Mark Heller, age 10, of Monroe, Michigan, for his question:
Who started the Boy Scouts?
Every sensible man and boy knows that there is no better training in this world than the Boy Scouts. Every boy can and should join the fascinating organization. If you have a friend who is not a Boy Scout, refuse to listen to his excuses for not joining a scout troop.
Sometimes a young fellow feels clumsy about talking to a grown man that he happens to respect and admire. Well, there is no need to feel small or way behind. Here is a trick that works every time. Just walk right up and ask the man whether he was ever an Eagle Scout. That question is guaranteed to break the ice between man and boy. Most probably he was indeed once a Boy Scout who tried hard, and maybe succeeded, in becoming an Eagle Scout. In any case, the ice is broken and man and boy have a whole world of experiences to gab about on an equal footing.
This, of course, is not the best of reasons for belonging to the Boy Scouts. Any halfway good and true Scout can list pages of better reasons. There are a few moments now and then between all those fascinating activities when a Scout can pause and wonder. And sooner or later he is bound to wonder who had the original idea, who set up the marvelous organization and got it rolling along.
He was born more than a century ago in the English city of London. Some of the English have two family names joined together with a hyphen. This man was named Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden Powell and he was a soldier. He served his country in India and Afghanistan for years. In South Africa he triumphed over impossible hardships and earned world wide renown. Everyone respected the name of Robert Baden Powell. Later he became Lord Baden Powell.
Like any good soldier, he was much more than a military man. He was concerned about the men who fought beside him. He felt that their schooling had not prepared them for the rigorous outdoor life they must face on the battlefield. And he did something about that. At the age of 50, he organized the first camp of Boy Scouts and planned a fascinating program for its 20 members. That was in 1907. The great plan began in a very small way, but it worked and what was much more important, everybody had a wonderful time making it work. An organization with those qualities just had to expand.
The Boy Scout movement soon spread through all of England but the whole country was too small to hold it and it spread to other countries. One story tells how a Boy Scout directed a visiting American through one of those pea soup London fogs. The American was a Chicago publisher named William D. Boyce. On his return home, he worked with a group of sensible men to found the Boy Scouts of America.
The Boy Scout organization is now 60 years old, a world wide organization, bigger and better than ever. Any boy aged 8, 9, or 10 can apply to the nearest troop and join the Cub Scouts. On or after his 11th birthday he can join a Boy Scout Troop: A boy must join up to learn all the wonders of scout hood and he will never be sorry all the days of his life. So don't hesitate or make excuses. Join the five million other boys and men who belong to the Boy Scouts of America.