Table of Contents

Rovering To Success

CONTENTS

(Chapter 1)

(Chapter 2)

(Chapter 3)

(Chapter 4)

(Chapter 5)

(Chapter 6)

(Chapter 7)

CONTENTS

HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH RICH-OR POOR

ROCKS: YOU ARE LIKELY TO BUMP ON

I. HORSES

II. WINE

III. WOMEN

IV. CUCKOOS AND HUMBUGS

V. IRRELIGION

ROVERING

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(Chapter 1)

HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH

RICH - OR POOR

I was once caught in a gale when paddling in a birchbark canoe across a lake in Upper Canada. It was a pretty exciting experience while it lasted, but well worth while.

We had voyaged along rivers and streams, sometimes in the smooth, sometimes through the rapids, but always amid the ever-changing glories of forest scenery.

It was a new experience to come out of our stream on to the wider expanse of the lake and, after starting out in sunshine, to find ourselves presently under a darkening sky involved in a rising gale and a choppy sea.

The frail little canoe, which before we had merely looked upon as a vehicle for carrying us along the river, was now our one hope of life. If she shipped a sea, or if she touched a snag (and there were plenty of them about) we were done for.

Our paddle, instead of being looked on as a mere propeller, became our one means for dodging the attacks of waves and of keeping us going. All depended on the handling of that one implement.

"In a four-hour run across an open bay you will encounter over a thousand waves, no two of which are alike, and any one of which can fill you up only too easily, if it is not correctly met," writes Stewart E. White, in that delightful book of his, The Forest; and he proceeds to tell you exactly how you deal with them.

"With the sea over one bow you must paddle on the leeward side. When the canoe mounts a wave you must allow the crest to throw the bow off a trifle, but the moment you start down the other slope you must twist your paddle sharply to regaln the direction of your course.

"The careening tendency of this twist you must counteract by a corresponding twist of your body in the other direction. Then the hollow will allow you two or three strokes wherewith to assure a little progress. The double twist at the very crest of the wave must be very delicately performed or you will ship water the whole length of your craft.

"With the sea abeam you must paddle straight ahead. The adjustment is to be accomplished entirely by the poise of the body. You must prevent the capsize of your canoe when clinging to the angle of a wave by leaning to one side.

"The crucial moment, of course, is that during which the peak of the wave slips under you. In case of a breaking comber thrust the flap of your paddle deep in the water to prevent an upset, and lean well to leeward, thus presenting the side and half the bottom of the canoe to the shock of water.

"Your recovery must be instant, however. If you lean a second too long, over you go."

Jumpy work!

The author goes on to tell successively, in similar detail, how to deal with a sea coming dead ahead, from a quarter or from dead astern.

In every case all depends on your concentrated attention, pluck and activity. The slightest slackness and down you go. But the contest has its compensation. "Probably nothing can more effectively wake you up to the last fibre of your physical, intellectual and nervous being. You are filled with an exhilaration. Every muscle, strung tight, answers immediately and accurately to the slightest hint. You quiver all over with restrained energy. Your mind thrusts behind you the problem of the last wave as soon as solved, and leaps with insistent eagerness to the next. It is a species of intoxication. You personify each wave; you grapple with it as with a personal adversary; you exult as, beaten and broken, it hisses away to leeward. 'Go it, you Son of a gun,' you shout. 'Ah! you would, would you ?- think you can, do you?' And in the roar and the rush of wind and water you crouch like a boxer on the defence, parrying the blows but ready at the slightest opening to gain a stroke or two of the paddle. You are too busily engaged in slaughtering waves to consider your rate of progress. The fact that slowly you are pulling up on your objective point does not occur to you until you are within a few hundred yards of it. Then don't relax your efforts; the waves to be encountered in the last hundred yards are exactly as dangerous as those you dodge four miles from shore."

Yes - and it is just the same with a busy life.

THE INTENTION OF THIS BOOK

The whole thing-the early voyage through the easyrunning stream, and then coming out on to the broad lake, the arising of difficulties, the succession of waves and rocks only avoided by careful piloting, the triumph of overcoming the dangers, the successful sliding into a sheltered landing-place, the happy camp-fire and the sleep of tired men at night - is just what a man goes through in life; but too often he gets swamped among the difficulties or temptations on the rough waters, mainly because he has not been warned what to expect and how to deal with them.

I have quoted a few of Stewart White's practical hints from his experiences in paddling through sea-ways: I want in the following pages to offer you similar piloting hints from my own experiences of dealing with the different snags and waves that you are likely to meet with in paddling through your life-ways.

Among these rocks and breakers are those that can be labelled in the terms of the old toast, "Horses, Wine and Women," with the addition of Cuckoos and Cant. You are bound to come across most of them in your time. In the following chapters I propose to show you there are good as well as dangerous points about these rocks, and also how by "rovering" you may not only get round them, but also derive advantage and make your way to success.

HANDING ON ADVICE

It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winnlng successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience. Why can't he pass it on so that they start with his amount of knowledge to the good to begin with, and so get on to a higher scale of efficiency and sense right away.

It is with that sort of idea in my mind that I feel induced to jot down a few of the difficulties that I have come across in my time, and tell how I have found it best to deal with them. I don't say "how I dealt with them," because sometimes I went the wrong way to work, but I saw afterwards through my own mistakes what I ought to have done.

So this book is not intended for experienced men to read. I warn them off. It is for you young men that I write, you who have got the sense to look ahead, anxious to see where you are going and what you are to do in life. And I must say I think that you of the new generation are a bit more level-headed in this direction than your predecessors in the past.

I suggest that we call this book "Rovering to Success".

You will see the further reason for the term in the last chapter.

By Rovering I don't mean almiess wandering, I mean finding your way by pleasant paths with a definite object in view, and having an idea of the difficulties and dangers you are likely to meet with by the way.

You must expect a good many of these snags.

I have myself tasted some of the bitters and many of the sweets of life, in most parts of the world, so you need not suppose that I am talking entirely through my hat in putting these ideas before you.

Life would pall if it were all sugar; salt is bitter if taken by itself; but when tasted as part of the dish, it savours the meat. Difficulties are the salt of life.

Goethe's mother gave a good principle for life when she said, "I seek no thorns and I catch the small joys. If the door is low I stoop. If I can remove the stone out of my way I do so. If it is too heavy I go round it"

In other words, she didn't butt in, looking for trouble, but took things as they came and made the best of them.

And that is the way to reach success.

THE ONLY TRUE SUCCESS IS HAPPINESS

What is success?

Top of the tree? Riches? Position? Power?

Not a bit of it!

These and many other ideas will naturally occur to your mind. They are what are generally preached as success, and also they generally mean overreaching some other fellows and showing that you are better than they are in one line or another. In other words, gaining something at another's expense.

That is not my idea of success.

My belief is that we were put into this world of wonders and beauty with a special ability to appreciate them, in some cases to have the fun of taking a hand in developing them, and also in being able to help other people instead of overreaching them and, through it all, to enjoy life - that is, TO BE HAPPY.

That is what I count as success, to be happy. But Happiness is not merely passive; that is, you don't get it by sitting down to receive it; that would be a smaller thing - pleasure.

But we are given arms and legs and bralns and ambitions with which to be active; and it is the active that counts more than the passive in gaining true Happiness.

TWO KEYS TO HAPPINESS

The rich man has his limitations. He may have two or three houses and dozens of rooms in each, but he can only occupy one of these in turn, since he only has one body.

He is no better off than the poorest in that way. He may look at and admire the sunset, enjoy the sunshine, or the view, but the poor man can do that just as fully.

If the poorer man has the sense to do two things in life he can enjoy it just as well as the millionaire, and probably better.

The first is:

Not to take things too seriously, but to make the best of what you have got, and to look on life as a game, and the world as a play-ground. But, as Shackleton has said, "Life is the greatest of all games; but there is the danger of treating it as a trivial game.... The chief end is to win through honourably and splendidly."

The second is:

To let your actions and thoughts be directed by Love. By Love with a capital "L" I don't mean falling in love and so on. I mean the use of the kindly spirit which you show when you do good turns to other people, when you are kind and sympathetic, and when you show gratitude to others for kindness done to you. That is, Good-will. And Good-will is God's will.

A HAPPY PEOPLE

The happiest people I know as a nation are the Burmese; their brightness and cheeriness are proverbial. Kindness to animals is one of their greatest "weaknesses"; no Burmese will kill an animal even if it is to put it out of pain. He will not eat flesh; and he generally treats animals almost as pets. Men, women and children all seem to enjoy with equal gaiety the beauty of their country, the flowers, the sunshine, and the forests, with smiles, singing and laughter. They are singularly free from money-grubbing, almost to the extent of being what some people might call lazy. They are content to raise of money or crops just what is sufficient for their wants; and for the lest they merely go in for enjoying life. But that enjoyment is not entirely idle enjoyment. Every young man goes through a period of training as a Phoongyi or monk; however well-off he may be he becomes for the time being penniless in voluntary poverty. He lodges austerely in a monastery, giving himself up to prayer and meditation, and taking up the teaching of boys in the ethics of religious knowledge. And he learns to render help in the best way to those who need it. So that when he comes out into the world he is a man with a sense of service for others and possessed of simple-minded tastes such as will make him a good citizen.

Fielding Hall, in writing of the Burmese in his Soul of a People, has said:

"Wherever else they may succeed or fail as individuals, the Burmese nation will always be the greatest in the world -because it is the happiest."

HAPPINESS

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor.

Yet comparatively few people are happy.

I believe the reason for this is that the majority don't recognise happiness even when it is within their grasp.

Did you ever read The Blue Bird by Maeterlinck?

It is the story of a girl named Myltyl and her brother Tyltyl, who set out to find the "Blue Bird of Happiness," and they wandered all over the country searching and searching but never finding it, till in the end found that they need never have wandered - Happiness, the Blue Bird, was there where they chose to do good for others, in their own home.

If you think out and apply the inner meaning of the legend it is a help to finding happiness within your reach when you thought it was in the moon.

Lots of fellows look on their work as drudgery, and even their daily journey to and from their work as a grind. And they keep looking forward to their holidays as the time when they will be having some real enjoyment. Too often when the holiday comes it is rainy and cold, or they've got the 'flu and the long-looked-for outing turns out a frost.

The truth is it is no use putting off happiness for some future day, but the way is to enjoy your life all the time. The wise man does not bank only on a vague Heaven in the dim future. He relises that he can make his own Heaven for himself here, in this world, and now; and that the better Heaven he makes now, the better is he building for the future. So eventually he will enter into the true Heaven prepared for him - the haven of rest and peace and thanksgiving.

PLEASURE IS NOT HAPPINESS

Many people think that "pleasure" is the same thing as "happiness". That's where they take the wrong turning.

Pleasure is too often only a distraction. You may take pleasure in looking at a football match or a play, or in reading a good story, or in criticising your neighbours, or in over-eating, or getting drunk. But the effect is only temporary; it lasts but for a time. Indeed, in some cases the reaction is anything but pleasurable - there is the headache next morning!

Happiness is another thing, it sticks by you and fills your life. You find that Heaven is not just a vague something somewhere up in the sky, but is right here in this world, in your own heart and surroundings.

Arnold Bennett defined happiness as "satisfaction after full honest effort".

But there is more in happiness than that. For one thing, as he admits himself when he says that "almost any marriage is better than no marriage," there is intense happiness in the loving comradeship of a mate and the eager trustmg companionship of your children.

The late Sir Ernest Cassel, who most people would point to as "a success in life," confessed to failure in the end. He had gained great riches and power and position and had achieved successes beyond the ordinary in his commercial, industrial and sporting activities. But at the end of his life he admitted that the great thing - happiness - was missing. He was, as he put it, "a lonely man."

"Most people," he said, "put too much belief in the theory that wealth brings happiness. Perhaps I, being well to do, may be entitled to say that it is not so. The things that are most worth having are the things that money cannot buy."

There is at any rate some comfort and encouragement in that remark for the man who is poor.

So there is also in the Cingalese proverb, which says, "He who is happy is rich, but it does not follow that he who is rich is happy."

THE POOR RICH

My wife and I did a queer kind of trip once. We went for a walking-tour on the edge of the Sahara Desert, where it breaks up into the arid stony wilderness of the Aures Mountains. We had with us our two mules to carry our camp-equipment, and two armed Arabs as guides and guards.

In the course of our journey we crossed the road made by the French which runs to the desert town of Biskra, and here in place of the usual strings of camels meandering along, we saw motor-cars tearing across the plain.

Inside were tourists being rushed to their destination - the big hotel in Biskra - without knowing anything of the joys of tramping it, of finding your own food (even to the spotting of tiny cracks in the soil which told of truffles underneath) and cooking it in the open and bedding down at night under the stars.

As we saw them, with one impulse we both ejaculated, "Poor millionaires"!

Yes, if you have riches you miss a terrible lot of fun.

ACTIVE WORK BRINGS HAPPINESS

But even the happiness of a home would not entirely fill the bill because it does not extend sufficiently far beyond self and therefore risks being selfishness. And selfishness is the root of discontent.

True happiness is like radium. It is a form of love that increases in proportion to the amount that it gives out, and that is where happiness comes within reach of everyone - even the very poorest.

The Rev. Canon Mitchell wrote, "Don't ask God to make you happy, ask Him to make you reasonably useful, and I think - I really think - that happiness will then come of its own accord."

Happiness seems to me partly passive but largely active.

Passive, because the appreciation of the beauties of nature, of the glory of the sunset, of the majesty of the mountains, of the wonders of animal life, of the scent of the camp-fire, coupled with the joy of a happy home, produce a sense of gratitude to the Creator that can only be satisfied by some active expresslon of it; the effort to be helpful to others largely supplies the want. It is the active doing of good that counts.

A joyful home coupled with ability to serve others gives the best happiness.

A boy was brought up before the bench, as being incorrigible; he urged as his excuse that is was God's fault. "If God did not want me to be bad, He would save me and make me good."

It reminds me of one of the Boer commanders who, when he was captured by our troops, inveighed bitterly against President Kruger for not having supplied him with sufficient artillery.

He said that when he asked for it the President gave him the characteristic reply: "If God wants us to win the war we shall win it whether we have artillery or not." To this he had replied, "That is all very well. God has given you a stomach with which to enjoy roast goose, but He expects you to do the plucking and cooking of that goose for yourself."

There is a truth underlying this. God has given us in this world all that is needed to make life enjoyable, but it rests with us to make the most of it or to make a mess of it. But we only have a short time to live, and it is essential, therefore, to do things that are worth while and to do them now. One step is not to be content to have your life and ideas wholly wrapped up in bricks and mortar, trade and politics, money-making and other man-made transient things that do not matter.

But look round and learn as much as you can of the wonders of nature, see all you can of the world and its varied beauties and the interests that God offers you. You will soon realise which are worth while and which are not to a life of happiness.

In my own case I had for years past said to myself "In three years' time I shall be dead. I must therefore get this and that in shape and finished, or it will be too late."

This habit has led me on to hustle and get things done which might otherwise have been put off till to-morrow. Incidentally - and I am very thankful for it - it led me to visit various parts of the world without that fatal waiting for a "better opportunity".

In a sort of day-dream I once saw my arrival, after I had done with this life, at the Gate and St. Peter questioning me. He said to me in a kindly way, "And how did you like Japan?"

"Japan? I lived in England."

"But what were you doing with all your time, in that wonderful world, with all its beauty spots and interesting places put there for your edification? Were you wasting your time that God had given you to use?" So I promptly went to Japan.

Yes, the thing that troubles very many men at the end of life is that only then do they see things in their right proportion, and too late they recognise that they have wasted their time, that they have been doing things that were not worth while.

PADDLE YOUR OWN CANOE

There is a tendency for you as a young man starting out into life to feel that you are but one of a crowd, and so can drift along with the rest and you will be all right, like the lady who, when remonstrated with by her spiritual adviser with the warning that her present life would lead her to hell, replied: "Well, other people have to bear it. So must I."

Well, that is a rotten bad tendency. Remember, you are you. You have your own life to live, and if you want to be successful, if you want to be happy, it is you who have to gain it for yourself. Nobody else can do it for you.

When I was a youngster a popular song was "Paddle your own Canoe," with the refrain

"Never sit down with a tear or a frown

But paddle your own Canoe."

This was meant as giving guidance to going through life - and very good too.

In my picture of you, you are paddling your canoe, not rowing a boat.

The difference is that in the one you are looking ahead and sending yourself along all the time, while in the other you are not looking the way you are going but trusting to the steering of others, and consequently you may bump into snags before you know where you are.

Lots of fellows try to row through life in that way. Lots more prefer to sail passively and to be carried along by the wind of luck or the current of chance; it is easier than rowing - and quite as fatal.

Give me the fellow who looks ahead and actively paddles his own canoe - i.e. shapes his own course.

Paddle your own canoe; don't rely upon other people to row your boat. You are starting out on an adventurous voyage from the stream of childhood, along the river of adolescence, out across the ocean of manhood to the port you want to reach.

You will meet with difficulties and dangers, shoals and storms on the way. But without adventure life would be deadly dull. With careful piloting, above-board sailing, and cheery persistence, there is no reason why your voyage should not be a complete success, no matter how small the stream in which you make your start.

SELF-EDUCATION IS NECESSARY

Remember that on leaving school you have not been educated fully to become a man. Mainly you have been shown how to learn.

If you want to win success, you must now finish your education by educating yourself. I suggest that this should take three main directions, viz.:

To make yourself capable for the responsibilities:

- of your profession or trade.

- as a future father of children.

- as a citizen and leader of other men.

When I left school I found that I was, as it were, in a dark room, and the education I had been given was as a lighted match which showed how dark the room was, but that a candle was available for me to light with that match and use for my future guidance in the room.

But it was only one room in this world of many rooms. It is well to look into the other rooms, that is into other lines of life in neighbouring centres or other countries, and see how people live there.

You may discover that though your own room seems dark and dismal, there are ways of letting in more sunshine and better outlook if you choose to use them.

