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Boy Scouts Association Dinner. Toronto. 5th February, 1938.

III

This is the third time since I came to Canada that I have had the honour to attend your annual dinner. I need not tell you that I find it one of the pleasantest occasions in the year. It gives me an opportunity of meeting many friends, and it gives me a chance of getting a bird's eye view of our progress. Although I am always on the road and meeting Scouts everywhere, it is only on this occasion that I can get our work into proper perspective.

Of our progress there can be no doubt. Take the question of Scout Leaders. Since I came to Canada there has been an increase of 868, or nearly 14 per cent. But we want a bigger increase. I want to double that figure and add 1730 before I leave, for without the Leaders one cannot get and the boys. This last year in the Maritime Provinces, and in Ontrio, and among the Salvation Army Scouts, there have been substantial additions to our numbers; but here have been losses in the Western Provinces, and the result is that out total membership at the end of 1937 is just about the same as it was at the end of 1936. Well we must do better than that. We use a familiar phrase of the Great War. That means that we have to add 14,000 recruits within the next two years. I appeal to Canada to give us these 14,000 more boys and 1,700 more Leaders, and I am quite certain that my appeal will be met, for you don't want your Chief Scout to leave Canada a disappointed man.

There are two things I want to say to you this evening. We are accustomed to repeat - I repeat it frequently myself - that

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the chief possession of a nation is its youth, and that is true. We are accustomed to repeat the Latin tag that "the greatest reverence is owed to youth." And that also is true. We must be most careful in the handling of youth, scrupulous to avoid discouragement and misdirection. But in this handling we must show commonsense. You remember the story of the Scots girl who complained of her lover that he was senselessly civil". We must not overdo our respectfulness. Youth has immEnse merits, but it has also great defects - it is eager, bold, adventurous, but it is also ignorant, inexperienced, unbalanced - it must be, or it would not be youth.

Now there is a poisonous creed in some quarters today which says that children must never be checked or reprimanded, or in any way repressed; a creed based on a false and trashy psychology. Every human being has to be checked and repressed, and if they do not get used to it in youth they will have to endure it in later life, when they are far less able to bear it. There should be nothing namby-pamby about our attitude to the young entry. We should treat it with affection and sympathy, but also with candour and with humour. "We are none of us infallible, not even the youngest of us," was the saying of a famous Cambridge don. I remember in a witty play in my young days that one of the characters declared that "the oldfashioned respect for youth was fast dying out." Well, I hope the wrong kind of mealy-mouthed respectfulness will die out. We should We should treat our young as healthy vigorous plants, and not as tender exotics in a conservatory, giving them all honest encouragement, but not being afraid, when they are silly, to tell them so. This discipline, this

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friendly frankness is what every wholesome young man needs, and desires.

That, gentlemen, is the line which the Scout movement has always taken, and it is a most valuable corrective to the faddists who would have children grow up untrained and uncorrected. We give our Scouts the ritual of a service, and without something of the kind no human being can be happy. We give them companionship, which rubs off their corners, we give them a fine code of conduct, and we offer a free development to every healthy youthful instinct. We keep them in close touch with nature, which is the greatest of all educators. We prepare them to be, in the fullest sense of the word, men and citizens.

The second reflection I would offer you tonight is this. Let the older men here cast their minds back thirty years, before the Scout movement had properly started. Suppose that then you had been told that in thirty years the Scout movement would have spread over the whole earth and have a membership of hundreds of thousands of every race and nation. Suppose you had been told that in its ranks there would be no distinctions of class or religion, that its creed would be based upon profound moral truths, that its fundamental principles would be peace among men and the service of our fellows. Suppose you had been told that great international gatherings would be held periodically, where Scouts from all over the world would meet and fraternise. What would you have said? I think you would have said that, if such a miracle came about, then our civilisation would be secure and there would be no more strife among men.

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Yet the miracle has happened. But other things have happened also. In these thirty years we have seen the greatest and cruellest war known to history. Today we find the Scout movement flourishing, but we also find the nations at loggerheads and peace very far off, and the world near the edge of the abyss. What have we to say about it? That the Scout movement, for all its high purpose has failed, that its goodwill is a mere drop in the bucket of the world's ill-will? No, gentlemen, I think not. I think that is a false deduction. I think that those who thirty years ago made a hopeful forecast were nearer the truth. I believe profoundly that no great and honest effort of mankind can fail in the long run. The leaven may be slow to work, but it does work; and steadily leavens the whole. I believe that the clouds which darken our sky today will pass, and that when the sun shines again we shall discover that we have builded better than we knew. The optimists are wiser prophets than the pessimists.