third International Jamboree of tlio Boy Scouts Association will be opened at Arrowe Park, Birkenhead, by the Duke of Connaught, and on Ist August the Prince of Wales, as the King’s representative, will go into camp for two days with 50,000 scouts, drawn from 25 different parts of the Empire and 41 other nations of the world. This year’s jamboree—at which Prince George, as commodore of the Sea Scouts, will also be present, and services of thanksgiving will be attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal Bourne—has a special significance of its own. The first experimental camp,, composed of just over a score of boys from the public, secondary and elementary schools, was held by Sir Robert Baden-Powell 22 years ago on Brownsea Island, off the Dorset coast. But the organisation, which is now to celebrate its coming of age, did not come into being till the following year. From it has grown a woi’ld-wide fraternity, with about 2,000,000 members. In 1920 and 1924, when the first two jamborees were held in London and Ccipenhagen, the camp totals were respectively 1200 and 6000, or, together, only about one-seventh of the number of scouts that will assemblo this month in England. The ideal of the training which Sir Robert Baden-Powell has spread abroad through the world with such triumphant success is the development of body, mind and spirit through methods which appeal to the boy and encourage his self-education, the “London Times’’ remarked recently. To him it has been given not only to conceive and cherish a, singularly high ideal, but to ; a very large degree to see it realised with his own eyes and in his own lifetime. To this one man, and after him to the devoted band of helpers that ho has gathered round him, the world owes a debt of deep gratitude. He lias probably done more practical work for its peace and happiness than any statesman of his generation.