But in making your life a success in this way, you will be doing a bigger thing than bringing about your own personal happiness - you will be doing something for the nation!

It may seem odd to you that one single fellow, and one who is not a big bug, can help the nation. But it is a fact all the same.

God made men to be men.

On the other hand civilisation, with its town life, buses, hot-and-cold water laid on, everything done for you, tends to make men soft and feckless beings.

That is what we want to get out of.

You often see it said that the Public School education which the more well-to-do boys get is no good. It is good, but not so much for what is taught in the class-room as for what is learnt on the playing-field and out of school.

A boy there learns that clean play and true sportsmanship, straight dealing and sense of honour, are expected of him by his comrades. They discipline him. Until he has earned the right to make his voice heard, he gets very definitely put in his place. In other words, he is "licked into shape". There is a considerable hardening process about it which is all good for him in the end.

In the old days the Spartans put their boys through a very rigorous training in hardness and endurance before they were allowed to count themselves as men, and so do many savage tribes of the present day.

In Central Arica, in the South Sea Islands, among the aborigines of Australia, one still sees it in full swing. I have known it too with the Zulus and Swazis and Matabele, where the trainlng took the form of sending a boy out alone into the bush, when he arrived at the age of young manhood, in order to prove himself.

He was painted white with bismuth, which cou!d not be washed off and which lasted for some weeks before it wore off.

He was given an assegai or short spear, and that was all, and was turned loose to live as best he could in the jungle.

He had to track, stalk and kill his game for his food and clothing, and make his own fire by rubbing sticks for striking sparks, and to keep himself hidden, since the rule was that if seen by other men while he was still white, they would kill him.

Well, a fellow who came out of that ordeal and returned to his kraal at the end of it was acclaimed as having proved himself no longer a boy and was given his status as a man.

Unfortunately, for the ordinary boy in civilised countries, there is nothing of this kind. We badly need some such training for our lads if we are to keep up manliness in our race instead of lapsing into a soft and sloppy, nation.

That is why I say that if you choose to prepare yourself for success as I suggest in these pages, you will not only be doing yourself good, but you will be doing a good thing for the country, "You'll be a MAN, my son," and you will thus be making one more man for the nation.

And what is more, your example will spread and others will make themselves men like you.

GO FORWARD WITH CONFIDENCE

Well, I've indicated to you in outline some of the "rocks" that you will meet with in the course of your voyage through life. There will be others.

But this I can tell you for your comfort, that I have been up against a good many ugly-looking rocks in my time, but in every case I have found that as one got round there was a bright side to them.

Over and over again I have had something bad in prospect, but when I have gone into it the results have been very much better than I expected.

This has happened so often that now I rather welcome a black outlook, as I feel certain that it is going to turn out much better than it appears at first sight.

I have got a little totem hanging over my writing-table. I have it there because it is an inspiring little figure.

It helps to tune one up when there's an ugly or a difficult job on hand. It is a man on a horse, tackling an ugly-looking dragon. St. George is his name.

I have got a lot of drawings, both ancient and modern, of him.

There is one I like better than the rest, not because it is a better picture, for it isn't; but because in it St. George is shown with a devil of a grin on - he is tackling the dragon with a smile, cheerily, and he means to win. And that is the way to tackle any difficulty however ugly it may look.

So don't be content merely to defend yourself and to ward off the worst of what you may be facing, but go at it with a determination to defeat it and to get advantage out of it some old how.

WHAT OTHER FELLOWS HAVE SAID

The best way to succeed in this world is to act on the advice you give to others (Anon.). (Sounds rather like a hit at myself!)

The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving (Holmes).

Success does not depend so much upon external help as on self-reliance (Abraham Lincoln).

Be not a shrub but a cedar in your generation (Sir Thomas Browne).

We are not what we think we are, but what we think, we are (Anon.).

The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be happy as kings. (R. L. Stevenson.)

Hump your own Pack (Canadian saying).

Happiness is more than a grin on one's face, it is the glory in one's heart. It is the consciousness that one's machinery is working perfectly at the job for which it was designed (R. Parlette).

PADDLE YOUR OWN CANOE

For a man 'tis absurd to be one of a herd,

Needing otheis to pull him through;

If he's got the right grit he will do his own bit

And paddle his own canoe.

He'll look without dread at the snags on ahead,

Wine, Women and Highbrows too;

He won't run aground but will work his way round,

With a smile, in his own canoe.

Chorus:

So love your neighbour as yourself

As the world you go travelling through,

And never sit down with a tear or a frown,

But paddle your own canoe.

(Parody.)

(Chapter 2)

ROCK NUMBER ONE

HORSES

DICK was not bad at heart. He was a great friend of mine, and I taught him lots of little tricks. For one thing, he would stand for hours without moving away if I left him with orders to stop there. On one occasion, on the North-West Frontier of India, this was jolly useful to me. One of the horses of my squadron had broken away from the camp in the night and disappeared. This horse, A44, was one of the best in the regiment, and was ridden by the regimental-sergeant-major, so everybody was in a great stew about his disappearance, especially the colonel.

So I started off on Dick to try and find him. It had been raining and snowing all night, so I soon found his tracks and followed them, sometimes in mud, sometimes in snow. They led me off into wild country among the mountains, often over rocky stony ground where tracking was most difficult.

After some hours of work, and after going over some miles of country, the tracks led straight up a mountain where it was much easier for me to go on foot So I got off Dick and told him to wait there, and off I went scrambling up the rocks and gullies, until at last I was rewarded by finding old A44, shivering with cold, bleeding from many cuts, having evidently been terrified out of his life. It took a long time to get him down the mountain-side again, but when at last we reached the foot, there was Dick calmly awaiting us - and I was soon riding home in triumph, leading my prize.

Poor A44 never got over it - he was never the same horse again, and at last got a bad fever and died. But the colonel was very pleased with what Dick and I had done in getting him back - and it was jolly lucky for me later on.

It was in this way.

Dick was my “first charger”. That is, although he was my own property, I was not allowed to use him for any purpose except for riding on parade or just quiet riding about. I must not drive him in harness, or ride him hunting.

Well, one day when I was riding him near our camp, I saw a fine wild boar scampering across the fields. This was too much for me. I called to my Indian groom to hand me my spear, and off I went on Dick, forgetting all rules and orders, to catch that pig. After a great gallop we got close up to him, and I reached forward to lunge the spear into him, when Dick stopped short and stood up on end. He very nearly sent me flying to the ground by doing so. The reason for this was that among other tricks I had taught him was that whenever I made a low bow to anybody he was to rear up on his hind legs and paw the air. So, when I stooped over to stab the boar, Dick thought I was bowing, and played his part accordingly; and stood up.

The pig might easily have escaped us while Dick was playing the ass, but the pig was clever, and he said to himself; “Now’s my time to kill those two,” so instead of running away he turned and came for us.

As he rushed at us I prepared to receive him on my spear, but as I had to lean over to do this up went Dick again, my spear missed, and the boar got a good cut with his tusks into Dick’s hind legs, fortunately missing his stomach. A second time the same thing happened. But when he came at us yet again I gave Dick such a dig in the ribs with my spurs as made him jump into the air instead of rearing, and as the boar passed under him I jabbed the spear down into his back and killed him.

But the awful thing was how to face the colonel and explain these wounds in my first charger’s legs.

“Please, sir,” I said, “a boar attacked me, and I had to defend myself!”

“Yes, that’s all very well,” said the colonel, “but how did you come to have a spear in your hand when riding your first charger? Let me see, isn’t that the horse that helped you to catch A44 when he ran away? Yes. Well, youngster, don’t go riding your first charger after pig again.”

HORSES

I love a horse. A roll of honour hangs on my wall of the different horses I have had as my companions at different times of my life.

They have been good friends to me, whether campaigning, hunting, playing polo or racing.

Racing is a truly attractive sport. It stirs the blood to see those splendid animals, the best of their breed, trained to the minute, putting forth all their powers to win under the direction of masters of the art of race-riding.

But like everything else, watching races can pall on one by constant repetition, just as eating good roast beef continually would pall if there were not some salt to savour it.

There are not many regular race-goers who do not savour their racing by having a bit of m6ney on the race. In fact, a fellow who attended meetings without betting would be looked upon as a bit of an eccentric.

It is the chance of winning or losing one’s money that supplies the constant attraction rather than simple admiration of the horse.

In fact, a very considerable portion of the racing sportsmen do not bother to attend the meetings, but do their betting comfortably in their own armchair and the telephone.

They thus make themselves the playthings of chance if not the dupes of something worse. They do no good to anybody - unless it is the bookies.

Akin to the so-called national “sport” of horse-racing comes that of boxing.

A good boxing competition gives one the sight of fine men in their prime, trained to the ounce, showing the highest skill, pluck and endurance in carrying out their attack and defence under strict rules of fair play and good temper.

I must confess, however, personally to having enjoyed a boxing tournament of Boy Scouts far more than that of a big and much advertised fight of champions at the Albert Hall.

One was the real sporting effort for the sake of sport, the other being a money-making scheme on a large scale.

In the Albert Hall case, each of the performers received a huge fee of some thousands of pounds for a few minutes hard punching (and a good deal of clinching), while the onlookers paid heavily for the privilege of seeing them do so, the man who really scored being the financial promoter of the show.

This does not compare well with the “good old days” when Tom Spring fought Jack Langan for the championship belt of Great Britain at Worcester in 1824.

The fight ran to seventy-seven rounds before Langan was finally knocked out.

Some sport, and not much money-grubbing about it!

FOOTBALL A GRAND GAME, BUT -

As an old footballer myself I love football, as I expect you do: you and I look upon it as one of the finest games in the world. There is nothing like it for giving health and strength, activity and pluck, discipline and good temper and, above all, the great lesson of playing the game unselfishly for your side and not for your own glorification.

A grand game! and an exciting one to watch, and for this reason some young men are “sucked in” with the rest of the crowd to become regular lookers on instead of regular players. It is always much better to play any game, however inexpertly, than to stand on the side lines and cheer the playing of others.

TAKE WARNING

Nowadays there are few sports which are not the subject of gambling, and you may think that little harm is done by it Everybody does it, you may argue. It is human nature to gamble, and you can’t alter human nature. So why worry?

I know there is satisfaction in winning, whether by luck or by study of form, but personally I hate to see true sport turned into a money-making concern by promoters and bookmakers concerned only in making a personal profit. The one aim of these people is to take your money in one way or another, and as one who has seen a good lot of this humbug I only want to sound a warning. It is, then, your look-out if you are taken in.

Many a man has made himself rich through betting - that is, by being a bookie - but no one of my acquaintance has done the same thing from the other side of the fence - that is, as a punter. It’s worth thinking about.

WHAT IS THE HARM OF BETTING?

That is a question you may naturally ask. Well, the truth is that it is a fool’s game for the bettor; and unless he is very well off it is a dangerous game, too.

The sight of someone winning a pile has tempted many a fellow to chuck slogging and to try for a turn of luck: it looks like a new way of getting rich quickly, but too often it proves to be the way to get rapidly broke. Moreover, it tends to breed a nasty trait in character - cupidity. And where cupidity comes in, honesty goes out.

Lads of fellows have thought betting was an easy way to make money, and have plunged deeper than they could afford. Then, perhaps, has come the worse crime when they have to steal or embezzle money to pay their debts.

That is the wretched story that one sees repeated over and over again in the papers, but the warning is rarely heeded. The fact is that millions of pounds every year change hands between bookmakers and their clients, and you have only to see the opulent style in which most bookmakers live to know which side benefits by the exchange.

TRUE SPORT

After reading all this you will think me an awful spoil-sport. Years ago bull-baiting was put a stop to by a lot of people who drew up a petition to Parliament against it.

Their opponents afterwards said of them that they did this not so much on account of the cruelty to the bull, as because they hated seeing other people enjoying themselves. Well, you may think that it is much the same with me. But it isn’t. I have enjoyed true sport and enjoy it still as much as anybody; indeed, I think I enjoy it more than most people. And better than any sport I like to see other people enjoying themselves, and the more there are of them doing it the happier I feel.

But such a lot of fellows go off on the wrong tack, imagining they are out after sport when they pour their hard-earned wages into the pockets of other people. In my case it is a question of “once bitten, twice shy”. I once made a bet when a boy at school, and lost. I backed a horse named Pax for the City and Suburban. I put eighteen-pence on him, and went broke over it! And that was the end of my betting at race meetings.

On the other hand, I have always loved amateur racing when I knew the horses and their riders, or better still, when I had a horse in the race trained and ridden by myself. That is a very different thing from looking on at a lot of strange horses running or to betting on a race from an armchair at home. It was active sport, not passive paying out.

What is sport? To my mind it is the active playing the game by the individual in place of being merely one of the crowd looking on or having your sport done for you. Why, I don’t even have my hair cut by another man; I do it for myself - so far as I have hair!

HOW TO GET FUN AND MONEY HONESTLY

You will say: “It is all very well to criticise looking on at sport; but -

What is a fellow to do with his spare time?

How is he to make money?

How is he to get enjoyment if he doesn’t go to races and football?”

Well, it is a bit of a conundrum to lay down any programme that will suit every kind of young man, whether he is rich or poor, or of moderate means, and whether he lives in a town or away out in the country, for winter or summer, singly or in company, indoors or out, day or evening.

Could you suggest an answer yourself?

I guess not. But here is a suggestion in broad principles that may be helpful.

The great secret is to have as your motto these words -

DON’T LOAF

To float over a dead calm sea is uninteresting, but it a very different thing in a nice breeze when there is a bit of a sea on and you always have a wave in front of you to be negotiated, and no sooner are you over that one than another rises before you.

In paddling your way through life you will find the joy of it in always having a fresh wave of work or activity ahead of you to tackle.

So, in answer...

To your question of what

to do in the matter of My suggestion is, go in for

SPARE TIME, TRUE SPORT AND HOBBIES

MONEY, SUITABLE PROFESSION AND THRIFT,

HAPPINESS. SERVICE FOR OTHERS.

SPORT

By true sport I mean any kind of game and activity that does you good and which you play yourself instead of looking on. I know that playing-fields are scarce at many centres, and they won’t accommodate all the fellows who want to play. Still, there is room for thousands more than those who use them to-day, and also there are playing-fields of a different kind which so far have been little made use of. I could suggest a good many games to meet one condition or another, but I allow it is hard to fit them in to suit all.

The main thing is for you to think out for yourself which sport would best meet the conditions and surroundings in which you find yourself.

But if you can’t hit off a line for yourself I can suggest one at any rate that will meet all the above conditions, and you will find it described in the last Chapter, on Rovering.

A TRUE SPORT

Under the head of a true sport, and one which is open to all alike without much expense, is mountaineering.

“Mountaineering?” you may say. “A lot of mountaineering you can do in England.”

Well, you can do a good deal, and I will show you how. To climb a twenty thousand foot mountain is a glorious achievement, but don’t think that you are hanging on by your eyelids all the while: the difficulty that tests the climbing powers of your fingers and toes only comes once m a while. If you fall there, you go down two or three thousand feet before you bump. But you can get an equally effective fall at two or three hundred feet in climbing an equally difficult rock face at home in your own country. You can get just as much excitement out of climbing on a small mountain, which needs just the same nerve, endurance, and skill, and the same good comradeship on the rope.

At the same time it is a very dangerous practice if you have not been carefully trained for it and have not an -experienced climber to lead you.

“It isn’t the height of the mountain that counts so much as the difficult bit to be overcome.” That is what a leader of an expedition to Mount Everest said to me in talking of the possibilities of rock climbing for young men in the British Isles. The only wonder is that it is not better known and more practised as a sport This is largely because fellows don’t realise that they can carry it out in almost every part of Great Britain.

If you can’t get a mountain you can generally get a group of rocks, a quarry, or cliffs. These all give splendid practice for a team of three or four mountaineers with a climbing rope. Occasionally you hear of a man climbing alone, which might sound particularly exciting, but this is all wrong. Once is enough just to give you confidence in yourself, but it does not do to be left helpless from a fall or a sprain. Climbing ought, indeed must, be done in teams, and for that reason it is good. Each man on the rope has to make himself efficient, so as to be helpful to the others. That is a good practical lesson in itself.

Climbing is the best possible physical developer of nerve and muscle and endurance. A good rock climber cannot be a weakling. And it is ripping good sport.

Then it needs observation - eye for country and resourcefulness.

I once accompanied the Italian Alpini troops campaigning in the high Alps. These men are trained entirely for mountain work, being all of them recruited from the inhabitants of the mountains. We sighted the enemy on the great snow slopes on the other side of a gorge some two thousand feet deep and two or three miles across. The officers were given the general plan of attack. Then they spread themselves out at intervals in a long line, and sat down and gazed at the opposite slopes and cliffs. They studied them through their glasses, each seeking out a particular line for his detachment to climb, and noticing the landmarks by which he should find it as he worked upwards from below.

The selecting one’s line and picking it up as you climb is what gives rock and mountain climbing a never-ending variety and interest and helps one to be successful or to be merely a moderate climber according as you become good at observation.

Then there is the moral effect of learning to face a difficulty, even when it looks like an impossibility, with calm determination and good cheer.

You thus get to face the difficulties of life in the same spirit, and by sticking to it and trying the different ways round or over the obstacle you get there in the end.

Lastly there is your soul. A funny thing to find in rock climbing, but there it is. Climb in company, but when you reach a glorious summit with its vast unearth-like outlook, sit down alone apart and think.

And as you think, drink in the wonderful inspiration of it all.

When you come down to earth again you will find yourself another man in body and mind and spirit.

HOBBIES AND THEIR VALUE

I find that the habit of doing things for oneself grows upon one and spreads into all branches of one’s daily occupation. And a very healthy habit it is; “if you want a thing done, do it yourself” becomes the order of the day.

Even little odd jobs about the house begin to have a fascination, and they teach you a tremendous lot. You get to hammer the nail instead of your thumb with a little practice, and become neat-fingered with the knowledge of electricity when you re-fit your electric-light plugs.

