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Boy Scouts Association Dinner. 1937. Toronto Feb 27.

I am very glad to be present here tonight. This is the second annual Scout dinner which I have attended since I came to Canada. Last year we had to announce certain changes in our organisation, and this year we can see the fruit of them. We have made admirable progress, for we have substantially increased the number of Scouts, we have very largely increased the number of Scout leaders, and we can show a remarkable increase in the number of training certificates. We are well on the way towards that membership of 100,000 which has long been our aim, and which I hope to see realised before my term of office in Canada is finished.

I have now been rather more than a year as Chief Scout for Canada. I have travelled a good deal up and down the country between the Atlantic and the Pacific and I hope before I have finished to go to both the eastern and the western Arctic, and to visit every province more at my leisure. I feel that I have only touched the margin of this great land, but I am determined before I leave it, really to get to know something about it. I am not sure that I won't end by knowing more about it than most Canadians.

Meantime let me record a few impressions gained during my travels. My first is the immense assets of the Dominion, assets so rich and varied that it would not be easy, I think, to find their parallel elsewhere in the world. We have only begun to scrape the edge of our great inheritance. I am speaking of material assets, but even greater, I think, are the human assets, the character of the people. I have not often admired any human quality more than the fortitude and hopefulness of the men and women in the drought areas

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of the Prairies. But my strongest impression of all, I think, is of Canadian youth. Wherever I went, both in town and country, it seemed to me that I saw great hordes of good- looking, healthy, vigorous children. Even in the stricken areas the children looked well, which meant that their parents were sacrificing a good deal to their welfare. That is a great thing. No doubt there is still much to be done in the way of health services and education, but at any rate you are giving the youngest generation a magnificent chance.

I have seen, too, a good deal of the older boys and girls, the material on which our movement draws. About them I want to say several things. In the first place there is a real, widely diffused desire for physical fitness. That, of course, is instigated and fostered by the older people, but it also represents a genuine instinct in youth. All these young people want, as they say, to "get into shape". Again, I have been struck with the way in which even town boys keep in touch with wild nature. Your admirable summer camps teach the lore of the bush; they harden and toughen the campers and introduce them to many of those crafts which are as old as human society. You find the same spirit in Germany today, and it is a spirit which I should like to see universal in the Empire. Again, I have been struck by what I would call the disinterested curiosity of your young people. They really want to know about things, and they are full of zest for living. There is no kind of decadence about them. They turn clear, candid, interested eyes towards the future. Lastly I would praise their good-comradeship. They are excellent mixers. They do not pass a stranger by on the other side of the road; they want to know all about him and get into touch with him. At the

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first there may be a scrap; but - well, a scrap is not a bad form of introduction.

If I am right in my view it means that we have here all the materials in ample measure for our Scout movement. There is no country in the world where scouting should have more success. The purpose of scouting is to organise all these fine natural instincts not to over-organise them, as they seem to be doing in Germany and in Italy, but to provide channels where they can have full play, and that reasonable discipline which is needed by all human effort.

I would offer you with all respect one or two reflections drawn from my year of experience. The first and cardinal aim of the Scout movement is to foster the community spirit. Now the community spirit is deep in a boy's nature. Every boy is by nature a gangster in the best sense of that word. He has to get together with other boys properly to enjoy himself. But these gangs should not be too exclusive or too bellicose. I well remember in my own boyhood how we organised ourselves into little troops which, like Highland clans, were perpetually on the war-path. If another tribe were too strong for fisticuffs we fought them at a distance with bows and arrows. Now what Scouting does is to make the gang a fine and generous thing, where the principle is not exclusion but inclusion, and where the motive is not combat but comradeship. That means that our movement is a true democracy. The key-note of democracy, remember, is not mere freedom, though that is important. It is far more that higher freedom which comes from the sense of brotherhood.

My second reflection is the enormous value of this Scout training in what, I fear, is a primary duty of every nation today,

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the ability to defend itself. I do not mean that I want to see our movement infected with the poison of militarism. The less Scouting imitates soldiering the better. But if it should ever be necessary, in the words of our national song, "to stand on guard for Canada" , what better foundation could you have than this sense of brotherhood, this feeling of partnership, this love and devotion for our native land'? The real power of defence does not lie in accumulations of war material, or even in the most perfect military system. In the last resort it depends upon the quality, the courage and fortitude of the people.

Again, Scouting is a counteractive to one of the greatest dangers of modern life. The discoveries of science and the advance in the material apparatus of life have tended to mechanise society, to make everyone a cog in a great impersonal machine. But human society can never be mechanised, and if you try, it will cease to be human and cease to be a society. Scouting cultivates the individual and the personality. Moreover, it brings boys from town and country into close touch with that wild nature which can never be mechanised. I believe that on us, the free democracies, there lies the special duty of insisting upon the immense importance of personality, for, in many countries in the world this seems to be forgotten. And there is no better agent in this task than the movement with which we are connected.

I would offer you one last reflection. It is a platitude that the most vital thing in a country is its youth - a platitude but also a fact, for even a truism is sometimes true. That applies

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especially in the case of a land like Canada, where your development has only begun, and where your future depends very largely upon the brains and character of your young men. You have questions to solve which require the enterprise and courage of youth, and in your development you have to face new scientific problems which require the best brains of youth. There never was a land in which young men needed a keener edge to their spirit. Canada is like the sleeping princess in the old fairy-tale; before she can be awakened the young prince must cut his way through the dark forest to reach the enchanted palace. Every Canadian boy is like the younger son in the fairy-tale. He starts off with his mother's blessing and his lunch in his pocket, and not much else. He knows there are all kinds of dragons and giants and enchantments to be vanquished, but he knows, too, that there are tremendous rewards for a quick brain and a stout heart. Can you offer anything better to youth than such a wide horizon?