Staying prepared

[fgoodwin]

Staying prepared

 

http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/staying-prepared/2007/03/22/1174153249402.html

http://tinyurl.com/2ntqaa

 

Michael Duffy

March 24, 2007

 

Baden-Powell's movement has thrived, in one form or another, for 100 years, writes Michael Duffy.

 

THE BOY SCOUTS were formed 100 years ago this year. It has been one of the most successful international organisations, involving some 350 million people over the century, and exists today in almost every country. As with many other movements, from Christianity to Marxism, it involves a structure of fairly independent local cells linked by a strong culture based on an impressive book. In this case that is Scouting for Boys, written by founder Robert Baden-Powell.

 

Scouting for Boys was one of the best-selling books of the first half of the 20th century, and subsequent versions in different nations have also sold well, yet they've rarely attracted the attention of reviewers. The American critic Paul Fussell regretted this when he wrote about the 1979 American version, observing that literary criticism generally ignores the fact that "a vigorous literary-moral life constantly takes place just below (sometimes above) its vision".

 

The scouts' culture deserved attention, he thought, because it involved so many people and, here the old soldier grew a little waspish, "since the right sort of people don't know much about it". The American Official Boy Scout Handbook he considered "among the very few remaining popular repositories of something like classical ethics, deriving from Aristotle and Cicero".

 

Scouting for Boys was first published in 1908, and a successor is used by Australian scouts today. A comparison suggests that the sort of advice considered appropriate for boys has changed dramatically. This tells us a great deal about how life has changed.

 

Scouting for Boys is vast in scope. The knots and camp craft are there, but compared with later editions it is far more concerned with ethics and values. It reflects an era more confident about giving tough advice, perhaps more confident that boys needed such advice, and also an era when concerns about Britain's preparedness for a likely war with Germany gave scouting a rationale and impetus lacking today.

 

Baden-Powell had fought in the Boer War and was inspired by the cadet corps formed during the Siege of Mafeking. Officials were shocked by the poor physical condition of many of those seeking to join the British Army. The book notes: "Our standard of height in the army was 5 ft 6 in in 1845; it was FOUR INCHES less in 1885."

 

Baden-Powell sought to inspire British youth with the example of colonials, such as "the bushmen and drovers of Australia" who "can find their way anywhere, are able to read meaning from the smallest signs and foot-tracks; they know how to look after their health when far away from any doctors, are strong and plucky, and ready to face any danger, and always keen to help each other. They are accustomed to take their lives in their hands, and to fling them down without hesitation if they can help their country by doing so."

 

Some of this was to be borne out by Australians' enthusiastic involvement in World War I.

 

The challenge for Baden-Powell was to imbue British city children with values that grew out of a rural existence. At the beginning of the book, he suggests how any adult can form a patrol of scouts on his own initiative, buying badges, medals, patrol flags, crests and tracking irons at low rates from an address provided. The adults he calls instructors and it is their job to teach the values espoused by scouting, many of which are summarised in Baden-Powell's famous maxim: "Be prepared." For instance, in teaching first aid through role-playing, "it is a great thing to spatter the patient with blood to accustom the rescuer to the sight of it, otherwise it will often unnerve him in a real accident. Sheep's blood can be got from the butcher's shop."

 

Instructors were later to become objects of ridicule among superior people (George Orwell once declared: "All scoutmasters are homosexuals.") But most of them have been fine individuals who have done a lot of good, not least by passing on the excellent advice contained in Scouting for Boys, which was the movement's text until World War II.

 

There are exhortations about shooting animals only for food and the dangers of smoking. The scout smiles and whistles under all circumstances and saves every penny he can, "so that he may have money to keep himself when out of work, and thus not make himself a burden to others; or that he may have money to give away to others when they need it". (Bees, we are told in the section on insects, are a model community because they respect their queen and kill their unemployed.)

 

Baden-Powell approved of Sherlock Holmes and explains how close observation can reveal character. There is advice on judging a man by the way he wears his hat: "If on the back of his head, he is bad at paying his debts: if worn straight on the top, he is probably honest but very dull."

 

As for facial hair, our author confesses: "I was once accused of mistrusting men with waxed moustaches. Well, so, to a certain extent, I do. It often means vanity and sometimes drink."

 

In the modern era, when we're more concerned with exceptions than rules, such advice would be unthinkable. But as advice for young men making their way in the hard world of Edwardian Britain, this sort of authorial confidence, often expressed with a flash of humour, must have been deeply appealing. Then there is the section on slaughtering livestock: "Cattle are generally poleaxed, or a spike is driven into the forehead with a mallet, or a shot or blank cartridge is fired into the forehead, or a big, sharp knife is driven into the spine just behind the horns, the animal's head having first been securely tied down to a cartwheel or fence." Such advice is no longer given.