When the war came and deprived us of our supplies of vegetables and fruits, it brought a blessing in teaching many of us to become gardeners and to grow our own food. Allotments have done more harm to the public-houses than any temperance reforms in Parliament, and at the same time more good to the health and contentment of men than any amount of sanitary or political reforms. His own garden is a grand hobby ground for any man, and the best rest-cure that a hard worker can have. It gives to very many their first real taste of the open air and it has brought to them their first introduction of the growth of plants as well as of bugs and grubs - i.e. Nature Lore.

It is the natural bent of every boy to make things with his hands. So many men lose the attraction as they grow older, but where they keep it up this natural form of self-expression and the fulfilment of the natural desire to produce becomes a habit and one which fills many an empty life. A man with hobbies never has time to waste, time never hangs heavy on his hands, and he is not easily dragged away to other less active attractions. Hobbies are a safeguard to him.

Hobbies and handcraft lead to skill, for a man who puts his whole thought and spare energy into making things cannot help developing a considerable amount of perfection in his work; and where the mind is applied to the hand, imagination and resource step in, and from hobby work a man often goes on to be an inventor.

When you look around your room or your office or your workshop you will find a hundred articles within sight which have been the outcome of invention by one man or another. So it comes in your power if you are a hobby man to evolve some invention which may not only help you financially, but which may be a blessing to your fellow-men.

Often, too, through the practice of hobbies a man has found one which, although entirely apart from his present profession, has proved to be the thing for which he was by nature best fitted, and it has shown him a new line and a real career for him to take up; and if he had previously been a round peg in a square hole he has now found the round hole in which he is properly fitted.

But hobbies, at any rate very frequently, if not generally, can bring in money where a man is in need of it, and although I do not advocate pursuing money for money’s sake, I quite recognise the need of a certain amount of it to enable you to carry on and not to be a drag on other people.

In the old hunting book, Jorrocks, there is a celebrated character, “Jogglebury Crowdy”, whose great hobby was cutting sticks in the hedgerows and woods with a view to making them into walking sticks. I too have that hobby amongst my many others, and though it doesn’t sound a very exciting one, yet when you come to practise it it is sufficiently attractive to lead you mile after mile in the hunt for a good stick which would otherwise be untold weariness; and the satisfaction of securing, of straightening and curing a good stick is very great. I only mention this as showing how the very simplest hobby, one that could be practised by anybody, has its attraction.

Moreover, it has its paying value, and many a boy I know of who has taken up this particular line finds himself able to earn many an honest shilling by it.

But a man who finds out his particular line in hobby can often make it pay well, and the money gained by one’s own efforts is very much sweeter than that received from a lucky bet.

Music, pictures, sculpture and drama, are all easily available hobbies for men in towns, and there is no need for loafing where there are municipal galleries, museums and concerts, etc.

But it is not merely the passive enjoyment of these that I recommend. It is your active self-expression of them that pays.

By self-expression I mean such work as writing poetry, carpentering, playing the fiddle, clay modelling, sketching, and so on. Also there is interest in collecting stamps, coins, fossils, curios, bugs, or any blooming thing.

Nature rambles in the country for studying birds, plants, or animals. You can go in for chicken rearing, fruit growing, jam boiling, rabbit keeping, or making moccasins, or any old thing that you like. There are hundreds of things to choose from; and when you have found the one that grips you it will repay you, not perhaps in cash but in life-filling satisfaction.

SUITABLE PROFESSION

As regards money, for most of us an assured income is necessary to save us from being a drag on others, and to put us on the road towards enjoying life and helping others to enjoy it.

So instead of throwing your cash away on the chance of getting more back out of some less lucky fellow let us Use the time in making a sure income in return for honest work.

And this means, as a first step, preparing oneself for a job in life. A good many boys see a chance of getting a well-paid job or are urged by their parents to take it, but they forget to look at the other end and to see how it is going to benefit them later on.

Too many of these well-paid boys’ jobs lead to nothing, and leave the lad stranded just at the important moment of his life when he should be going up the steps of a career that will pay him well in the end.

Then a very usual fault is that even when a young man has found a line that has good prospects in it he takes it up because the job looks like suiting him without first considering whether he is really suited to the job; and eventually he finds, or his employers find for him, that he is not the right man for it, and out he goes to try and find something else to do. He is a square peg in a round hole, and so he never gets on.

The thing is to find out what kind of work you are best suited for, and if at first you take a different job that will give you pay you should still keep your eye on the right line and go for that directly you get your chance. At the same time beware of always thinking that the grass is greener in the next field.

If you are a square peg keep your eye on a square hole and see that you get there.

“Get the scent in your nostrils and keep your nose to the ground, and don’t worry too much about the end of the chase. The fun of the thing is in the run and not in the finish. When I was a young fellow out of a place) I always made it a rule to take the first job that offered, and to use it for a time till I could catch a better. You can catch a minnow with a worm, and a bass with your minnow. With the bass you can catch an otter, and then you’ve got something worth skinning.”

That is the advice of The Self-Made Merchant to his Son. If that “something worth skinning” is to make a fur coat of comfort for someone else, then you have reached success in your business career; you have won your way not only to making a living, but also in making your work of service to others.

And that means enjoying your life.

If you should wish to take the above advice and find some sort of paid occupation until you can hit on a congenial opening, you might do worse than enlist in the Royal Air Force, since the service is not long, is well paid and the work is of intense interest.

But what is more it is actually educative and if taken in that spirit gives a final finish to your school training. You are meantime gaining character, and “a character” such as will enable you the better to take up a career when you see one open to you.

Similarly, should you contemplate life in one of the Dominions, the best way to gain local experience and friends is to serve for a time in the Constabulary of the country. This similarly is educative and well paid and character building.

THRIFT

Since the war our critics tell us that the nation has gone very much to the bad. Well, I don’t know. I see that the Headmaster of the City of London School says that the boys of today are more energetic than those of yester- day, and are getting better every day. That is a promising sign at any rate.

Certainly there are more people who save money now- and fewer who spit. I don’t know that the two points have any connection, but they just happen to be facts.

I have suggested in the coming pages that by practice of self-restraint you gain character; but you also gain another thing - at least sometimes - and that is money.

I never suggest to people to do what I would not do myself and I have done a bit of this thrift in my time that I am recommending to you.

I was the seventh of a family of ten and my father was a clergyman who died when I was three. So I was not brought up in what you might call affluence, and when I got into the Army I had to live as best I could on my pay, which was pretty small.

It was a bit of a struggle. It meant among other things no breakfast or midday meal at the Mess, no smokes, no liquor, and it meant earning what I could outside my military duties by drawing and writing.

But I worked hard and enjoyed the struggle. And I “got there” in the end. I had any amount of luck, but I must add that I snatched a good deal of this for myself. What is commonly called luck is really largely the power to spot your opportunity and to jump at it and seize it. Too many fellows sit down and wait for luck to come to them and then complain because it never does so.

The curious thing was that I got on faster than I wanted to. I had no real ambition to do anything more than be able to keep myself without drawing on my family to help. If I could do something to help them, so much the better. And I loved my work because it was among the men and horses. I was perfectly content.

But when promotion came to me and I was moved up to higher standing, although the pay was better and the prospects great, I did not like the idea, and I only wanted to he left where I was. I remember well asking my colonel whether I could not decline the promotion, but he laughingly pointed out that that was impossible and up I had to go. I got on; but it was largely thanks to practising thrift in the beginning.

I was amused a day or two ago in looking through some of my early diaries of journeys and visits to friends; how religiously I kept account of every penny I spent, and how triumphantly I recorded every penny that came in to be available for spending! I could speak, if anybody could, to the truth of the saying, “Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves.”

And I was not only able to help myself in this way but was able to give advice from my own experience and a lead to a lot of my friends among the men in my squadron in the same direction. As a consequence, canteen profits went down, but savings-bank balances went up. The men were healthier and happier, and, on leaving the Service, had money in hand with which to set themselves up in business or in private life.

So too it can be with you who read this. If you have no money, make it-somehow; but make it. A rainy day may come and you ought not then to be a drag on other people’s resources. Think of that rainy day, too many fellows forget about it and suffer in the end for their neglect.

If you already have some money, that is no reason for chucking it away; freeze to it. If you have to spend it at all, spend it on other people and not only on your own amusement.

You may be rich, but there is one thing you can’t afford-that is if you are a good sort-you can’t afford to spend money on your own luxuries while there are people around you wanting the necessaries of life.

But look here, when I talk of thriftiness I don’t mean meanness. Be as mean as you like towards yourself, save from your own expenditure but not from what you would spend on other people.

For myself I enjoyed life just as much as my fellows. I hunted, I played polo, I enjoyed pig-sticking and big-game hunting, but I did not buy high-class-priced animals for the sport, I bought unbroken, untrained ones at little cost and had all the fun and interest of training them myself. Some people buy things almost because they are expensive; others don’t. One man will buy a new coat the moment his previous one shows any sign of dirt or surface wear, another when his coat is worn has it turned and uses the other side of it and so makes it last twice as long. There are ways of getting along with small means quite as enjoyably as with big ones if you only exercise your ingenuity and thrift. Indeed it is a bit of adventure that appeals to a sporting mind. Poor millionaires!

SEIZE YOUR OPPORTUNITY

A man who had been in my regiment as a soldier came to me not long ago complaining that he was on his beam ends. He said he had served his country faithfully for the best ten years of his life and this was the way a grateful country treated him, letting him down into the gutter. He had no particular trade training, but his brother in Canada was willing to take him into partnership if he went out there. But for his part he didn’t think it right that he should be banished because he had served his country, nor had he the money to take him if he had wanted to go.

I asked him how much he had saved during his service. He smiled ironically and said, “You don’t save much as a private soldier.” But my experience was that most of my ex-men had left the Service with a very fair balance in the savings bank, and I was bound to say-”You got your food and lodging and clothing and doctor and fuel and light and water all good and all free. It would have been possible, therefore, in your ten years to have put by a tidy sum, or even allowing yourself beer and baccy and entertainments, more than enough to fix you up in Canada, and Canada is not a place of banishment but a jolly good land of promise.” But he was one of those who had not used the opportunity when he had got it. The moral of this story is, “Make hay whenever your sun shines; don’t wait for it to shine later on; clouds may get worse and rainy times may set in.” Or, put another way, “Don’t play with the spoon before taking your medicine; putting off an easy thing makes it hard; putting off a hard one makes it impossible....”

Why save up? Well, you may some day see your opening to better things if you could afford to go overseas, or had a little capital to set yourself up in business. But what is still more certain to come is that one day you’ll want to get married; you will have to think of setting up house with a wife, but there is something more than that which too many men forget. There will be the children. It is playing a low-down trick on them to bring them into the world if you have nothing then to bring them up on.

HOW TO SAVE UP?

The Post Office Savings Bank is as simple a way as any. The postmaster at your post office will take your savings as you hand them in and give you a bank book showing the amount you deposit from time to time, and this money will draw interest and gradually increase of itself.

Another method is to buy National Savings Certificates at a post office or bank with saving enough to buy a few stamps each week to be attached to your savings card. These savings stamps can be bought at any money order post office.

But another and very popular way is to join with a few other people in forming a “Savings Association” under the National Savings Committee. Under this system you pool your savings each week with the other members and thus they begin to earn interest much sooner than they would do by “lone saving”.

The price of every certificate thus collected goes into the Bank and begins to earn at once. Full details can be got from any post office on your asking for a Savings Association Leaflet.

As you get larger sums you can of course invest them in stocks and shares which will bring bigger returns though at greater risks. Investing in these requires a certain amount of knowledge of the game, and you should get expert advice. But in the National Savings and Post Office banks your money is absolutely certain and you get a very satisfactory return for it in interest.

CHARACTER FOR CAREER

I wrote a recommendation once for a man for a good business appointment and I gave a short list of his qualifications. When I came to look over them alter I had written them down it struck me that if the people who had asked about it had given me a list of the points they wanted in him it would have been just about the same as the list I gave them. You may take it that these qualities are what most employers would like to find in a man. The point for you is, have you got them yourself? If not, hie-in and get them and you’ll be safe for a good job in any line that you may find best suits you. This is what I said of him -

“He is very capable and energetic, reliable in every way and resourceful; a tactful leader of men-and has a hefty laugh. This last is alone worth his salary, since it comes at the time when things are looking most difficult and infects everybody around him.”

Well, that is a good enough character to take you anywhere. “Capable” means skilled and efficient at his work. “Energetic” means active and keen in the enjoyment of it. “Reliable” means sober, punctual, truthful and to be trusted with money and confidential work, and is not likely to do anything foolish or wrong; that he is loyal to his employer as well as to those under him, and will carry on his work whether under observation or not “Resourceful” means that he will find a way of carrying on whatever the difficulties may be. “A tactful leader of men” means that he is courteous and human, that he leads and does not drive. And the fact that he laughs and takes things cheerily and makes others do the same is a very valuable point in his favour.

RESPONSIBILITY

One day, in the times when I was just a careless young fellow, my colonel suddenly called me in and told me he was going to make me adjutant of the regiment.

Adjutant! I was appalled.

The adjutant was the man on whom the whole of the well-being and well-doing of the regiment to a great extent depended. A glorious work-but what if one failed?

I couldn’t face it.

But the colonel simply said he trusted me to do it. Well, in a few minutes I was a changed being. I was now a man with a big responsibility thrust upon him instead of being a devil-may-care feckless boy with no special aims beyond enjoying himself.

I found myself with a new and serious outlook, with great visions of what I might bring about for the good of the men and for the name of the regiment I plunged into my work with heart and soul; and I never looked back. That interview with the colonel, short as it was, was the real starting-point of my career.

And from that lesson in responsibility I was able to go on to higher steps of one bigger responsibility after another.

If you are to do any good towards making a career for yourself you must be able to take responsibility.

To be able to take responsibility needs confidence in yourself and knowledge of your job and practice in exercising responsibility.

In the Royal Navy this fact is fully recognised and they begin it when young. Even the most junior officer is given responsible management of a boat with its crew and he gets the whole of the blame or praise according to its doings.

So too in the Boy Scouts. The Patrol Leader is the one authority answerable for the efficiency and behaviour of his six Scouts; and so it is among the Rover Scouts (see final Chapter) with the Mate.

Once you are accustomed, from early practice, to take responsibility, it makes a man of you. It strengthens your character and it fits you for the higher steps in your profession.

Then, too, it strengthens your influence for good with others.

IMHLALA-PANZI

The late Marshal Foch, one of the greatest of the French generals, once said:

“When you have a task to perform consider it carefully.

1. See that you understand exactly what is wanted of you or what it is you want to effect.

2. Then make your plans for bringing it off.

3. Have some good reason for the plans.

4. Make their execution fit in with the material you have.

5. Above all, have the will, the stubborn will, the determination to carry them through to a successful finish”.

I know that the Marshal was right. In my own small way I have always had a weakness for planning things, even unimportant things, before taking them on.

From this I got the name among the Zulus of “Imhlala-panzi”, literally “the man who lies down to shoot”. That means one who takes care about first getting his aim as correct as possible before loosing off his shot. It is the sure way to success. Take “Imhlala-panzi” as your motto.

You will sometimes have to take risks if you want to ~ succeed; take them, don’t shirk them-but take them with your eyes open.

Talking of that, I was once out with another man reconnoitring the enemy’s position in Matabeleland.

We had, during the night, managed to get through his outpost lines, and were in rear of his position at daybreak.

While we were sneaking about studying it, whom should we meet but a jolly great lion. The opportunity was too tempting. We both nipped off our horses, and regardless of giving ourselves away to the enemy we both fired and between us knocked him over.

But he was up again in a moment, in a shocking bad temper, using awful language, with his hind-quarters partly paralysed by the shot. He couldn’t gallop away, but he turned round and round, snarling and looking in every direction for us.

We didn’t want to do more shooting than we could help for fear of bringing the enemy down on us, and also for fear of spoiling his skin as a specimen; so I went down into the dry water-course in which he was in order to get nearer and give him his quietus, while my friend stayed on the bank with his rifle ready aimed at the lion in case he tried to turn tables and give me mine.

As the lion saw me approaching he turned on me with his mouth open, lips drawn back, and eyes nearly shut with rage. I fired down his throat and killed him.

Then it was that, having taken our risk Of being discovered, we kept our eyes open. We took it in turns to skin the beast (and if you have no gloves it is wonderful how soon a hunting knife can raw your hands when in a hurry with a great tough loose hide to deal with). While one man skinned, the other kept a sharp look-out in every direction with the acute feeling that they looking for us all the time.

Lucky we did so! As we got the skin off, the enemy discovered us, and we just had time to bundle it up and mount our horses before they got within reach of us.

HOW TO PREPARE FOR A CAREER

A scheme was once made out of what a young man should go in for when educating himself for his career in life. The main points that he should aim at were put in diagram form.

I was asked to criticise this: so I added another diagram as Part II to it.

With regard to Part I, the qualities shown in italics all go to form what is known as Character; and it is Character, as much as efficiency or skill, that will help you to success in your career. But I would specially draw attention to energy on the one hand and patience on other.

Energy comes partly of good bodily health, but mainly of genuine interest in your work. Some fellows never seem to get interested in their work because it seems to be very limited and running perpetually in the same groove. It would be better if they looked around and saw where it fitted in the complete work of the whole; and if they looked ahead and saw the ultimate value it was going to have when it comes into use beyond the walls of the workshop or office. The best workers, like the happiest livers, look upon their work as a kind of game: the harder they play the more enjoyable it becomes. H. G. Wells once said: “I have noticed that so-called great men are really boys at heart, that is they are boys in the eagerness of their enjoyment of their task. They work because they like to work, and thus their work is really play to them. The boy is not only father to the man, but he is the man and does not disappear at all.’ Which is just another way of saying: “Play is LOVING to do things, and work is HAVING to do things.”

There is a good deal in indispensability. I was asked once why I admired my Indian servant so particularly. The reason was quite simple: it was because he put master first and self second-if self ever came into it at all, which I doubt. Absolutely loyal and to be trusted, always there, ready for any job, silent and hard-working. He was a treasure. But in that country such a character was not exceptional, whatever it might be elsewhere.

