SCOUT NOTES

Southland Times, Issue 21101, 5 June 1930, Page 14

SCOUT NOTES

(By

Pathfinder.)

Scouts are requested to cut out these notes-and keep them in a scrap book. There was a fine rally at the scout camp “ at Oreti on the King’s Birthday. The day was gloriously fine and at 9.30.ab0ut 80 scouts crossed by motor-cycle or car to the ■ camp site. The locality is ideal for the purpose. The valley runs east and west, flanked on both sides by sand ridges well covered with flax and culminating in a substantial sandhill on the west. The ground is dry, and well covered with tussock and grass. Access is by a rough car track which branches off from the Oreti Sands road about 300 yards past the Oreti Bridge. There is plenty of work ahead to put this track into good ord«B The valley is subdivided into six strips of 50 yards each and the various troops have selected their allotments by ballot. Six groups were to be seen busily engaged yesterday clearing their plots, building camp fires,* sinking wells and planting trees. Water is found at a depth of six or eight feet. Some two hundred trees and shrubs were planted yesterday and should enhance the charm of the spot in the years to come. Half a dozen car loads of visitors arrived during the afternoon and were very much impressed by the attractiveness of the valley and the activity of the. scouts. Subject to final arrangements a meeting of the Scouters Club will be held at St. John’s on Thursday, June 12, at 7.30 p.m. All troops will concentrate during the next two months on scout training. Tenderfeet should earn the second class badge and second class scouts should earn the first class badge. A Word to Parents and,Others. The aim of the Boys Scouts Association is to develop good citizenship among boys by forming their character —training them in habits of observation, obedience and selfreliance—inculcating loyalty and thoughtfulness for others and teaching them, services useful to the public and handicrafts useful to themselves; also to encourage kindness to animals. The association has no military, political or sectarian aims. The Southland District is in charge of the District Commissioner, Mr F. G. HallJones, who has the co-operation and assistance of the District Committee, comprising Messrs C. Bradfield, C. Campbell, Davies, Gow, H. H. Royds and C. E. Watts, all busy men who devote considerable time, and attention to the movement. The. younger boys are the W’olf Cubs, the older boys are the Scouts, and older boys still are Rovers. The unit of the movement is a troop of which there are six in Invercargill. each run by a scoutmaster, who ‘ has.the assistance of a troop committee of parents and others. Most troops have associated with them a cub pack. 1 As one of the aims of the movement is to teach boys self-reliance, money should be earned and not solicited. Troops must be self-supporting; scouts should save and earn, with the assistance of the troop committee, a reasonable proportion of all costs incurred. Next week —The work of boy scouts. The Boy Scout. Just suppose that instead of sitting down and reading lhe paper, you were in camp with a few tried and chosen comrades, scouts for choice. /upper is over and cleared away and we are all gathered around the camp lire. The tents loom white against-the dark background oi tiie bush. Tnere are millions of stars overhead. The wind is making low, mysterious incantations over the sand mingling with the roll oi the breakers on the oeach; Now and theh a twig snaps sharply or there is a faint, odd rustle in the shrubs. The flames have bl. zed up and now have died down, leaving warm, glowing rosy embers —beautiful, sci.itillant, live things. We have sung all the songs we know from ‘'Once upon a Time” to the "Long, Long Trail.” At last a silence has fallen, one oi those pleasant silences that come between friends, full of contentment and happiness and a sense of shared well-being. We drift into talk, the sort of talk one drifts into more easilv perhaps,'under stars and around a camp fire than anywhere else in the world, talk of things that really matter, though we speak of them so seldom by daylight. What'if somebody were to say to you: "What’s the use of being a Scout? You could do all the things Scouts do without belonging to the Scout movement.” You could of course hike and swim and lay trails and camp out and tie knots and do all the rest of it without being a scout, but would it be quite the same thing? Would you find the same satisfaction in it, done that way? If not, why not? The Fun of Togetherness. Half the fun of doing things scouts do comes from doing them with their own "gang,” their own particular crowd, that is, the troop or patrol. This "togetherness" is a rather big thing, and the deeper you get into if the bigger it is. You wolves and cubs are not just eight boys doing the same things. You are yourselves as individuals, plus yourselves us a closely knit group —a unit. Being a member of a troop or a patrol gives you a sense of loyalty and good comradeship, of belonging together, sticking together, through thick and thin, "each for all and all for each.” That is a splendid thing. Just think back to the last time you went to camp. Remember how you felt, swinging along with your pals, up hill and down dale, going swimming, setting up tents and gathering firewood and getting nipper together, sitting ’round afterwards with the shadows of the flames flickering across your faces? Wasn’t that “togetherness” a wonderful thing, didn’t it stir something deep in you? “What’s the use of being a scout?”’(Well if they don’t understand, maybe it isn’t much use trying to tell them. We know.) (To be Continued.)'