 

As might be expected, Baden-Powell had much to say about keeping yourself healthy. It is important to clear "out all dirty matter from inside your stomach, which is done by having a 'rear' daily, without fail; many people are the better for having it twice a day". He warns against self-abuse, which "brings with it weakness of heart and head and, if persisted in, idiocy and lunacy".

 

Women are covered with three simple rules: don't lark about with a girl whom you would not like your mother or sister to see you with; don't make love to any girl unless you mean to marry her; and don't marry a girl unless you are in a position to support her and children.

 

There's plenty of racism to be found in Scouting for Boys, though behaviour often trumps nationality and even race. Colonials are generally superior to Britons as are, regarding certain characteristics, savages and "even Japs". Baden-Powell was in favour of religion, provided it was "a practical working religion rather than a too spiritual one at first". But any religion would do: "When you meet a boy of a different religion from your own, you should not be hostile to him but recognise that he is like a soldier in your own army, though in a different uniform."

 

The scouting movement was something of a precursor of the League of Nations and the United Nations, with its emphasis on the equality of people from all nations, provided they accepted its values and its frequent international jamborees.

 

The modern reader is struck by how often the book's appeal comes from harping on threats and fears, whether of poverty or invasion. There is, after all, no point in being prepared if there's nothing to be prepared for. In 1908 there was: "Every boy should prepare himself, by learning how to shoot and to drill, to take his share in defence of the Empire, if it should ever be attacked. If our enemies saw that we were thus prepared as a nation, they would never dare to attack, and peace would be assured ... Don't be disgraced like the young Romans, who lost the empire of their forefathers by being wishy-washy slackers without any go or patriotism in them."

 

THE MOVEMENT outlasted the empire, of course, and is still strong around the world, with about 28 million members.

 

As with most movements, it has shrunk in the developed world. As the dwindling membership of religions and political parties shows, people these days are not joiners. In 1970 there were about 120,000 scouts, guides, cubs and brownies in Australia. Today there's half that number.

 

Scouting Australia chief executive Richard Miller thinks the decline has occurred because "young people have so many more options now. There's also a lack of understanding of what scouting can contribute."

 

The main book used by Australian scouts is the Fieldbook for Australian Scouting. The new edition appeared in January, full of good advice about practical matters such as setting up camp and surviving bushfires. The fieldbook reflects modern interests, such as risk management and the environment and modern prosperity, with chapters on flying, snow activities and planning for foreign travel.

 

The values have pretty much dropped out. Even the chapter on citizenship that adorned the previous, 1994 edition has gone. It had advice that would have benefited many adults. On giving a talk: "Never write out your talk and then read it to the troop: it looks awful." On meetings: "It is not much of a meeting if nothing is decided." Mr Miller says this information is still available for scouts elsewhere and the movement continues to be an important source of good values. Still, it's interesting to see the ebbing of values from the scouts' main text. No classical ethics here.

 

But parents need not despair. Last year The Dangerous Book for Boys hit the stores. Written by brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden and unrelated to the scout movement, it contains some of the material that disappeared between Scouting for Boys and the fieldbook.

 

There's nothing about risk management but plenty of inspiring stories (for example, the Battle of Thermopylae, Scott of the Antarctic) and information about the Ten Commandments, grammar, the rules of cricket and shooting, and skinning and cooking a rabbit. The advice on girls is a bit more detailed than in Baden-Powell's book. Here young men will learn that "it is important to listen" and "when you are older, flowers really do work".

 

"Play sport of some kind," the authors urge. "It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it replaces the corpse-like pallor of the computer programmer with a ruddy glow. Honestly, this is more important than you know."

 

Still, although it advocates courage, initiative and the knowledge of interesting stuff, even The Dangerous Book for Boys doesn't attempt to preach with the scope and certainty of Baden-Powell's book. Conservatives might regret this but I suspect it, and the pragmatic emphasis of the fieldbook, warrant quiet celebration. The ethics of Scouting for Boys have not been lost; they have been adopted by such a large proportion of society that the scouts, at least in Western nations, no longer need to preach them. If we laugh at Baden-Powell now, we do so because we can afford to, thanks in part to his success in civilising males.

 

All this is good. As is the fact our boys no longer need be prepared for the vast range of disasters that hung over the youth of 1908.

 

Scouting for Boys: a Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship, by Robert Baden-Powell, first edition 1908, republished 2004, Oxford University Press; The Dangerous Book for Boys, by Conn and Hal Iggulden, HarperCollins, 2006; Fieldbook for Australian Scouting, Scouts Australia, third edition, 2007.