Without knowing it, he was indispensable; and I can tell you this, that if you make yourself indispensable to your employer he is not going to part with you in a hurry no matter what it costs him.

Another point that is missed in the foregoing list is that of being quick in your work. It may to some extent come in under energy, but it is improved all the more by practice.

If you are quick in all that you do in your play and in your personal actions so that it becomes your habit, you will be equally quick in your work, and there it will count in your favour.

As a matter of practice carry it out in your daily dressing. Don’t dawdle; have everything in its place and ready to your hand; time yourself at it, and go on and beat your own record.

Other points that should have special attention and receive too little notice in the list are pluck and cheeriness. And there is another asset that you should have for making your career, that is Hope. Don’t think that because you start low down that it is therefore impossible for you to get up. Hundreds of the big men to-day started at the very bottom of the ladder. But, as I have said before, you’ve got to do your own climbing. Don’t stay in the mud because the others stick there; look for your stepping stones and make your way out of it. Get your foot on to the lowest rung and up you go.

I have seen so many men start well in life with all the equipment necessary for making them successful, who then went and failed owing to their lack of patience; when things went against them at the moment they chucked up everything and tried something else; and if once you get into the habit of chucking up and trying again it becomes a habit and remains a habit, so that your whole life becomes a series of chucking-ups and never getting up.

As regards Part II of the diagram, the question of How to Live, that is how to enjoy life with true happiness and not merely pleasure, is of equal importance with the problem of making a living; and the two parts into which I have divided it are almost of equal importance with each other, viz. having High Ideals and Serving others. But I think that serving others is the more important of the two because it largely includes the High Ideal and is the main step to Happiness.

That is why I shall go into it more fully in another chapter.

HORSE SENSE

A pound in hand is worth two on a horse.

If you are a square peg make for a square hole-and don’t be content till you get there.

A coat, like a question, has two sides to it. Both should be exploited before you have done with it.

So live that when you die everybody will be sorry - even the undertaker (Mark Twain).

Let us all be happy and live within our incomes, even if we have to borrow the money to do it with (Artemus Ward).

Most Vice is due to suppressed perspiration (Dr. W. J. Dawson).

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control. These three alone lead life to sovereign power. (Tennyson).

KEEP SMILING

When you feels a mighty mis’ry an’ yer stomach’s kinder bent,

And de doctor starts to projec’ with the cutting instru-ment;

When he lays you on de table, an’ a-standin’ by yo’ side,

He’s a-twitchin’ an’ a-itchin’ ter be whittlin’ up yo’ hide-

DEN remember ‘bout the ‘possum who was sittin’ on de limb,

Wid de gun a-p’inting at him, an’ de dorgs a-treein’ him;

How he holler to de hunter an’ he holler to de houn’

“I’se gwine ter keep a-grinnin’,-doh I spec’ you’ll fetch me down.”

(“Ole Marster”, by B. B. Valentine).

(Chapter 3)

ROCK NUMBER TWO

WINE

"WINE ?"

The story used to be told of an army officer who was never without a glass of wine or other alcohol at his elbow. Then came the occasion when no liquor was at hand and so, unperturbed, he drank some furniture polish. When the doctor said to him, "But do you mean to say that you could get no water?"

The colonel replied, "My good sir, you can't have ever had a real thirst on you or you would know that that's not the time for thinking about having a wash."

THAT THIRD GLASS

Wine? I like a glass of good wine-for its flavour, its colour and refreshment.

And equally I like a glass of beer or cider in its turn. Somehow a second glass seldom appeals to me so much as the first, because the flavour no longer strikes one with its novelty and the first edge of appetite has worn off.

As for the third glass, the man who is wise knows that there is "poison in the cup", that the sugars and other chemicals contained in the liquor don't in the end do you great good.

It is the third glass-if not the second-that puts you out of condition for running and exercise; and a young man will keep his eye on it accordingly.

In my regiment we worked on the principle that officers and non-commissioned officers led their men by example rather than by command, and on this principle I held that one or two of the sergeants were too large round the waist to be able to nip on to or off their horses as quickly as they should do in showing their men the way.

So I gave out the warning that in three months time any officer or N.C.O. whose circumference made him too slow for his position would be likely to lose it, and that in the meantime he would do well to lose some of his superfluous tissue. I added that the trick might be accomplished by a little more exercise daily and a good deal less beer.

The results were surprising and entirely satisfactory. It was that third glass that had done the harm. But third glasses do worse than this, they lead to fourth and fifth and "sisssth glass"- and then the trouble begins, and the imbiber, clinging to the lamp-post, asks, "Is this Christmas Day or Piccadilly?"

THE BETWEEN-MEALS GLASS

I knew a wonderfully capable engineer, indeed a genius in his way; he would have been famous by now had he not been, as he expressed it, a "twenty minutes man," that is, he never went longer than twenty minutes between drinks.

Which reminds me of an American admiral of my early days, who, when I offered him a glass of something, said, "No, sir; I never drink between drinks."

And this brings me to my point, that it is the drinking between your eats that does the harm. If fellows only drank liquor at meal-time I believe that there would be no such thing as drunkenness, and certainly they would be twice as healthy.

Reverting to my regiment again (I warn you, you will be awfully bored by "me and my regiment" before you have done with this book; but I only want to give you actual experiences towards navigating those "rocks", so you must forgive me), I allowed the men, against all the regu- lations, to have beer with their dinner and with the hot suppers which were a regimental institution.

As a consequence, drinking at the canteen bar died down to such small proportions that on one occasion I had to present a pair of white gloves to the canteen steward because he had had a blank day when not a man entered the canteen.

TEMPTATION TO GOOD FELLOWSHIP THE FIRST STEP

A well-wisher was trying to get a drunkard to see the error of his ways and to make a better man of him, but old bottle nose suddenly interrupted him with the remark, "You talk as if you had never been drunk yourself."

"Drunk? I should hope not indeed."

"Then what do you know about it? Don't talk to me. Go and get drunk yourself and learn something of the temptation-and the joy of it. And then talk I"

Well, there is a certain amount of temptation about it, particularly if you let yourself become one of a herd. I suppose half the men who take to drink get drawn into it in the first place by companionship and supposed good fellow- ship with a lot of other fellows. A lad first coming out into the world feels that he must do as others do in order to show that he is one of them-"one of the bhoys!"

Nine out of ten boys begin smoking for that reason- largely out of bravado.

If a boy grew up, say on a ranch, where the men happened to be abstainers, but where tobacco and whisky were avail- able if he wanted them, I don't believe that he would take to them of his own accord. Both are very nasty to the beginner, and taking to either is largely a matter of"because the other chaps do it".

And it is mighty difficult when you are in the company of others round a bar not to join them in drinks and this leads to that "sisssth" glass, and to hilarity and row.

Goodness knows I don't object to high spirits and occa- sional rowdiness. These are natural to young men even without the help of alcohol. I have enjoyed them myself most heartily, and played the fool to an extent that I should be ashamed of now if I did not recognize that it was all part of the nature of the lad growing into manhood.

I well recall a game we used to play called "The Bound- mg Brothers of the Bosphorous!"

You pile all the furniture in the room into a pyramid, legs of the chairs upwards for choice, and place a good solid table well out in front of it. Then each competitor takes it in turn to run at the table, turn head over heels on it, landing on the pyramid and not forgetting to shout as he does so, "I am a bounding Brother of the Bosphorous."

For the life of me I can't see the fun of it now-but I did then. But that is just the sort of ass a young fellow is.

The joy of being a Bounding Brother is, however, entirely different from the false hilarity brought about by too much drink. Drink is not necessary to enable a young man enjoy himself. Indeed, he can do it just as noisily and far more effectively without.

THE SOLITARY SOAKER IS A WASTER

Apart from the good~fellowship temptation to drink there is also the more potent individual one, that of trying to forget personal miseries of mind or surroundings by "drowning your troubles in the flowing bowl".

Continued bad luck in your dealings, depression from ill- health or disappointment, an unhappy home and drab surroundings, all tempt a man to the easy refuge of a glass too much.

But it is not good business. The toper may say, "It is all very well to talk, but what is a man to do? After all, if it does give him a spell of contentment, why not let him take his dram?"

Well, the objection is that if he lets it get a hold of him he will eventually lose control of will, and he loses his energy; and these two points are the main things in "character".

Once he has got the drink habit firmly established, he is liable to give in to each other temptation as it comes along- and that is no foundation for a life of happiness.

The hard-headed fellow who has character in him will never be carried out of his depth by the herd; he will know when to stop. But not so the weakling who has always been content to follow the crowd. He will find in time of need that he lacks the grit to take up arms against his sea of troubles because he has never been accustomed to take a decision for himself.

In some countries attempts have been made to curb the dangers of excessive drinking by placing a total ban on the sale of all liquor. In Mahommedan countries it is sup- pressed by a religion that holds the mass of the people. In other countries it is banned by law. The worst of such measures is that they lead a lot of people to dodge the law.

Moreover, prohibition offends the sense of free people who prefer to impose their own disciplines, and who resent them being pressed upon them by reformers, however well- meaning.

And in this respect, I am glad to say, self-discipline is growing with each year that passes. When I first joined the army it was quite usual for the men and officers to get drunk on festive occasions and nothing~ was thought of nothiit. Today if an officer were to exceed the limit in a good regiment he would be told pretty forcibly that "it is not done" and would find himself fired out if he went on with it.

One sees regiments nowadays embarking for foreign service with every man present and sober, just as if turning out for an ordinary parade. But in my early days it was no unusual thing for half of those present to be helped, if not lifted, into the train or aboard the transport.

Saturday nights in manufacturing towns used to mean streets full of rowdy fighting drunkards, where now one sees nothing but orderly crowds of happy, sociable people.

Improved character and improved surroundings are doing their work, though there is still an immense field for their development.

I believe in the rising generation of young citizens. They have ambition. They want to be manly fellows, fit to play their parts in games and in life.

Prohibition is not needed in a nation of character; the Oncoming generation will see to its own reformation.

THE FORCE OF EXAMPLE

I have a great respect for the opinion of any honest outside critic, and I have found the uncivilised savage of Africa or the Pacific Islands as simple-minded and honest a critic as one could want, and a very good judge of character.

Among both these people I have heard the same verdict pronounced: "If the English white man says he will pay us we give him the goods. He will pay. But it is not so with all white men."

That is the reputation we hold, and it is one which we ought to uphold.

But even the "English white man" did not, I am afraid, come up to sample in every case. And that is where our missionaries are heavily handicapped in their work.

I remember an old Queen-Mother of the Swazis telling us how the missionaries had come and had explained to her and her people the blessings of Christianity and how under its beneficent influence men were honest and straight in all their dealings, sober and truthful, charitable and helpful to others.

So her people welcomed the arrival of white traders and settlers and gave them land and helped them to build their homes.

Then they found that these men instead of being grateful and helpful to others were helpful only to themselves. They took the native cattle, they promised payment but gave it more in the form of kicks than halfpence. They imported whisky in liberal quantities for their own use, and trade gin for the benefit of the natives.

The old queen told us how her warriors had asked leave to kill off these insidious destroyers of the nation. She had no belief now in a religion which professed one thing and did the opposite.

We could not help sympathising with her, and possibly we rather over-did it. For when she was leaving us she turned and asked if we had really meant what we said. When we strenuously affirmed this, she asked us to make good our word by presenting her with a case of gin! Such is the force of example.

SMOKING

I have harped a bit on drink because taken to excess it can be the cause of much crime and misery. It is therefore a danger to both the individual and the State, and is a rock most strenuously to be avoided. But there are some other forms of self~indulgence that a young man will do well to guard against. For the boy there is the danger of smoking.

Someone asked me recently: "What is the order against Scouts smoking?" My reply was that there was no order at all, but every Scout knows that the boy who smokes is rather foolish and we have an understanding in the movement that "A Scout is not a fool"

No boy begins to smoke because he likes it: he hates it at first, but he does it out of swank, in order to look manly, as he thinks. It's really rather silly when you come to think of it that a cheerful young man should embark on a habit that he cannot afford and does not like for no better reason than that he is scared to be different from the rest.

Then there is the question of the effect of smoking on one's health. It has long been acknowledged, even by the heaviest smokers, that tobacco rapidly impairs the wind and is therefore to be avoided by all who are seriously interested in athletic pursuits. But, of course, it doesn't end there. It actively attacks such vital organs as the heart and lungs, which surely should be good enough reason for any young lad to leave it strictly alone. There is no hardship not to smoke when the desire is not there. The difficulty comes only in the breaking of a long-cultivated habit. Avoid the habit and the problem ceases to exist.

I used to be a bit of a smoker myself~ that is a smoker of pipes, until I came to be associated with some American frontiersmen who had served as scouts in wars with the Red Indians.

None of them smoked and they smiled at me indulgently as a tenderfoot for doing do. They explained that smoking was apt to play Old Harry with your eyesight, wind, and sense of smell; and sense of smell was invaluable to a scout for his work at night. So I chucked smoking then and there, and have never taken to it again. I am all the better in health and certainly in pocket for the abstention.

OVER-FEEDING

When I was besieged in Mafeking we all had to live on a very reduced ration of food, and it was interesting to see how this affected the different people in the garrison. And it affected them in remarkably different ways. Some remained much the same, many were visibly reduced, and I do believe that one or two got fatter on it. But the test came at the end of the seven months, when I called for volunteers to make a sally against the enemy. I asked for those who felt themselves capable of marching five miles, and, though everybody wanted to join in, we very soon found that only a small proportion of them could stand even this mild test. But it was quite evident that the men who were most capable of doing the required work were those who had been all their lives temperate in eating, drinking and smoking.

The same results were found during an expedition in which I took part off the West Coast of Africa through the swamps and forest of Ashanti-a region that is popularly known as ~'The White Man's Grave". Those men who had lived fatly and well in their ordinary life went down like ninepins. It was the moderate feeders and the active men who survived. Incidentally on that trip one discovered that meat was not a necessary part of man's food. For a long time I lived on nothing but bananas and plantains, and, though we were buried in a deep, dank forest where we seldom saw the light of the sun, and the scent in the atmosphere was like that of an old cabbage garden, from vegetation rotting in the swamp, I was never fitter in all my life, and averaged my twenty miles a day marching with a light heart if a thin tummy.

OVER-SLEEPING

Over-sleeping is another indulgence which people seldom take into consideration, but the Japanese have a theory that every hour of sleep, above what is essential for resting and restoring the energy of brain and limb, is harmful and encourages the growth of fat. So if a man finds he is getting corpulent, he knocks an hour off his sleep each night, and per contra if he finds himself too skinny, he sleeps an extra hour or two for a few weeks until he has attained a satisfactory amount of sleekness. If you want to rest your body, read a good book; if you want to rest your mind, play football or go fishing.

OVER-STRENGTH IN LANGUAGE

Another very common form of seif-indulgence, for that is what it amounts to, is swearing. For it shows want of self- control, and though it may relieve the feelings (and I have found it does so it is none the less a weakness which is apt to grow worse the more you allow it a free rein. It does you no good, and if employed against others it does harm. It arouses bad feeling on their part, and in any case it knocks chunks off your own dignity. The truth is that swearing is too good a relief to be wasted, and should be kept for times of crisis. Napoleon once said of General Lannes, one of his most promising leaders: "That devil of a Lannes possesses every quality which makes a great soldier, but he never will be great because he gives way to temper in rebuking his officers. I consider that one of the greatest faults that a general can have."

Lannes was privately told of this by General Marbot, who was a great friend of his and an aide~dc~camp of Napoleon. Lannes was eager to be a good general, and from that day on he took himself in hand and kept control of his temper and his tongue. He rose to be a Field-Marshal of France.

How many Lannes in business may have failed to get promotion because they were known to have this failing? A swearer can never hope to be a leader of men, though he may try to drive.

OVER-WORKING is another form of self-indulgence which some people go in for. Some, I said, not all!

The publisher of this book, the late Herbert Jenkins, was one of the "some". I have a note of his before me as I write in which he said that he was working thirteen hours a day and could not get away from London for a night. I had known him some years and I don't remember when it was otherwise with him. He always worked thirteen hours a day. He died young, mainly from overwork.

I was a bit amused to hear that a newspaper recently held a competition on the question of who were the three busiest men in the coun~try, and I found that I was bracketed with Mr. Lloyd George and the Prince of Wales.

I no more deserved such implied praise than my hat (indeed less, for my hat has done a lot of overtime in these days of high prices).

It is true that I am writing this at a quarter-past five on a bitter winter morning, but if I had not got up early all my life I should never have had time to get half the enjoyment that I have had out of it.

Mind you, if you only take an hour extra per day it means three hundred and sixty-five hours per annum, or three weeks more of waking time than your average neigh- hour gets.

Personally I reckon to get thirteen months of life into each year instead of twelve. Some people put in extra time at the other end of the day when body and mind are tired. There is nothing like the early morning for getting over your work.

A man who takes a pride in his work gets a big measure of enjoyment out of it.

I once spoke to a young engineer whom I found work- ing when a strike was on. I asked him how it was, and he said with pardonable pride: "Well, look at that bit of work. Isn't it nobby? I could not leave that."

He stuck to it for the love of the thing. What a difference it makes when you work for love of the thing.

The only danger is for an over-keen worker that he should become a slave to his work and not give himself the right amount of recreation and rest.

By rest I don't mean idleness but change of occupation. My own change of occupation varies pretty considerably. Once, for instance, it took the form of wading in a ~muddy stream to clear off the growth of weed. The job had its interest for me, but a greater interest for a loafer who Sat on the parapet of the bridge smoking his pipe and watching me with keen enjoyment as I worked.

At last his curiosity overcame his satisfaction. "Mucky job, seemingly," he murmured. I agreed. I couldn't well do otherwise, being plastered, face to feet, with mud.

"Now, how much do you get for that shift, mate?"

"Oh, not a tanner an hour," I replied.

"Gor blimey! Well, I'm bunkered if I'd do it!"

And I didn't doubt him.

