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3·

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,