II
BUT it was late in February before they saw Camp Hancock. Meanwhile the boys continued at school and Ted, in his leisure, read everything he could find about the cantonments in Georgia and elsewhere in addition to keeping up with the war news as usual. For more than a year now he had read the papers eagerly every day and in consequence, as Hubert expressed it, could "talk a blue streak" about the war. Hubert, who was no reader and was content to get his news at second hand, thought Ted knew all about the situation in England, France, Italy, Russia and even Germany. Obviously this was a slight exaggeration, but Ted did grip much current information, and he was never unwilling to give Hubert and other boys the benefit of his knowledge.
During the time of waiting Ted received a letter from his Uncle Walter in Georgia which greatly interested him.
Bring your Boy Scout uniform when you come down [it read.] I was glad to hear you had earned the right to wear it by first-rate examinations, and I want to see you in it.
This pleased Ted the more because he did not often wear his khaki in North Carolina. The reason for this was that his sensitive and quick perceptions unerringly informed him that the sight of it was not quite agreeable to his perfectly polite Aunt Mary and Uncle Fred. Having failed to pass the examinations, Hubert had no Boy Scout uniform and Ted's was a reminder that the son and heir had not measured up to the standard of the orphan cousin.
And perhaps [Uncle Walter's letter continued] your soldierly uniform may make an impression on the slackers hiding in the Okefinokee if we should run across any of them when we take that hunting trip. It is reported that some of the backwoods boys of this county evaded registration and are now camping on an island far in the Okefinokee in order to escape being drafted into the war. The sight of your uniform and a tongue-lashing from me, with well-grounded threats of prosecution and punishment, may make them ashamed of themselves and perhaps even scare them into their duty.
The suggested effect of Ted's uniform on fugitives from the draft was little more than jest, but Ted accepted it quite seriously and was at once thrilled with ambition and aspiration. His prospective hunting trip into the Okefinokee took on the character of a mission in his country's service. Was he not actually in the country's service now that the President had made the 370,000 Boy Scouts of America "dispatch bearers" in the matter of the circulation among the people of "bulletins of public information"? Would not the government also be willing and even pleased for him to undertake to show the hiding draft-evaders the error of their way? What if he could really find them and persuade them to renounce their cowardly course, thus contributing more fighters to the armies of Uncle Sam! But when he spoke of his glorious plan, the unimaginative and unaspiring Hubert merely said:
"If you can get at them, you'll talk a blue streak about the war, all right; but what good will that do such fellows? They don't care. Papa says slackers can think only of their own skins."
"There's nothing like trying," insisted Ted, accustomed to discouraging comment and not in the least inclined to abandon his scheme.