PHYSICAL FITNESS HELPS SELF-CONTROL

I had command of a force once where I did away with part of the ordinary equipment of the soldiers-namely, their water-bottles.

It sounds cruel and at first the men thought it was so, but as they got into fit condition they found they never needed water, they were relieved of this heavy weight banging on their hips, and could march three times as well as other troops.

Moreover, they did not get diarrhoea or typhoid as the others did. The reason for this was that when ~en had water-bottles they drank them dry within the first hour of marching.

After swilling their insides in this way they found them- selves thirstier than ever and filled up their water-bottles from the first stream or pool they came across, and hence disease and sickness.

It is one of the signs of being "fit" that you seldom feel thirsty. A man gets himself fit for football or other athletic work and could not possibly carry it out otherwise; but be seems to forget this when he is dealing with the work on which his pay and promotion depend. If he kept him- self bodily in condition at all times he would do his work and enjoy his leisure twice as well.

He would take care to keep clear of those between-meals sips, and he would live to a hundred.

UNCLE JOHN SHELL

"Last year 'Uncle' John Shell returned home to find his wife dead. Her relatives took charge of the funeral arrangements, and decided to take his little son, aged seven, to live with them. Uncle John protested strongly, but they took him away. Uncle John thereupon went into the house, got his old flintlock rifle, which he had himself made more than a century ago, and mounting on his mule, went in pursuit. He overtook his father-in-law on the road and with his gun forced him to give up the boy."

"One hundred and thirty-two years old-and hard- boiled!"

Yes. It is not a misprint. According to the authentic account published in the Landmare in 1920, old John Shell was born in Knoxville on September 3rd, 1788, and was alive and hearty. The son who figured in the case was only seven, but his eldest son was over ninety, and he had twenty-seven children in between these. The old boy was a farmer, and gave as his recipe for living long:

"Work hard, but don't over-work. Too much work is as bad as too little. Take the food and sleep that your body needs, and a little fun besides, every day."

But he had never drank anything stronger than water.

AMUSEMENTS

One little form of "fun" in which I sometimes indulge myself when I have had too long a day in office or at com- mittee work is to go to a music-hall or a cinema. I have been urging ACTIVE change of occupation as your best recreation. I have no defence for this occasional lapsing into being passively amused by others.

At a cinema I get into a restful, half-asleep condition, with a story put up in pictures before my eyes, and if it is a rotten story, as too often it is, I go quietly to sleep.

For a music-hall show I prefer one where there is a tramp cyclist, or the champion smasher of plates or the fellow with a spring necktie. A good dose of laughing is to me like a bath for the brain.

At the same time, I don't deny I get dreadfully bored with three-quarters of the show, with the old chestnuts about smelly fish and mothers-in-law, and the nasty little meaning sometimes put into their words by actors who cannot raise a laugh on their merits as humorists.

If it were all clean fun at the halls I believe the audience would like it all the better, and it would pay the manage- ment all the better. Men of to-day are cleaner minded than they used to be, and it is up to you, the rising generation of young men, to continue that improvement if only for the sake of your own self-respect.

There are many other weaknesses and points of self- indulgence which I have not referred to here, but which you can find for yourself by carefully examining your own character and habits. Many of them may have been un- suspected hitherto, but when you find them for yourself, instead of having them pointed out by others, you may look on them as already well on the way to being cured.

I have indicated some few of these in the last chapter, together with their antidotes.

THE WAY ROUND THE ROCK

So you see that this rock labelled "Wine" that crops up in your fairway is really that of selfindulgenre. By that I mean letting your inclination run away with you, whether it be in over-drinking, over~smoking, over-eating, or any other form of luxury. Self-indulgence may spell ruin to the individual and harm to the community. It is largely the result of drifting with the herd around you, with your back to the danger. But by looking ahead and paddling your own canoe for yourself with self-control you can navigate yourself safely round to the sunny side of the rock, thereby acquiring strengthened character that will make you secure against other temptations to weakness. And so it will help you on your way to success.

SELF-CONTROL

There are various ingredients that go to make character. The kind of character I mean that practically makes a man a man, or, better, a gentleman.

Of these the first is self-control. A man who can control himself, his anger, his fear, his temptations~everything, in fact, except his conscience and his sham~that man is well on the way to being a gentleman.

By "gentleman" I don't mean a toff with spats and eye- glass and money, but a "White Man", a fellow whose honour you can rely upon through thick and thin to deal straight, to be chivalrous and to be helpful.

Self-control is the point in which Britons are particu- larly strong as a rule. Indeed we are inclined to hide our feelings so thoroughly that foreigners often think we are unobservant and unsympathetic, but they allow that we can be relied upon to keep our heads in an emergency.

Well, that is something at all events; but I believe that we can do a lot more through self-control. It certainly enables us to stand up against temptations successfully.

It is a thing that can be cultivated and ought to be cultivated by everyone who means to have character.

People often laugh at the Law of the Scout which says that when a boy is in trouble, danger or pain he should force himself to smile and to whistle and this will immedi- ately alter his outlook.

Yet I do not know anyone who has not approved the idea when once he has tried it for himself.

It undoubtedly has the desired effect, and also the more it is practised the more seif-control develops itself as a habit, and therefore as part of one's character.

I once had to crawl into a patch of thick thorn-bush after a lion which I was hunting. I was in a mortal funk all the time, but my Zulu tracker was keen on it and planned that if the lion charged he would cover me with his shield. Though I self the lion, I control still more the contempt of my Zulu. So I crawled in-and, I can tell you I was mightily relieved when, after poking about for a time, we found that the lion had bolted out another way.

It came about that later on, in India, I was obliged to repeat the performance with a wild boar. We had been hunting him on horseback, with spears, and had severely wounded him when he got into a thick strip of jungle from which the beaters could not dislodge him.

They went through the covert, making lots of noise, but came out at the far end saying that he was not there.

Well, we knew that he was there, as we had watched all the exits.

So having cheaply earned the reputation for that kind of game, I had to dismount and go in with the beaters to encourage them in their second attempt.

We found him right enough~or rather he found me. In the middle of the thickest part of the jungle I suddenly heard a crash and a roaring grunt as the great beast charged out at me from his hiding-place. I had my spear levelled for him, so that in his rush he charged straight on to it and got it full into his chest. But the force with which he came threw me over fiat on my back. Keeping tight hold of the Spear, I was able to hold him just sufficiently far back to prevent him from ripping me up the waistcoat with his tusks.

This he was pretty eager to do, and he went at it with great zest, trying to push me farther down; but I jammed the butt-end of the spear into the ground behind me and so managed to hold him.

The beaters, stout fellows, vied with each other in getting outside the jungle to tell the other hunters how I had been killed! These presently came crashing along with their spears and soon put an end to Mr. Boar and relieved me from his attentions.

But, do you know, after a time-nasty as we had thought the job at first-we actually got to rather like the excite- ment of this method of finishing the fight, and so whenever we had a boar badly wounded we dismounted and went at him on foot.

I expect that had there been more dragons around in St. George's time, he would, after getting over his first fear of them so successfully, have probably taken to dragon slaying as a regular pastime.

Yes. If you take yourself in hand and force yourself to face a difficult or dangerous-looking job, it will come all the easier the next time.

Self-control not only enables you to master bad habits, but also gives you command of your very thoughts.

And this is a point of vital importance for your happiness. Force yourself always to see the bright lining that lies behind the darkest cloud and you will be able to face a black outlook with full confidence.

Anxiety is depressed thought, and once you have mas- tered this, by being able to substitute bright hopefulness, you need never have recourse to drink to give you either Dutch courage or oblivion.

A great boon that comes of the practice of self-control is the ability that you gain to switch your thoughts off any unpleasant subject and to think of something satisfying~ing and jolly.

If you take trouble you Can cultivate this habit of switching off a brain-cell that is harbouring bad thoughts and opening a fresh cell with good ideals in it.

In this way you may make a new man of yourself.

SELF-DISCIPLINE OF GENERAL NOGI

The celebrated Japanese general, General Nogi, once explained in my presence how ho had trained himself to self-control and courage. It was a matter of self-discipline. He had begun life as a weekly youth with a nervous dis- position, but his will-power was such that he recognised his weakness and determined to overcome it.

Whenever he had to face some ordeal which he did not like or which he feared, he forced himself on principle to go through with it, and repeated the performance whenever he could get an opportunity in order finally to subdue his weakness.

He eventually freed himself from the tyranny of fear. He became the boldest leader and the most intrepid soldier of his time.

When his son was killed in action he made no sign lest grief on his part should cause depression among others. But none the less he felt very deeply.

When his Emperor died he felt as a faithful servant that he himself should no longer live: and he killed himself with his own hand. A wonderful example of self-command over fear and pain.

SELF-CONTROL MAKES THE GENTLEMAN

Old William of Wykenham declared long ago that "Man- ners makyth Man," and he was right. A real man is courteous; that is, he shows deference, human sympathy and unbreakable good~humour.

It makes him a gentleman, and I have seen it very truly said that it is just as hard for a duke as a bricklayer to be a gentleman.

I used to play polo against a certain team who had a very good black player; but he had his weak spot, he had a bad temper.

So one only had to bump into him once or catch his stick just as he was about to hit the ball (both allowable in the game) and he lost his temper, and with it his head, for the rest of the game, and was perfectly useless to his side. It is much the same in discussion or debate; if your adversary cannot control his temper you have him at your mercy- that is if you can control your own.

One often sees it in the acrimonious correspondence in the newspapers. It is generally the sign of a small mind when an angry man rushes "to write to the papers". He shows the childish spirit of "I shan't play in your yard any more. I'll go and tell mother of you."

Remember this, "If you are in the right there is no need to lose your temper; if you are in the wrong you can't afford to."

Go ahead on that-behave like a gentleman with polite- ness and self-control, and you will win every time where your opponent lacks these qualities.

LOYALTY

Another point that tends to make character is loyalty to others, and more especially loyalty to oneself.

Loyalty is an outstanding point in character. Sir Ernest Shackleton, before he went on his last cruise in the Quest,~est, once said that in the Antarctic, when things were at their darkest and death by slow starvation seemed certain, he overheard the following conversation between two of his men:

"I don't think we'll get through," said one voice.

"That's the Boss's t,," came the rejoinder.

It brought home to him afresh, not only the responsibility of leadership, but its loneliness.

"Leadership," he said, "is a fine thing, but it has its penalties. And the greatest penalty is loneliness.

"You feel you must not tell your men everything"

"You often have to hide from them," he said, "not only the truth, but your feelings about the truth. You may know that the facts are dead against you, but you mustn't say so. One thing only makes Antarctic leadership pos- sible, and that's loyalty. The loyalty of your men is the most sacred trust you carry. It is something which must never be betrayed, something you must live up to.

"No words can do justice to their courage and their cheerfulness. To be brave cheerily, to be patient with a glad heart, to stand the agonies of thirst with laughter and song, to walk beside Death for months and never be sad- that's the spirit that makes courage worth having. I loved my men."

Personally, I can fully endorse every sentence of Shackle- ton's from the experience of Mafeking, which, though a smaller test in its way, embraced long-continued danger and hardship for the men.

The same practice of cheerful whole-hearted loyalty on their part was the secret of our success there just as it was with Shackleton. In the same way loyalty would be the secret of success in any difficult work, whether it is in busi- ness or in the maintenance of the country.

Loyalty is a very precious quality; it should be culti- vated and strongly held through thick and thin by any man who has a true sense of honour.

At the same time there is in loyalty that which Shackle- ton does not particu]arly point out, although he practised it in a high degree, and it is one which adds enormously to the "loneliness" and to the heavy responsibility of a leader.

The leader needs the loyalty of his men, but equally he must show loyalty to them, and that point is emphasised in the Scout Law where it says that "a Scout is loyal to his employers and to those under him."

This side of loyalty often puts the leader in a difficult position when he has in a way to deceive his men, as Shackleton has suggested, by hiding the worst from them. I, too, have known it.

And then, too, he has to be loyal to the cause for which he is working. There comes in the most difficult part of a leader's duty.

For instance, few people realise the awful responsibility that rests on a general in the field when, with all the loyalty towards his men, he has to balance the fact that their lives are only a matter of to-day, while the result of a battle may mean everything for the future: and he has therefore to risk those men who are trusting him, for the sake of the greater consideration, the safety and welfare of the nation.

These are things that have to be thought on when you are considering what is meant by loyalty and how you are to train yourself for leadership.

But then there is also loyalty to yourself. Temptation comes along, conscience says "No". Inclination says "Yes".

You either rise or let yourself down according to which you obey. If you are loyal to yourself you go up one. If you funk it and give way, down you go, and down goes your respect for yourself.

TRUTHFULNESS

It was my job at one time to try and detect spies. Of course, a very common way of finding out a suspected man's nationality is to stamp on his toe and hear in what kind of language he expresses himself But a foreign spy-catcher once told me that if he suspected a man of being a British officer in disguise he had one infallible test: he would get him in conversation and take the first opportunity of calling him a liar. Although the officer might be marvellous at generally concealing his true character, if you call him a liar he can't help flaring up at the insult, and so gives him- self away

Yes, it is true. That word "Liar" has a stab in it for an honourable man. I hate to hear the word used, as it often is, by boys or men in an unthinking way, when in argu- ing some ordinary question they say, "You're a liar."

From hearing it often, I suppose they get accustomed to it, but the man of honour can never accustom himself to it. To him it is always the worst possible insult.

SHAME MAKES A MAN AN OUTCAST

Do you know what is one of the most tragic sights in this world?

It is the sight of a man who is ashamed. One feels almost ashamed oneself to look upon it.

I saw it once, for a few moments only, many years ago, but it has haunted me ever since.

I was travelling on a railway extension, in the jungle in a far-off spot. Our train pulled up at a point where a white ganger and his native crew were at work. Instead of coming up, as these men generally did, full ofjoy at seeing the train, to get the latest news from the other world and to speak, if only for a few moments, with other white men, this ganger withdrew himself aside and turned his back upon us,only waiting for the train and its white folk to leave him again.

I asked about him and learned that he had been a cavalry officer, well known as a cherry sportsman and a popular fellow.

But the craving for drink had gradually got hold of him and had ruined him, and he was now what we saw him, an outcast, a man who was ashamed.

"YOUNG FELLOWS ARE FULL OF GO, BUT EMPTY OF GUMPTION"

"Young fellows are full of go, but empty of gumption."

That is what someone has said of some of you. It re- minds me of an occasion when I was out reconnoitring in South Africa with a party of 7th Hussars, and in crossing a dry river bed we came across a lion.

One of us had a shot at him and severely wounded him, but he managed to get away into a patch of thick reeds and rushes, into which it was impossible, or at any rate very unsafe, to follow him, as he had all the advantage of lying hid and had the pull of hearing and scenting anybody coming near his hiding-place.

So we rapidly posted men on the look-out at different points round the covert to give information if he should come out. Our plan was, when all preparations had been made and men with rifles had been posted at likely spots, to set fire to the grass and drive him out.

There was considerable delay about this as the reeds to the windward side were green and would not take fire.

I had a good place on a rock for seeing him should he come out in that direction, and was straining my eyes to catch a glimpse of him in the reeds. Suddenly my vigilance was rewarded. I saw a movement among the rushes, and as they.waved to and fro I perceived that the animal was coming in my direction.

My heart thumped with excitement, I spat on my cartridge to bring it good luck, and I waited with my rifle ready at full cock to give him "what for" the moment he showed his nose.

On he came, closer and closer, till he was within a few yards of me. I felt he was mine. I could not miss him at that distance.

The reeds parted. I was on the point of firing, when instead of a lion there stood before me a farrier sergeant!

One of the duties of a farrier sergeant when a horse gets badly damaged is to put it out of its pain. So this fellow, having seen that the lion was wounded, supposed that it was his duty to go in and finish it off.

He did not reflect that his revolver would have been about as much good as a pea-shooter, and that the polishing off would have been done by the lion and not by the farrier.

As it was, he nearly got it in the neck from me. But he was young in the ways of lions. They didn't come his way in Tooting. He had shown splendid go, but little gumption; and that is what many young fellows do in taking on the lions of real life for which they have had no preparation or warming.

AUTO-SUGGESTION

Self-control or self-mastery. has now become a scientific study, and many doctors have established a wonderful record of healing people from pain and illness through the effort of their own mind.

In various directions you will have heard of remarkable cures being effected through "faith healing", that is by the patient believing that the evil will go from him.

I suppose that most of us have at one time or another worked it to some extent upon ourselves.

Say you have a wound in the leg. It hurts all over the limb; you feel likely to faint; you can scarcely put your foot to the ground. Ouch! How it hurts!

Let's sit or lie down for a bit and groan.

Well, there is another way of dealing with it.

"Wound? So it is, quite a small hole, and the pain can only be just round the wound. No, not all up the leg, that is imagination. No, it is just at that one little spot, quite a small place, and therefore small pain. Hold yourself together, walk on and keep the leg moving so that it won't get stiff. Warm it up and it won't hurt. That's right, better already."

The idea is that in order to cure yourself of your ailment, you must use your imagination rather than your will.

A famous doctor once explained the difference thus: If you put an ordinary plank on the ground, you can walk along it with prefect ease. Put the same plank as a bridge between two house-tops, a hundred feet above the street, and you cannot cross it. Your will wants you to go in order to get to the other side, your imagination makes you think you will fall, and defeats your will. And that is their usual relationship to each other. Imagination wins the day.

So if you are suffering you must concentrate your thoughts and imagine to yourself what relief you desire, imagine then that you are gradually getting it and you will presently find that you have got it.

Auto-suggestion can not only ease pain, but it can equally cure bad memory, nervous fear, and more especially- and here lies its importance for young men-it can resist and conquer the desire for alcohol or tobacco, sex tempta- tion, and other forms of self-indulgence.

HOW TOMMY TOMKINS DEFEATED DEATH

That awful scourge of India, cholera, broke out in the regiment. Tommy Tomkins, a tough old soldier in my squadron, went down with it. In a few hours he was in a bad way.

"Poor Tommy is 'for it'," was the verdict of the hospital sergeant.

