Baden-Powell Boy Scouts
There were two distinct organizations of Boy Scouts by the time of the Great War. One was known as the "Baden-Powell Boy Scouts," which was of a military nature. The other was "The World Scouts," organized by Sir Francis Vane, of England, the distinguished advocate of peace. The "World Scouts" was started to counteract the military tendency of the Baden-Powell movement. It was but little known in America, but the Baden-Powell organization was being persistently pushed in every State of the Union. There was a well matured organization which was promoting it through the Y. M. C. A., the churches, the Sunday schools and by adroit systematic advertising in the newspapers.
There was much criticism of the Baden-Powell Boy Scouts, and Mr. West, the American secretary, and other promoters, have denied that it was of a military nature, but the facts were against them. The inventor and the present commander-in-chief of the Boy Scouts was Major-General Sir Robert Stevenson-Smyth Baden-Powell, "hero of the great battle fought at Mafeking," in the Transvaal, with the Boers, and he ranks with Lord Kitchener and Lord Roberts of England as a fighter. He belongs to the English nobility and was an intimate friend of the Czar of Russia. He was a professional man-killer, and he won great distinction in killing the peaceful Boers because England wanted the rich diamond mines of the Transvaal.
He went to Russia and induced the Czar to issue a proclamation requiring 3,500,000 peasant boys between the ages of 12 and 15 to be organized into Boy Scouts, and receive military training by regular army officers. The Associated Press dispatches July 1911, in giving an account of the review of the Boy Scouts by the Czar, said the authorities "hoped that the early awakening of enthusiasm for the army will operate against the spread of seditious Socialism among the youth of Russia." In Russia the Boy Scouts are under regular army officers and are designated as the "Juvenile Army."
The Boy Scout movement, as proposed by Lord Baden-Powell, met the approval of the Emperor of Germany, who, it has been stated, was promoting it in that country "to strengthen the army." The movement was receiving the support of other rulers and plutocrats of Europe. An item appeared in some of the papers of the United States: "Lieutenant Simons, who was visiting this country, in command of the Australian boys, gives an account of the Boy Scout movement as they have it in Australia. He states that already 100,000 boys are registered, and the purpose was to continue the work until Australia has 600,000 well-trained soldiers. Every boy of thirteen was registered. For two years he will be drilled (without a gun). At 15 years old the rifle will be put in his hands, and he will be drilled until he was 18."
That it does create in the lads a yearning to become soldiers was certain. No one in Europe thought of claiming that the Baden-Powell Boy Scouts are not being trained for war.
Scouting was not so much an organization as a movement. The scout movement was neither military nor antimilitary. It has been criticized by pacifists because the boys wore uniforms and perhaps did some drilling. On the other hand it has failed of support by some who wanted to see to the uniforms added rifles, and the boys made young soldiers. Baden-Powellshaped the movement as non-military. Soldiering was a man's game, and the young boy needs an untrammelled boyhood, stimulated by the manysided activities of scouting.
For all that, the scout movement may fairly be counted a military asset of great value. First of all, boy scouts learn to take care of themselves in the open, to march long distances, to become, in short, physically fit,-and this was a very important military consideration, especially when it was recalled that upwards of 50% of those drafted in the last war were far from fit. Further, the scout training includes some subjects directly useful in a military sense, such as mapping, first-aid, signalling; and in general greatly increases mental alertness and initiative. Officers in the Great War found that soldiers previously trained as scouts knew better how to take advantage of cover, and were superior in a dozen ways to those without such training. Finally, the scouts, if properly handled, learn obedience and selfcontrol; their "gang spirit" was directed into disciplined team-work; and through the "daily good turn" and the helpful attitude toward the other fellow, they learn how to render a patriotic devotion. to a cause outside of, and bigger than, themselves.
It was a program for moulding boy-material into citizens. The Headquarters of the Boy Scouts of America in New York points the way-it approves the appointment of all scout officials, publishes handbooks, magazines and other literature, supplies uniforms, and the like. Each local council coordinates the work in its own vicinity, conducts rallies and competitions, makes inspections, provides for central camps. But the real unit in scouting was the troop, and the real leader the scout-master. Some score or more of eager boys (not less than twelve years of age), a man-comrade who hasn't altogether forgotten how to be a boy himself and the scout program does the rest.
