Lord Mayors and Mayors.—This scheme might suggest some useful forms of instruction for the newly-authorised vacation schools.
Schoolmasters and Teachers.—This scheme may, I hope, supply an additional means by which to get hold of the more unruly boys and to continue out of hours the practice of the theory which they have learnt in school. Unruly boys are often the best, once you have got the right side of them. A Commission on our schools has recently shown that there is an excess of book instruction in many of them; possibly if one day a week were devoted to scouting it would greatly benefit both the teachers and the scholars mentally and physically.
Clergymen.—Clergymen would, I think, find in scouting a good means of keeping the wilder spirits among their boys in some kind of order, and also of arousing the loafers among them into some sort of energy and interest in life.
Parents.—Parents might be apprehensive that this course would lead their sons to imbibe too much the spirit of adventure and romance, and those whose sons are wage-earners would fear for their getting unsettled and wasting their working hours on a useless fad. But to such I would point out that the course is purposely designed to teach the boys useful knowledge in a form that will attract them, and it can be carried out entirely on Saturday afternoons and Sundays as a counter-attraction to that Sunday loafing which is the ruin of so large a proportion of our young men.
Ladies.—To ladies interested in the care and education of girls, I think this scheme might supply a suggestion for an attractive organisation and valuable training. The experiment of a somewhat similar camp for factory girls has been such an unqualified success as to lead one to hope that scouting camps might with advantage be employed for the rising generation of girls as well as boys.
Boys' Clubs and Brigades.—Officers of Boys' Clubs, Boys' Brigades, Church Lads' Brigades, University and Public Schools Missions, Cricket Clubs, and Cadet Corps, but most especially officers of Rifle Clubs, will, I hope, find in this scheme an additional means of attracting recruits and of maintaining their interest in their corps after the first glamour of it has worn off.
Legion of Frontiersmen.—The Legion includes many an old scout in its ranks who could at once take up the instruction of a few boys and youths and do really valuable work for the Empire, while reviving for himself many a delightful experience of camp and prairie life.
Ex-Army Officers.—Then there are a number of ex-Army officers, keen and capable, but without occupation, who would here have a great opportunity for the exercise of their special gifts and of their prestige among boys for doing a great national good with very little trouble and expense to themselves.
Country Squires.—Members of county families might do much among their tenants and villagers by making good Englishmen of their lads, somewhat on the old feudal lines, by means of scouting.
Y.M.C.A.—Everyone recognises the keenness and go-a-head manliness of the members of the Y.M.C.A. and Polytechnics in all parts of the kingdom, and I am convinced that if these men could see their way to do a good turn to the rising generation of their countrymen they would take it up with ardour, especially since this kind of work is becoming a part of their policy. It is these gentlemen that I have specially in my eye in suggesting this scheme, as being the men who can, if they wish, get hold of practically the whole of the British boyhood by means of scouting. If every member of the Y.M.C.A. took a friend as his second-in-command and six boys as pupils, each of them being required to bring in another recruit, and then acting as leaders and instructors to further patrols of six, there would at once be the commencement of a great "snowball" movement for good.