For the next forty-eight hours, however, he held on between life and death, and finally, to the surprise of every- body, he turned the corner.

Later on when I went to see him convalescent in hospital he told me how he had conquered death.

He knew he was dying; the doctor had as much as said so. The doctor then told the native attendant to set hot bottles or bricks at the patient's feet in order to keep him warm.

The doctor went out, and the attendant, instead of bothering about the hot bottles, pulled out his hookah and squatted down in the corner to have a quiet smoke.

This mightily enraged poor Tommy, who, though unable to move or speak, understood all that was going on. He swore to himself that if he could only get well again he ~would give that native such a rousing up as he would not forget in a hurry. He busied himself thinking what form of thrashing the punishment should take and how soon he would be able to get out of bed and administer it. He put all thoughts of death on one side in the more absorbing idea of getting a bit of his own back on that fellow.

And so he came to life again.

It was the force of will and imagination that pulled him through.

I had just such another experience in my own case. I was pretty bad in hospital with dysentery when the news came that if I could only be well by a certain date I should ~get command of a column that was going off after the enemy.

It seemed a hopeless task, but still I hoped. And I imagined to myself what I would do when in command, and I planned plans, while, at the same time, I tried hard to get better.

The harder I tried, the better I got. Day after day passed by and I was convalescent, but when the eventful date arrived I just wasn't fit enough to be allowed to go.

Two days later another man came in, also seriously ill with dysentery. My bed was wanted for him. As I gave it over to him he moaned that he was coming in to die. I told him, "Rot-I was much worse when I came in. Think of what you are going to do when you get out again."

Next day I started out with an escort of three, and after a ride of eighty miles, through a risky country, I caught up the column and took charge of it.

Meantime my successor in the bed imagined himself dying. He got worse and worse, and eventually did what he thought he would do~he died.

SELF-CURE

Well, this is really the art of auto~suggestion, by which a man can, tj he is determined, cure himself of many an illness and almost any weakness.

If a man can defeat death by it, surely he can defeat drink or any other temptation. Don't forget it. If things at any time look difficult for you, or even impossible, think of a way by which you might have won success and then figure to yourself your winning it; and when your mind tells you that it is impossible, reply to it, "No, not if sible. I see what might be. I can try. I can win it. I can. I can. I CAN-and I will!" And ten to one you will succeed.

Self-indulgence comes of centring your attention in your own sensual desires; its cure is to divert your interest from self to other things and people. Take up hobbies. GO in for active sympathy and helpfulness to others, and inci- dentally you will be gainer of new points in building your character.

Individuality over-developed means self let loose, which is the very opposite of what we want. Individuality with character is another thing, it means a man with self- discipline, energy, ability, chivalry, loyalty, and other qualities that go to make a good man. And when these qualities are harnessed into the service of the community he is something more than a good man, he is a good citizen.

WHAT OTHER FELLOWS HAVE SAID

Self-respect, not self-esteem, breeds respect from others.

Character has more value than any other attribute in life.

Self-control is three parts of Character.

Don't drink between your "eats".

You cannot dream yourself into Character. You must hammer and forge it for yourself (Froude).

Take advice from the thrush, when he says, "Stick to it, stick to it, stick to it."

Consider the postage stamp, my son; its usefulness consists in its ability to stick to one thing until it gets there (Josh Billings).

A man who has no refuge in ..... . is not properly a personality at all. He is one of a crowd, a taxpayer, an elector, but not a man. He who floats with the current, who has no ideal, no convictions, such a man is a mere article of world's furniture-a thing moved, instead of a living, moving being (Henri Amiel).

When everything goes crooked

And seems inclined to rile,

Don't kick, nor fuss, nor fidget,

Just-you-smile!

When someone tries to "do" you

By taking more than half;

Be patient, firm and pleasant;

Just-you-laugh.

But if you find you're stuffy

(Sometimes, of course, you will)

And cannot smile, nor grin, nor laugh,

Just-keep-still.

(Chapter 4)

ROCK NUMBER THREE

WOMEN

THE Danger is the risk of forgetting the chivalry due to women.

The Bright Side is the development of the manly and protective attitude to the other sex.

SEX INSTINCTS AND RISKS

THE MONARCH OF THE GLEN

One of the finest sights that you can see of animal life on the moor or in the forest is a full-grown stag in the pride of life. He is the king of the herd-the Monarch of the Glen, as Landseer has pictured him.

He is the embodiment of courage, strength, and virile beauty as he stands roaring out his challenge to all rivals to “come on”.

In the “rutting” or mating season in autumn it is an exciteing sight to watch the stags when they are calling and fighting each other for possession of the hinds. They seem to go off their heads for a time, running hither and thither, restless and excited, for weeks unable to settle down to feed or to sleep till utterly worn out. It is the strongest and finest which come out on top. In the combats that follow, with the rattle and clash of antlers and the grunting of struggling combatants, the weaker are pressed backwards by their more powerful opponents until they are driven off in flight, leaving to the victor the choice of wives as lord of the herd.

And he takes his responsibilities, ready at all times-and able-to protect his hinds and fawns against all aggressors.

The defeated weaklings can then only sneak about trying to get what joy they can among the outcasts of the herd. These poor, under-sized creatures, are not thought much of by stalkers, who value rather the finer animals with their greater strength and activity.

The same kind of thing goes on in a greater or lesser degree among other animals of the jungle, among the birds in spring, and even among the fishes in winter.

Even plants, trees, and flowers come under the same law of Nature, and in their mating season, the spring, the sap rises and spreads itself through every branch, leaf and tendril, and the flowers blossom out, so that the female pistil can receive the pollen dust from the male stamens, which is a small germ that unites with the female germ, and they jointly make the young seed for a new plant.

Even the throwing out of beautiful flowers by the plants in springtime is similar to the habits of animals and birds, which put on their brightest plumage in the mating season, and this we see reproduced again among human young bloods, with their bright socks, fancy ties, and well-oiled hair.

MANHOOD

Man, however, differs from others of nature’s creatures in that, whereas in most animals there is a definite mating season, in man the instinct is always at work and there is no definite mating season. The woman’s “monthly periods” are due to the rhythm of the organism but are not the same as the definite periods of “heat” that we see in other animals.

When the adult sexual instinct shows itself in the growing youth, it brings about emotional changes which often feel upsetting. But remember these impulses are natural. We all have them and we must all learn how to deal with them. I get lots of letters from young fellows who have never been told what to expect when they are growing into manhood, and consequently they have felt worried by finding it an upsetting time for them. They get nervy and unsettled in their mind without knowing why. They can’t settle down properly to their work, they get shy of other people and feel miserable, and occasionally think that they are going off their head.

I am only too glad that in their trouble they have thought of writing to me, because in many cases I have been able to reassure them and to help them to take it calmly. There is nothing in it to be upset about. It all comes from quite natural causes.

When a boy grows into manhood his whole body under- goes a gradual change which anyone can see for himself. His voice becomes deeper, hair grows where it didn’t grow before, his muscles become set and hardened, his organs develop, and so on.

SEXUAL DESIRE COMES FROM PERFECTLY NATURAL CAUSES

The change is brought about by the secretions from the organs of sex, which influence the development of the whole body and may be compared to the flow of sap in a tree. It gives the vigour of manhood to his frame, and it builds up his nerves and courage.

The actual fluid secreted by the testicles and adjoining glands is called semen, which is Latin for seed.

THE WAY IN WHICH LIFE IS REPRODUCED

This fluid contains the male organism, which is responsible for fertilising the female organism called the ovum, which is Latin for egg. In order for life to be reproduced throughout the animal kingdom and a large part of the vegetable kingdom too, it is this union of the male organism with the female that starts the process of a new life develop- ing. In man the male organism is called the spermatozoon and there are many thousands of these spermatozoa in a single drop of semen. Nature appears to be extravagant in malting so many of these, of which only one actually fertilizes the ovum.

You can get some idea of the process by looking at these pictures of the fertilisation of the hen’s egg and the growth of the chick which uses up the yolk as it grows. The “white” contains the actual ovum, which is fertilised by the spermatozoon of the cock bird when it “covers” the hen. By a similar process in the human being, from the joint germ there emerges a living, breathing creature of flesh, blood and bones, with eyesight, brain and mind, and even with many points of likeness in appearance and character to both of its parents.

THE GERM IS OF VITAL IMPORTANCE FOR CARRYING ON THE RACE

And this young creature carries within it again the germs for reproducing further children in its turn, when it has grown to the riper age.

The whole of this marvellous and complicated process is a work of God the Creator. The germ from which you were made was passed down by your father just as he came from the germ of his father before him; and so away back into the Dark Ages.

And you have that germ in you to pass out, when the time comes, to join with that of your wife in making your son.

So it is a sacred trust handed down to you through your father and his fathers from the Creator-The Great Father of all.

Sometimes, when this semen is forming over-rapidly, you may find that you pass some of it out in your dreams while you are asleep. This need not alarm you; it is the natural overflow. If brought on by oneself the act is called “self abuse” or “masturbation”.

MASTURBATION

Young men are sensible enough, and are willing, to take advice if they can only get it, and I am certain that if only these things which I have mentioned above were better understood by them they would avoid many of the distressing and sometimes agonising times they go through. It often used to be taught that self abuse is a very dreadful thing leading to insanity and, at any rate, causing permanent and severe damage to the system. Now this is a grossly exaggerated picture to say the least of it. Self abuse is obviously brought about by unnatural conditions. If we were living in a primitive state of nature, boys would behave about sex matters just as our friend the stag!

There would be no moral or social check to sexual intercourse. They cannot do this for moral and social reasons, but that does not take away the primitive sexual instinct which is at the bottom of their desires. No, to have the desire is natural, so don’t blame yourself for this and don’t waste time in self torture if you have abused yourself£ The tension is sometimes so great that many fellows have at times practised masturbation. What is it really? It is the gratifying of the sexual instinct by giving oneself the feeling of satisfaction. In other words it is a form of self love, which is obviously not a thing to cultivate.

Now we are members of a community governed by certain moral laws and social conventions. Promiscuous sexual intercourse is forbidden by these moral laws, so here is the dilemma. Primitive desires versus moral and social laws. We have granted we cannot escape the desires. If our aim is to lead a healthy decent life for ourselves and others, we shall soon adjust these difficulties. Sex is not everything in life, and other energies take the place of sex and relieve the strain. The energy that the primitive male animal puts almost solely into sex, in the human, is turned into all sorts of other activities, such as art, science and a hundred and one other things. So the more interests you have and the more you follow them with keenness the less will primitive sex urges worry you and when the time comes you will have the delight of sharing them naturally with the woman who will surely be your mate. Now you can see how Rovering comes in. Instead of aimless loafing and smutty talks you will find lots to do in the way of hiking and enjoyment of the out of door manly activities. Without knowing it you are putting something in the place of sex.

VENEREAL DISEASE

One almost invariable result from loose talk among lads is that they get to talk filth, and in this way lower their ideals and thoughts to a beastly standard, and one which they will be ashamed of later on when they have grown to be men.

It puts them back on their road to happiness, because they will have so much leeway to make up in getting out of the mud into which they have floundered. And mud always sticks to some extent.

Then lads are apt to joke airily about venereal diseases which are sure, sooner or later, to overtake those who indulge their sex desires unwisely.

But these diseases are no joking matter; however slight their first effects, they are desperately dangerous to a man.

There are two principal Venereal Diseases: Syphilis (“Pox”). Poisonous infection that can be caught by connection with a person already infected. The disease shows itself in a sore at first; this develops in a few weeks into other sores; then in from one to twenty years it causes diseases of parts of the body or of bones, and frequently of the heart, if not properly treated. Gonorrhoea (“Clap”). Nearly always caught by connection in the same way as Syphilis. Shown by discharge of matter from the organ and inflammation of the organ itself. Further inflammation is likely to follow in the bladder, etc.

Syphilis is often inherited by children from diseased parents, with the result that they are blind, or deaf, or paralytic, or insane. It has been estimated that twenty- five per cent of people who are blind from infancy are so as the result of parents syphilis. The sins of the fathers are indeed visited on their children.

When once syphilis has got hold of you, none of the quack medicines as advertised will save you. The only way is to go at once to a good doctor and tell him straight out what has happened. If he takes you in time he will be able to cure you.

But the danger is not one which anyone will joke about once he knows the depth of it, is it? A visit to any Lock hospital will give you such examples of venereal disease as will persuade you, better than any words of mine, to avoid having anything to do with women of the street if you would save yourself in body as well as soul.

The folly of taking such a risk is largely the result of being carried away by the weaknesses of the herd.

It is like drinking or gambling - a disease which you pick up from letting yourself drift too far without thinking, in the company of a lot of other unthinking young fellows.

Many men come to grief from supposing that if they go with a girl who is not a regular prostitute of the streets, there will be no danger of being infected with the disease. But the reports show that the danger is actually greater. The girl who has once been deceived by some blackguard of a man loses her sense of shame and is willing occasionally to go with other men. But in her ignorance she is more liable than the professional to harbour disease, from not knowing what precautions to take. Therefore, she is all the more dangerous to herself; poor creature, and to others with whom she comes in contact.

A man may be continent and resolve to remain so. He may then by chance, or by boon companions, be led to take that fatal “sixssth” glass, and, with brain and senses clouded, do the very things he meant not to do.

That is where so many a good fellow has come to grief and ruined himself not only morally (in his character) but physically (in his body) as well.

There is a play called “Damaged Goods” which deals with the venereal question in an open, common-sense way, and is a good education for a young man. It tells of a young man’s infecting his wife and child, and the child’s nurse, through ignorance. The pathetic cry which there comes in, “If I had only known in time!” is one which is echoed in hundreds of cases every day.

SINS OF THE FATHERS VISITED UPON THE CHILDREN

When I was writing this chapter a friend asked me whether it was really true that syphilis was passed on by a father to his children to the extent suggested.

I only had to show him a letter that had appeared in The Times that morning from a coroner, in which he said that the loss of life or of reason and the infection of innocent children from this awful disease “is terrible in the extreme”.

MANLINESS

CHIVALRY

You will, I hope, have gathered from what I have said about this Rock “Women,” that it has its dangers for the woman as well as for the man. But it has also its very bright side if you only manoeuvre your canoe aright.

The paddle to use for this job is CHIVALRY.

Most of the points which I have suggested as being part of the right path are comprised under chivalry.

The knights of old were bound by their oath to be chivalrous, that is to be protective and helpful to women and children.

This means on the part of the man a deep respect and tender sympathy for them, coupled with a manly strength of mind and strength of body with which to stand up for them against scandal, cruelty or ridicule, and even, on occasion, to help them against their own failings.

A man without chivalry is no man. A man who has this chivalry and respect for women could never lower himself to behave like a beast, nor would he allow a woman to ruin her- self with him by losing her own self-respect and the respect of others. It is up to him to give the lead-and that a right one; and not to be led astray.

I have known such chivalry on the part of a man to give further than this, even to the point of raising a woman who had fallen; where she had expected him to join her in debauchery his courteous respect for her, which overlooked her faults and was given because she was a woman, caused her once more to think of her own self-respect and so restored her to her place.

Chivalry, like other points of character, must be developed by thought and practice, but when gained it puts a man on a new footing and a higher one with himself and with the world.

To be chivalrous he must put woman on a pedestal, and see all that is best in her; he must also have sympathy for the weaker folk, the aged and the crippled; and he must give protection to the little ones.

For this he must use his self-control to switch off all that is impure from his mind and ensure that his own ideas are clean and honourable, that his sense of duty is so high that ridicule and chaff will mean nothing to him.

NOT MY JOB

“Not my job” is usually the camouflage under which a coward endeavours to conceal his want of chivalry. But for a man anything that can be helpful to anyone is his job.

I don’t mean by that that he should therefore poke his nose into other people’s business, or ask them, “Are you saved?” and so on.

But if he can lend a hand to a woman who is down, or help a young fellow who is trying to keep up and clean, then he can do a great good through his chivalry. And, more- over, he can be of service to others by the very example he sets of leading a clean, upright life, and by showing that he is not ashamed of so doing.

IT IS UP TO YOU TO BE MASTER OF YOURSELF

The thing is to remember, as I have said before, that you are YOU, and you have got to make your own road for yourself if you mean to gain happiness. Come out of the herd and take your own practical steps towards dealing with the desires that come upon you in the course of Nature.

Keep away from loose companions, whether men or girls; take on lots of other occupation and healthy exercise, such as boxing, walking, hikes, football, rowing, etc. Keep your thoughts off lewdness by taking up hobbies and good reading in your spare time; keep off drink and over-smoking, over-eating, sleeping in too warm or soft a bed, since all these help to make the temptation worse.

Athletics are also a great outlet to one’s natural forces. They have the elements of struggle and victory by physical force, which accompany war, but they should take its place and not be used as training for turning boys into “Cannon Fodder”.

You all know about scouting and the immense value that it has, so we need not go into that any more.

Now one word about tolerance - we are all different and we must not think that because other fellows seem inferior to us, they are to be despised.

For example, you may be a good athlete and Smith may be a poor one, but very good at books. Don’t despise him, but “Live and let live”.

Now we have taken a pretty good look at the problems of sex as they arise in boyhood. I hope you feel happier about them. Life should be natural and easy, and the healthier a life you lead, the less these problems will arise and bother you.

Remember that if you do get troubles that worry you, the best way is to take them to an older man-your Father, if you can talk to him, or an understanding Doctor or Master.

Brooding over troubles never does any good.

If one really lives up to the Scout’s Code, one can’t go far wrong.

There is an old tag in Latin, which we might do well to close with:

“Mens sana in corpore Sano”.

“A healthy mind in a healthy body”.

A good thing to aim at!

Keep yourself clean inside and out by daily washing, and swimming if you can. Constipation and neglect to keep the racial organ cleaned daily are apt to cause slight irritation which leads to trouble.

It will be a struggle for you, but if you are determined to win you will come out of it all the better for the experience; you will have strengthened your character and your self-control; you will have come through clean-minded and wholesome; and you will have fortified your body with the full power of manhood.