Pretending to be an old butterfly collector, Baden-Powell inspected Austrian fortifications in the Balkans. He skillfully disguised his sketches as images of butterflies. He visited Turkey, Italy and other countries, including Russia. This was in 1886. Maneuvers took place in Krasnoye Selo, during which new searchlights and a new military balloon were to be tested. Robert Baden-Powell and his brother managed to enter the restricted area without much difficulty. William Hilcourt's biography of Baden-Powell says: "They greeted everyone who was greeted by everyone, and passed by the sentries, who asked them nothing." When the guards left for lunch, the brothers were able to get a good look at the balloon gondola, and then remained in the restricted area until the evening to observe the tests of the searchlights. Both the searchlights and the balloon did not seem as interesting to them as they expected.
In 1887, Baden-Powell was sent to South Africa, where blacks offered desperate resistance to the British colonialists. He took part in suppressing the uprising of the Zulu, Ashanti and Matabela. In his memoirs, Baden-Powell later wrote that because of his sudden attacks, the blacks nicknamed him “The Wolf that Never Sleeps.” In 1899, Baden-Powell was promoted to colonel and appointed commandant of the Mafking fortress, an important strategic and administrative point and railway junction. Mafking was located in the Cape Colony, near the border of Bechuanaland, a British protectorate.
The Boer War began on October 12, 1899; Boers from the Transvaal surrounded Mafking. The siege lasted seven months (217 days), until 17 May 1900, when Field Marshal Lord Roberts, advancing on the Transvaal capital Pretoria, sent a special detachment to liberate Mafking. The garrison consisted of 1,250 men, but Baden-Powell mobilized all men capable of bearing arms. Among them were boys 12-14 years old. Of the most efficient, a detachment of scouts was formed, who were tasked not only with observing enemy positions, but also with carrying letters through the ring of Boers besieging the fortress. Every man - every boy - counted. For the boys of Mafeking had been collected, drilled and uniformed, and now acted as messengers, orderlies, and sentinels. They carried on these duties throughout the siege, and at the end of the war received their medals like grown-up soldiers.
In England after the Boer war, there were thousands of under-developed, flabby youths, poor material indeed for citizens. Baden-Powell, now a general, remembered Mafeking.
Baden-Powell decided to test his theories in practice. To do this, he gathered a group of 22 boys and spent 8 days with them in the summer of 1907 in a tent camp on Brownsea Island, off the south coast of England (Dorset). He collected these English boys in Surrey, talked to them, taught them, and uniformed them. Everyone liked the camp, and at the beginning of 1908, the book “Scouting for Boys” was published in six separate notebooks. The need for out-of-school education for teenagers has been felt for a long time, and many attempts have been made to create children's organizations in different countries, but what Baden-Powell proposed turned out to be the most suitable.
In the spring of 1908, the whole of England was covered with a network of spontaneously arising detachments. Then the movement spread to the colonies. A year later, King Edward VII received the first parade of fourteen thousand scouts from England. In 1909, the first Girl Scout groups appeared. The Scout Association of Great Britain received its legal status by a king's charter on January 4, 1912.
At the end of December 1910, General Baden-Powell arrived in St. Petersburg. O. I. Pantyukhov and V. G. Yanchevetsky, the founder of the legion of “young intelligence officers” in St. Petersburg, learned about this from the newspapers and hastened to meet the author of the book “Young Intelligence Officer”. Baden-Powell invited his new acquaintances to visit England and get acquainted with the organization of scouting work on the spot, and he himself soon left for an audience with Emperor Nicholas II, and then to Moscow, where a banquet was held in his honor by local “young scouts”. Baden-Powell did not have time to get acquainted with intelligence work in St. Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo.
That Baden-Powell was a talented spy was evidenced by a book he wrote immediately after returning from South Africa in 1901. It’s called “To Help Scouts.” It gave general advice on methods of observation and deduction to improve the quality of training of soldiers. In addition to purely military advice, other requirements for a scout formulated by the BP are noteworthy here: he must be strong, healthy, active, a real scout has good eyesight and hearing, he was a good horseman and swimmer, he can explore and read those around him. All these requirements were later presented to young scouts.
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