The Human Boy and the War

by Eden Phillpotts

But in the meantime, of course, there is a pretty rosy chance he may get slain himself. Not that he'd mind, if he knew his side was on top and going to conquer. Only, perish the thought, as they say.

TRAVERS MINOR, SCOUT

Before the fearful war with Germany began, Dr. Dunston was not very keen about us joining the Boy Scouts on half-holidays. He liked better for us to play games; and if you didn't play games, he liked you to go out with Brown to botanize in the hedges. It was a choice of evils to me and Travers minor, because we hated games and we fairly loathed botanizing with Brown. Unluckily for us, he was the Forum master of the Lower Fourth, and so we had more than enough of him in school, without seeing him pull weeds to pieces on half-holidays and talk about the wonders of Nature. For that matter, he was about the wonderfullest wonder of Nature himself, if he'd only known it.

But after the War began, old Dunston quite changed his attitude to the Boy Scouts, and, in some ways, that was the best thing that ever happened for me and Travers minor, though in other ways it was not.

I'm called Briggs, and Travers minor and I came the same term and chummed from the first. We had the same opinions about most things, and agreed about hating games and preferring a more solitary life; but we were very different in many respects, for Travers minor was going to be a clergyman, and I had no ideas of that sort, my father being a stock broker in the "Brighton A" market. Travers minor was more excitable than Travers major, though quite as keen about England, and after being divided for some time between the Navy and the Church, he rather cleverly combined the two professions, and determined to be the chaplain of a battleship. His enthusiasm for England was very remarkable, and after a time, though I had never been the least enthusiastic about England before, yet, owing to the pressure of Travers minor, I got to be. Nothing like he was, of course. He used to fairly tremble about England, and once, when an Irish boy, who didn't know Home Rule had been passed, said he'd just as soon blow his nose on the Union Jack as his handkerchief--which was rot, seeing he never had one--young Travers flew at him like a tiger from a bow, and knocked him down and hammered the back of his head on the floor of the chapel. As soon as he had recovered from his great surprise, the Irish boy--Rice he was called--got up and licked Travers minor pretty badly, which he could easily do, being cock of the Lower School; but, all the same, Rice respected Travers, for doing what he did, and when he heard that Home Rule was passed, he said that altered the case, and never cheeked the English flag again.

Then Dunston changed towards the Boy Scouts, and said such of us as liked might join them; and about twenty did. We were allowed to hunt about in couples on half-holidays; and the rule for a Boy Scout is always to be on the look-out to justify his existence when scouting, and to assist people, and help the halt and the lame, and tell people the way if they want to know it, and buck about generally, and, if possible, never stop a bit of scouting till he's done a good action of some kind to somebody. Of course, we had to do our good actions in bounds, and Travers minor often pointed out, as a rather curious thing, that over and over again there were chances to do good actions if we'd gone out of bounds--sometimes even over a hedge into a field.

But he generally found something useful to do, and I generally didn't. The good action that occurred oftenest was to give pennies to tramps, but Travers did not support this. He said:

"I dare say you've noticed, Briggs, that all these chaps who ask us for money have got starving families at home. Well, if it's true, they ought to be at home looking after them. But it isn't true. As a rule, they spend the money on beer. And when you ask them why they haven't enlisted, they all say they're too short, or too tall, or haven't got any back teeth, or something."

We were scouting the day Travers minor pointed this out, and that was the very afternoon that we met the best tramp of the lot. I should have believed him myself and tried to help him; but Travers, strangely enough, is much kinder to animals and dumb creatures in general than he is to men, especially tramps, and it took a very clever tramp to make him believe him. But this one did.

He was old and grizzled and grey, and his moustache was yellow with tobacco. He was sitting rolling a cigarette in the hedge, and as we passed together in uniform with our scout poles, he got up and saluted us with a military salute.