Remember also that you have done this, not only for your own sake, but because you have a duty to the nation, to the race, that is, to beget strong, healthy children in your turn; and to do this you have to keep yourself pure.

Some fellows seem to think that if they don’t let them- selves go now and then, they will not be able to perform when they get married later on. This is absolute nonsense. Continence does not weaken your powers.

I have had so many letters from young men on the subject that I quote a reply that I have sent them, as it may meet the anxiety of others:

“I am very glad indeed to hear that you have managed to keep yourself straight in spite of the continued temptation. In reply to your question, I don’t think you need have any fear about being able to marry, provided that you go On as you are now doing. Lots of fellows have, to my knowledge, been afraid to marry thinking that they might be impotent, because of their having indulged in self-abuse when young. But they found that they were all right after all, and so I hope and expect it will be in your case.”

AUTO-SUGGESTION

Imagination runs off into day-dreams, and these may be suggestive ones which bring on temptation.

Yet imagination is the important part of auto-suggestion or self-cure, and therefore the lad who is given to day- dreams is really the one who has the best power for curing himself if he only sets about it on the lines that I have suggested.

THE PARENTS’ INFLUENCE

A large proportion of the men who have risen to eminence in the world admit that they have owed very much of their character and success to the influence of their mother.

And this is natural, since in any case she has been the one who cared for him and watched over his upbringing from his earliest childhood. She has given of her best for him.

The man owes a debt to his mother such as he can never fully repay. But the best that he can do in this direction is to show that he is grateful and prove himself worthy of and bring success to her efforts.

She has probably dreamed ambitious dreams to herself of what her boy would do in the world, and disappointment, as bitter as it is secret, will overshadow her where he turns out a waster or a failure.

Boys don’t think of this enough. They are cruel without intending it; they are apt to forget how much she has done for them and how grateful she would be for the smallest return.

I remember Sir Thomas Lipton telling me the story of his life, and I realised how he made his mother a happy woman when, as a shop-boy, he brought her the first week’s wages he had earned. “Why, Thomas,” she said, “you will be getting me a carriage and pair next I”

That little remark caught his imagination, and on it he built up his ambition. His whole effort was then devoted to the one aim of making enough money to buy a carriage and pair as a surprise-offering to his mother.

He told me that, among the many exciting incidents of his life, the proudest and happiest moment was that when he was able to actually hand over to her the prize that he had gained for her.

So in making your own way to success remember that as you progress it will not be merely a satisfaction to yourself but it will bring a real happiness in a quarter where it is most deserved-in your mother’s heart.

And when some of these difficulties or temptations of which I have spoken are troubling you, turn your thoughts to your mother. Think what her wish would be. Act upon it, and it will pull you through.

If problems arise which you feel you cannot cope with by yourself, talk them over with your father. Remember he has been through the same difficulties as you and will be able to help. If for any reason your father is not available there will be some older man you can trust to whom you can go.

SAVE YOURSELF AND HELP TO PRESERVE THE RACE

Now, as I have said before, in giving you these ideas I am only trying to help you to get happiness.

Happiness depends to a large extent on health, though it also depends on knowing that you are aiming to help the general well-being of the country as well as of yourself. It is no use your getting married, indeed in some cases it is a crime to do so, unless you are fit and healthy and able to beget healthy children. And part of your responsibility as a parent will be to teach your children how to grow up healthy.

Well, there is an awful lot of happiness missed in our country through ill-health, and most of that ill-health could be prevented if fellows only took reasonable care of themselves.

Do you know that only one man in three is really healthy, and that one in every ten is an invalid?

Out of eight million young men-young men, mind you, not the old worn-outs-called up for army service in the Great War, over one million were found to be medically unfit for service!

A large proportion of these were born healthy, but were allowed by their parents or they allowed themselves to become weak and feeble.

A further proportion were born defective because of the defects in their fathers or mothers-very largely from veneral disease.

If you added up all the working hours that men lose through sickness in Great Britain every year, it would amount to fourteen million weeks. Just think what this means in trade and wages, and yet that loss is largely preventable if fellows only knew how to take care of them- selves and had the sense to do it.

If you are an engineer you know what tremendous care is necessary in keeping the machinery properly lubricated, fed with fuel, gentle use of levers, thorough cleaning of all its parts; constant care and attention are necessary, together with a close knowledge of each particular bit of the machinery, if you are to have it in good working order, running smoothly and efficiently.

But in your own body you have a machine more wonderful than any man-made engine and one that needs still closer attention and better understanding if you are to keep it well. And what is more, you can, by taking care of it, improve it and make it bigger and stronger, which is more than the engineer can do with his engine.

Yet how few fellows understand anything about their inside and its wonderful mechanism: they try to drive an engine that they know nothing about, they give it all sorts of wrong treatment and then expect it to keep sound and to work well!

HOW TO KEEP HEALTHY AND STRONG

When I was serving in the fever jungles, both on the east and the west coasts of Africa, I noticed that many of us were healthy enough so long as we were on the march every day, but that whenever we had a day’s halt and rested some of us were sure to get fever.

I argued it out in my own mind that our blood got cleaned and freshened every day through the daily rear and sweating out of waste stuff in one’s system.

A day of rest meant less perspiring and more feeding than usual and therefore less drainage of one’s inside.

So I always made a point of going in for a good bit of exercise on a rest day, and sticking to my usual small amount of food and drink.

I never had a day’s sickness, and at one time averaged twenty miles a day marching for over a week in a pretty soggy atmosphere. Never felt fitter.

I had one white officer with me, but he had to be re- placed five times by fresh men owing to sickness.

Well, I put it down to keeping my blood clean and pure. It is pure blood that makes your body, muscle and fibre grow and keep strong.

And the heart that pumps it through the body is the most important organ that you have. The “Scout’s Pace,” i.e., alternate running and walking for short spells of twenty or thirty paces, saves men from the heart strain of long-distance running, which is not a sport that every- one is physically fitted for.

FRESH AIR

The blood needs loads of oxygen-that is fresh air-to keep it fresh. Living indoors without fresh air quickly poisons the blood and makes people feel tired and seedy when they don’t know why.

For myself I sleep out of doors in winter as well as summer. I only feel tired or seedy when I have been indoors a lot. I only catch cold when I sleep in a room.

The British Medical Journal has reported that living in the open air improved the metabolism (There’s a word! It means getting the best chemical value from the food we eat) of patients in one hospital to the extent of 40 per cent above the average.

CLEANLINESS

I have said clean yourself from inside, but also it is important to clean yourself outside if you want to be healthy.

Cavalry soldiers used to be noted for their cleanliness, the truth is they learnt from grooming their horses and cleaning them up at least twice a day how very important it is to health and freshness, to have the skin and parts properly cleaned.

A bath cannot always be got every day, but a wet and scrubby towel can always be made available and should be used without fail.

BREATHING

The Red Indians used to train their children while they were yet babies to breathe through the nose and not through the mouth. This was partly with the idea of teaching them not to snore and so give themselves away to the enemy in the night, but also because they believed that an open mouth reflected on the character of the man. My Red Indian friends once told me of an Englishman who wanted to fight a duel with a Red Indian, but with true idea of fair play he declined to use pistols or other weapons that the Red Indian was unaccustomed to. So he suggested that they should strip and be armed with a knife apiece and fight it out in that way. The Indian smiled and said he would fight if the Englishman still wished it, but that it would go badly with the Englishman.

When asked his reasons for this he said that he had noticed the Englishman habitually kept his mouth half open and he had no fear whatever of a man who did that. It was the sign of a weak character. Whether or not an open mouth is an indication of weak character I would not know but it is certain that the man who breathes through his mouth sucks in poisonous germs from the air, instead of getting them caught up in the moisture inside his nostrils.

The way to catch ‘flu or any other disease that is flying about is to breathe with your mouth open.

TEETH

It is said that nearly half the ill-health of the nation may be traced to bad teeth. Although people start with good teeth as children, there are very few that have a sound set after twenty-five, and this is mainly because of their own want of care of their teeth.

Children are not taught the importance of cleaning their teeth THOROUGHLY alter meals; and grown-ups don’t bother about it. Diseased teeth and gums not only prevent you from properly chewing your food, but breed germs and microbes in your mouth which go down with your food and give you continual small doses of poison which gradually make you seedy and depressed without your knowing the reason.

If you want to see what you have in the way of germs in your mouth it is an interesting experiment to put some hydrogen peroxide with water in a glass and dip a clean toothbrush into it. Nothing happens.

Brush your teeth over with the toothbrush and dip it again into the glass and you will see myriads of bubbles rising in the water, which means so many germs being knocked out.

EXERCISE

I was asked once by a high authority in education whether I did not think that the cost of erecting gymnasia in every town-though it might amount to millions-would be money well spent because it would develop the health and strength of manhood.

I replied that the two strongest, healthiest races I happened to know were the Zulus and the Bhutani peasants of the Himalayas; but in neither country had I ever noticed a gymnasium. There was plenty of God’s fresh ‘air, and lots of walking and running and climbing to be done in the daily work of these people; and I believed that these were good enough tonics for any man.

But both fresh air and exercise are absolutely essential to health, both when you are growing and when you have grown up. I always begin the day with a little bit of body twisting, in the open, when I tumble out of bed-but that is only a start.

Some men go in for physical drill, and some for dumb-bell and other muscle-developing exercises till they come out all over lumps that look fine in a photo when you brace them up, but are not of the slightest practical use to you.

And this work is generally done indoors.

Your exercise must be out of doors in the fresh air, and the very best you can get is at the same time the easiest and cheapest, namely, walking. Weekend walking tours are the very best thing for health of mind as well as of body.

THE RUCKSACK

I know nothing more enjoyable or more cheering and health-giving than a good old tramp every week-end. A knapsack on your back makes you absolutely free and independent. You load it with only the essential things and no luxuries. It is not merely every pound but every ounce of weight that tells on a long march. Nothing can beat the Norwegian type of rucksack with its light wooden or metal frame which holds it securely in position without galling or overheating your back. It will take in addition to your clothing a light little tent that can be set up on your staff or on a tree stem, and your sleeping quilt and waterproof sheet. Thus equipped week-end hikes are possible, and what is more enjoyable all the year round. Weather? Can anything be better than a good long tramp on a cold blowy day? If it is wet, all the better; you get a very real enjoyment out of a good fire and shelter in a snug farmhouse or inn at the end of the day. I tell you, you get so hardened by practice of the out of doors that you really don’t notice the weather very much and you mind it less. Whatever it is, hot or cold, rain or shine, you gain strength, vitality and cheeriness by it.

BE A MAN

A clean young man in his prime of health and strength is the finest creature God has made in this world.

I once had charge of a party of Swazi chiefs on their visit to England. At the end of their stay, when they had seen most of the interesting sights of the country, I asked them what had struck them as the most wonderful of all that they had seen.

(They were, incidentally, wonderful sights themselves, having discarded their fine native dress for top hats and frock coats!)

They unanimously agreed that the finest thing in Eng- land was the London omnibus. They were so taken with its brilliant colours and the idea of its being entirely for joy-riding!

The next best thing in their judgment was the troupe of gymnastic instructors at the Gymnasium at Aldershot.

When they saw these men performing their various exercises they were tremendously taken with them, but they were not fully satisfied until they had had the men stripped and had examined for themselves their muscular development.

And I must say these gymnasts were magnificent specimens of what a man should be, and active and alert in mind as well as in body.

God has given you a body – no, He has lent it to you – to make the best use of; to take care of; to strengthen and build up into a really fine figure of a man and a father of children.

You can do this if you like. It is up to you. And what a splendid adventure it can be.

St. George fighting the dragon won’t be in it with you, who fight the dragon of temptation and down him so that you may in the end present yourself a man, clean and strong and chivalrous to the girl whom you love. You will also have taken a further step towards happiness, and will have fitted yourself bodily for the service of God in carrying on the race on the best lines.

MARRIAGE

You are bound to have your.....

LOVE ADVENTURES

I know the difficulty that you are faced with. There is little enough of romance and excitement in the ordinary life of a town or village, and at your particular age, woman comes into your thoughts in a new and alluring way.

It is a great adventure, therefore, to a young lad to seek out a girl for himself.

Sometimes he likes to show her off before the others as a sign of his manliness, in other cases he prefers to get her all to himself. Don’t think this unnatural. It is all in the course of Nature. As I have said above, it is in accordance with the law that governs animals as well as man.

But in the case of man there is this difference. He has a mind and intelligence which the animal does not possess; he sees romance in selecting a mate to whom he can give his admiration, love and devotion. These are far above the mere animal instinct. They form human love instead of animal lust; and the higher he raises himself above the animal instinct the less he is of the beast and the more he is of the man.

A main step to happiness in this direction is to select the right kind of girl. There are women and there are dolls.

CALF-LOVE

As a very young man you will of course go entirely by her face and figure and you may fall in love with one girl after another-desperately in love; and sometimes will have perhaps two or three on your string at a time.

Probably you may think it the most glorious adventure and most probably a few days later the most disastrous tragedy that ever happened to anyone. It comes to most young fellows about this period to feel like committing suicide over a love quarrel-but they don’t do it!

You may comfort yourself by knowing that all this is what comes to every lad, and is known as “calf-love”. There is no harm in it, and nothing to be ashamed of nor to be depressed about. Indeed in a short time, when the really right girl has come along, you will laugh at your first ideas of love-making.

But in that calf-love period don’t forget you are a man. Behave like a man. Play fair and square with the girl and remember your future son for whom some day you will be responsible.

And you will be on the right side if you only take on with a girl whom you can bring to your own home without shame, among your mother and sisters.

Remember that whoever she is, she may be someone else’s sister; think of him and behave to her as you would wish him to behave to your sister.

HOW TO GET THE RIGHT GIRL

The right girl will come along sooner or later-if you have kept your head. Your calf-love will have disappeared. You will find a girl whose character you admire and respect, whose tastes are like your own and whose comradeship you long for. It will not be merely her person that attracts you but her personality.

You will find a new, calmer and deeper form of love that links and binds you to her – one which, if you are wise, will never grow less.

And you will expect her to come to you pure and clean, won’t you? But what about yourself? Are you going to expect of her what you cannot offer in return yourself?

That would neither be manly nor fair. No, if you are going to enjoy real happiness in life that is the supreme joy of being married to a really good woman from whom you hope for love and respect.

Don’t begin your married life with a lie, else you will be lying all through it, and there will be an end to trusting each other.

WARNING FROM A PORK-BUTCHER ON GETTING ENGAGED

If you have never read a book called A Self-made Merchant’s Letters to his Son you’ve got a treat in Store for you. It is a most amusing bit of reading, but at the same time full of jolly sound advice.

The merchant is an American pork-packer, writing to his son who holds a junior post in the business. He hears that his son is hanging about after a certain young lady.

So he says: “I suppose I am fanning the air when I ask you to be guided by my judgment in this matter because while a young fellow will consult his father about buying a horse, he is cocksure of himself when it comes to picking a wife.

“Marriages may be made in Heaven, but most engagements are made in the back parlour with the gas so low that a fellow really doesn’t get a square look at what he’s taking. While a man doesn’t see much of a girl’s family when he is courting, he is apt to see a good deal of it when he is house- keeping.

“Your Ma and I set up housekeeping in one of those cottages you read about in story books, but that you want to shy away from when it is put up to you to live in one of them. There were nice climbing roses on the front porch, but no running water in the kitchen; there were plenty of old-fashioned posies in the front yard and plenty of rats in the cellar; there was half an acre of ground at the back, but so little room inside that I had to sit with my feet out of window. It was just the place to go for a picnic, but it’s been my experience that a fellow does most of his picnicking before he is married.

“But one way and another we managed to get a good deal of satisfaction out of it, because we had made up our minds to get our fun out of everything as we went along.

“With most people happiness is something that is always just a day off, but I have made it a rule never to put off being happy till to-morrow. [I have italicised that.]

“Of course when you are married you’ve got to make an income, and this is going to take so much time and thought that you won’t have a very wide margin left for golf. I simply mention this in passing, because I see in the Chicago papers that you were among the players on the links one afternoon a fortnight ago. Golf’s a nice foolish game and there ain’t any harm in it so far as I know; but a young fellow who wants to be a boss butcher hasn’t much daylight to waste on any kinds of links-except sausage links.

“Of course a man should have a certain amount of play, just as a boy is entitled to a piece of pie at the end of his dinner, but he don’t want to make a meal of it.

“Of course your salary isn’t a large one yet, but you can buy a whole lot of happiness with fifty dollars a week when you have a right sort of woman for your purchasing agent, and, while I don’t go much on love in a cottage, love in a flat with fifty a week as a starter is just about right if the girl is just about right. If she isn’t, it doesn’t make any special difference how you start out, you’re going to end up all wrong.

“Money ought never to be the consideration about marriage, but it always ought to be a consideration. When a boy and girl don’t think about it enough before the ceremony they’re going to have to think altogether too much about it after; and when a man is doing sums at home, evenings, it comes kind of awkward for him to try to hold his wife on his lap....

“There is nothing in this talk that two can live cheaper than one. A good wife doubles a man’s happiness and doubles his expenses, but it is a pretty good investment if a fellow has got the money to invest...

“A married man is worth more salary than a single one, because his wife makes him work more. He is apt to go to bed a little sooner and to get up a little earlier; to go a little steadier and to work a little harder than the fellow who has got to amuse a different girl every night and can’t stay at home to do it.

“That’s why I am going to raise your salary to seventy- five dollars a week the day you marry.”

On the other hand, in Enchanter’s Nightshade you find:

“Men all seem to want to make money directly they get to a city.”

“Well, they must marry.”

“You don’t need a deal of money-unless the girl is all wrong.”

There is truth is both ideas, but the advice from the old pork-packer is sound, if less romantic, and it is your business before marrying to see that you are in a position to keep a wife and family, otherwise you will be condemning these as well as yourself to a struggle for existence.

Success in business is not a matter of luck or favour or interest, nor even of learning, so much as of ability and character. Expert skill in your work is bound to tell, but for promotion to higher grades, character-that is absolute trustworthiness, tact, and energy-is essential.

This applies practically to every trade or profession. I was asked the other day what I meant by tact, and I could only reply by quoting the old example of the tactful plumber who, on entering a bathroom which had carelessly been left unlocked by the lady using the bath, promptly said: “I beg pardon, Sir. I didn’t know you were here,” and strolled out again.

A MAN’S DUTIES ON GETTING MARRIED

Someone once told me my fortune by looking at the lines on the palm of my hand, and he said: “Your line of head is stronger than your line of heart,” meaning that I should not be carried off my legs by the first beautiful girl I saw but that I should think as much about the character of the girl I admired as about her appearance; and that is, I am certain, the way to make your choice. Take care lest, in making your choice, you think too much of what you would require in your future wife and forget her point of view and what she would like of you as a husband. Think of that.

When I got married, an old friend, on giving me his congratulations, also gave me a new vision of my future state when he said: “My dear fellow, I have been married over twelve years and it is still a honeymoon with us. Life has gone on getting happier and happier for us.”

And in my turn I too have since found the truth of this. I should hope that it will be the case with you who read this, but it means using your “line of head” as well as heart; it means getting the right girl to start with.

Mind you, it is only a little step to ask a girl to say yes, but on that word depends a layaway sentence to both of you, consigning you both to happiness-or hell.

Then, as I said above, “Be wise”; that is, in taking the girl to be your wife for “better or worse” you are rather apt in the rosy sunshine of it all to forget that “worse”.

Clouds may come and you’ve got to be prepared for them -that’s what I mean by being wise.

Have no secrets from your wife and she will have none from you-and all will be plain sailing.

There may be times of trouble, little difficulties in the home which you don’t foresee at first. Before you married you only did things for yourself; now that you are married you’ve got to chuck your self and do things for your wife~ and later on for your children. You have got to catch yourself up in little bits of selfishness on your part, such, for instance, as grousing at the food because it isn’t exactly to your liking, and that sort of thing. Look at things from her point of view.

Grousing won’t mend matters. Give instead some of the little love gifts of your courting days, of admiration and praise; give and take and SMILE all the time, but most especially at that time when most women get a little off their usual line, just before the first baby arrives. You’ve got to show your manliness and chivalry as her comforter and protector then.

If she is a little fractious it is through her love for you that she is so. To such attention she will respond. Women are not only more grateful than men, but their character shapes itself according as it is led by their man.

If he be nasty she will nag; if he be nice then she will be nicer, and then there’s love and laughter in the home.

CHILDREN

Have you ever read Rudyard Kipling’s story They? I read it long before I was married, away out in the bush in Africa. The point in that story that went home to me was not the delightful description of English scenery, of the old-world home and garden, etc.; it was where the man imagined that he felt the clinging of little children’s fingers in his hand; he only imagined it, but it thrilled him to the core.

And I had that imagination in my mind for years as vividly as in the story. But when it came to pass that I actually felt a tiny hand in mine, the hand of my own little child, it gave me something more than a thrill-a feeling that has never worn off with custom, for it still does so- the heart-filling joy of it never grows less....

But, there! Try it for yourself, in your own home, of your own making-and you will know what happiness is.

There is nothing like it-and it cannot be described, at least not by me.

So, as I have already said before, Heaven is not just a vague something somewhere up in the skies.

It is right here on earth, in your own home. It does not depend on riches or position, but rests with you to make it, in your own way, with your own brain, and heart, and hands. And you can do it if only you like to use these aright.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF PARENTHOOD

But the joy of being a father brings with it a big responsibility. Children learn mainly by the example of their elders.

A grousing, selfish father must not be surprised if one day his son swears at him and goes his own way; the father will get later on what he gives out to-day. Train your children through Love rather than Fear.

A kindly parent gains a loving daughter and devoted sons. As I have suggested before, you will be happier if you aim to leave this world a little better for your being in it.

One step in this direction, and one which is within your reach as a father, is to make your boy a better man than yourself, by teaching him all that you know, what to aim for and what to avoid. Especially he will want your helpful advice when he, in his turn approaches Manhood.

Think how much or how little your father did for you and go one better with your son.

You will be the happier for it.

But are you prepared for this? You may have been educated, or you may have educated yourself for your profession in life, which after all can only last a certain number of years, but have you gone through any training for this much more important point, on which depends so much the future lives of your children?

Have you had any practice yourself in the training and upbringing of boys? Of knowing their ways, of judging their temperaments, of developing their character?

This is all of grave importance to you in your responsible position as a parent.

I hope in the concluding chapters to give you a few practical suggestions about it.

Many parents object to their sons being told about sex matters and venereal disease. I have heard men curse their parents for not having told them. Personally I don’t think that any parent who has seen something of the effects of ignorance, or of what is worse, the wrong notions which boys pick up all too soon from their fellows, would hesitate about warning his sons.

A FINAL TIP FOR HAPPINESS

But I warn you that there is still another item needed to make your Heaven complete.

A man came to me who had been a big-game hunter and naturalist in Central Africa; he had been a farmer in British Columbia; he had started a tobacco plantation in East Africa; and he had seen the world in a life of adventure and romance. He had now settled down in an island of his own in the Indian Ocean in a glorious climate of sunshine amongst beautiful and healthy surroundings. One might well have thought, as he did at first, that this was going to be a heavenly haven after all his strenuous wanderings, but he had now come to discover a fly in the ointment.

He realised that he was living comfortably merely for himself. This conviction had now brought him to give up that Existence and exchange it for Life - that is, for activity in doing something for others.

I had myself gone through much the same experience when I finished my career as a soldier. It had been a pretty varied and strenuous one, bringing a good deal of the rough along with the smooth, and I had loved every minute of it.

At the end my ambition was to settle down in a little farm in some out-of-the-way corner of the world.

I planned it out, but then the second thought arose which made me realise that idleness and indulgence of self did not mean happiness-that true happiness could only be got through Service.

So there is another chapter to this book.

To sum up:

Sex is universal in all forms of life - man, the “lower” animals, birds, fishes and reptiles. It is also found in the vegetable kingdom and in the most primitive forms of living matter. There is no sin in sex. The sin arises when sex is abused.

In primitive, unspoiled man, where sex is simply taken as a matter of course, the same problems do not arise as in “civilised” men. Here there has always been a certain shame and mystery about this matter. This must lead to much guilt and abuse. The problem of prostitution comes in and venereal disease appears. This form of disease is unknown among really primitive, unspoiled races. It is only when these races get contaminated by “civilisation” that such diseases appear. They are indeed dreadful afflictions. Syphilis if not promptly and properly treated may not only affect the person who contracts it, but he may pass it on to his offspring. Blindness, paralysis and insanity are all possible after-effects. Gonorrhoea, in the same way, may have lasting effects, and babies who are infected from the mother are often hopelessly blind. It is right that you should know about these diseases and what may be the consequences of promiscuous sex. It happens fairly often that a girl who has been with men and who is not a real prostitute, may have a slight form of venereal disease, which shows so little that she may not even realise she has it. You see how dangerous this sort of thing can be. If by unfortunate folly you or your friends ever acquired any form of venereal disease, the only thing to remember is to go at once to your Doctor. With modern methods of treatment these diseases can be cured when taken in time.

Remember that the ideal to aim at is for a man to be clean as the girl he is going to marry. If there were sex- equality in this matter it would be a great step towards a healthier attitude. However, you cannot expect to solve all these difficult problems which social reformers and others have studied for many years with little result up to the present! You can each one of you, however, do your bit in bringing about a better state of affairs. Sex is often the matter for sly, obscene jokes when there is really nothing funny about it. As we have seen it is part of all living things and only requires proper management.

WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID ON THE SUBJECT

Men ought to be mighty good to women, for Nature gave them the big end of the log to lift and mighty little strength to do it with (Abraham Lincoln).

Have a heart that never harden,, and a temper that never tries, and a touch that never hurts (Charles Dickens).

Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing and the favour of the Lord (Proverbs xviii. 22).

Health is worth more than wealth.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness.

A “Gentleman” is a bloke wot keeps even ‘is toenails clean.

Fear of a father does not necessarily mean respect for him.

The cane often makes the coward and the liar.

Men! With the help of God, be MEN (Heard at St. Gervais Church, Paris).

As man was created for Health, so was man created for Happiness (Maeterlinck).

Let not thy fancy be guided by thine eye, nor let thy will be formed by thy fancy; let thy understanding moderate between thine eye and thy fancy (F. Quarles).

(Chapter 5)

ROCK NUMBER FOUR

CUCKOOS AND HUMBUGS

HAVE you ever watched a cuckoo at her job? When she wants to lay an egg she doesn’t go to the trouble of making a nest, she goes about looking for some other birds’ nest, preferably that of the harmless little meadow pippit. When she finds one she goes into it, regardless of any protests on the part of the owner, and she takes up one of the pippit’s eggs in her beak and drops her own egg in its place. Then she flies off to a neighbouring tree and eats the egg that she has stolen. The pippit on her part meekly accepts this dictation and does all the work of hatching out the cuckoo’s egg among her own. The result is a big ugly nestling which even before its eyes are open at once begins to bully its nest mates and finally heaves them out one by one till it has the nest to itself and the full service of the parent pippits for its feeding, etc.

We all know the insistent voice with which the cuckoo goes about proclaiming himself above all other birds.

But it is not only in bird life that all this happens; we have human cuckoos, too.

THE HUMAN CUCKOO

The human cuckoo is generally a superior sort of person who sees his own side of a question but nobody else’s. He is the self-interested man who wants only his own way in the world; he makes use of the work of other humbler folk for his own benefit, or he pushes others out who may be in the way of his getting the things he wants. You find the human cuckoo in various forms such as cranks, political tub-thumpers, intellectual highbrows, and social snobs, and other extremists.

There are two dangers about these cuckoos.

One is that you may be sucked in to follow their lead.

The other is that you may become one yourself.

THE PERSUASIVE HERD-LEADER

Have you ever been to a large open-air market? You will see there on every hand experts selling goods. They are not ordinary shopkeepers, they are professors at the game. they catch your ear and then your eye and, finally, your mastery of yourself I have been all but taken in their net. I was in point of fact merely looking out to find a brass candlestick for my mantelpiece. As near as a toucher I was let in for Lot No.4. It had nothing to do with candlesticks, but I was simply hypnotised by the auctioneer to bid for it. This lot contained nothing nearer to my needs than an old saddle, a file, and a pair of partly worn stays.

But such was the power of the tub-thumper that I only escaped by the skin of my teeth and, as it was, I ran into another persuasive man round the corner who was selling a pair of lace curtains. And here I very nearly fell again, not because I could ever want such things, but because he said he was in a vast hurry and packed up to go, and this lot was accidentally left out, and he would rather sell them for what they would fetch than undo all his packages again; but he was in a hurry, just off, another minute and the wonderful chance would be gone.

Fortunately I just managed to tear myself off too-in the opposite direction. Happening to pass that way an hour later I found him still at it, selling his curtains like hot cakes because he was in a desperate hurry, and he hustled people to snap them up in a hurry, too-though possibly to repent at leisure later on.

Well-it is much the same with the good loud-voiced political orator; with the gift of the gab he will bag at one go a whole crowd of open-mouthed wondering lads, who have never troubled to hear the other side of the question about which he is spouting. They fall like ripe plums to his shake; he hypnotises the whole herd. But he cannot mesmerise the individual fellow who doesn’t mean to be carried away by the rest.

It is not only the orator that catches unthinking listeners, there are writers too; and somehow, when you see a thing in black and white, you tend to think it must be true. You naturally take for gospel anything that you read in the papers until you come to enquire into it and to recognise that it is the opinion of one man writing for his living or to back certain views.

There are writers of repute who have studied great questions and who claim to put the matter clearly for those who have not the time or opportunity for going deeply into it.

But even these make their mistakes or take sides, and are apt to colour their pictures rather highly, so it doesn’t do to trust them entirely. If they happen to be writing on one side of the question it is well to read what some equally good authority has to say on the other.

And then there are the snakes in the grass, the fellows who get hold of you by chance in conversation, with great ideas, or who lure you through attractive clubs or with well- sounding “Brotherhoods”. There are lots of them about; so keep at least one eye open and both ears and all your wits. Every one of these cuckoos has his particular aim in getting hold of promising young men. Sometimes the aim is harm- less, but more often than not there is some vice underlying it.

THE SEE-SAWS

These are the extreme views that people are apt to give you from Opposite ends of the see-saw. That is, they are the cuckoos that make the noise in the world and so attract attention of the general flock of birds.

But fortunately for the nation there is a quiet common- sense middle lot of men in between the extremists who, though they don’t talk loud, think quietly for themselves: sensible workmen, human employers, and public-spirited benefactors; in other words, a citizenhood that is out for fair play and mutual forbearance for the good of the whole. It is this solid element that serves to keep the balance between the extremes.

EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION

The right kind of evolution is a very big question, affecting every branch of public and private life, needing the careful study and careful handling of disinterested men if it is going to be a blessing instead of a curse to the mass of the people.

The older men who have had more time in their lives to look round the world to see what has gone on are inclined to ask what extremists would put up in place of the existing form of government. They recognise that progress in the right direction is quietly going on all the time; that is evolution, a natural development; but a new constitution built up all in a hurry could only be a jerry-built affair.

Young bloods are too impatient.

Once on a time I lived with a missionary in an unhealthy spot in West Africa. He was the fourth incumbent of the place in four years. His predecessors had died there or been hurried off to healthier climes. I asked him whether he really thought it good enough when one looked round and saw how little real effect the Christianity had upon the natives into whom it had been inculcated at such sacrifice. And he explained that he never expected to see tangible results in his time, but that he felt that the seed sown in the present generation, though it remained underground, would gradually take root and come up in the next generation and possibly blossom and bear fruit several generations later on.

Well, that was a fine spirit in which to tackle the job. If more of it were developed in our efforts to bring about better conditions for the country the effect would probably be all the more successful in the end.

But extremists generally prefer to be up in the limelight, instead of working in obscurity at making foundations.

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT

Freedom of the individual is only right so far as it doesn’t interfere with the good of the community as a whole. Every fellow is welcome to have his own opinions, but there has to be a limit somewhere. We are all in agreement with trying to do away with the disgrace which at present hangs over civilisation in almost every country; where human beings, through no fault of their own, are condemned to live through an existence of misery and squalor through bad organisation and faulty conditions. We all want to ensure that every human being who is put into this world by God should have his fair chance of enjoying and making the best of life without being handicapped from the first by man- made circumstances of poverty. But no amount of cuckoo work will put an end to this, anymore than will all the Acts of Parliament that may be made. It is a matter for the good will and co-operation of all classes to help our worse-off brothers out of the mire, mainly by giving them a proper education in character towards career-making.

NATIONAL GOVERNMENT

I have been in most civilised countries of the world. It doesn’t seem to make much difference to the happiness of the people whether the country is governed by a King or a President. In fact, the President of the United States has far more autocratic power in his own hands over his country than our Monarch has in Britain.

The King, by our constitution, does not rule, but keeps the government running on constitutional lines. He has no power to make war, though he has a high standing for keeping the peace. He is not elected by any particular party of politicians, but comes into the position by succession, trained for it from youth, and without political bias or interest. The main objection raised is that a monarch costs money to the State.

That also is the case with the head of the Government in every country; but in Britain it does not happen to be so true, because our King has private means of his own and uses them to the full.

In some Republics the President is elected by his own political party; in others he gets there by force of arms; and in many he and his Government are out to make hay while the sun shines, and feather their nests while they are yet in power. We have also seen dictators come into power in countries where people, through internal differences, were not a nation that could count in the world. Where these dictators have been men of exceptional character they have done a remarkable work in regimenting their people into a consolidated national body. But it has meant restriction of the freedom of their subjects to gain that end. In the British Commonwealth our different States rule themselves democratically in the hands of party politicians nominally representing the will of the people.

WHERE LABOUR STANDS IN BRITAIN

In Great Britain, apart from being merely a political party, Labour has gradually and steadily raised itself on its merits as a National institution, through the work of a succession of earnest, far-seeing men. Its members have been handicapped by extremist jackals yapping round them and trying to divert them to more violent methods. But they are British, and that is the point which the jackals, who are mostly from other countries, don’t grasp.

The Trades Unions have grown up to be great organisations for safeguarding the workers, and the Co-operative Trading organisations, as well as the Workers’ Friendly Societies) are now immense business schemes testifying to big outlook and administrative ability among our working men.

Education is now being seriously encouraged and claimed for the rising generation of workers; because of the need of character, as well as of knowledge, if the majority of our population are going to enjoy the good of life. Whatever may be other differences of political outlook all parties are agreed on this one point, and all treat it as of first importance namely Education for Citizenship. In these two qualities lie the key to prosperity and the peace of our people in the future.

But it is well not to Sit down and wait for universities to come to you, nor indeed to expect a university to do every- thing for you when it does come. A very considerable portion of that education can be, and can best be, carried out by every man for himself if he only sets his mind to it.

That is why I am bothering you with this book.

THE AMBITIOUS CUCKOO

As I have said before, apart from the danger of being sucked in by highfalutin talkers, there is the danger of becoming a highbrow oneself.

Such a lot of fellows, while they are young, think no small beer of themselves as politicians, or poets, thinkers or orators, artists and the like. I was a real cuckoo myself - equally intent on becoming a red-hot Socialist or a devoted Missionary, and I wore a green tie with forked lightning on it!

In Enchanter’s Nightshade-which please read if you want a delightful walking-tour-amusing-philosophy-book-J. B. Morton wrote of a tourist meeting with a commercial traveller on the road. The C.T. said: “I am contented with my work; there is more in it than touting and braying my wares in the market-place. The market-place itself is sometimes worth seeing. I go about a lot, see new places, meet new people.... I don’t want to be bounded, caged by my work. I am a traveller, and I often forget the commercial part of it. I shall be sacked one day, and then I shall probably play the piano in a picture show. I’ve no ambition. All I want is to see life, and to live it, to some extent.”

“Ambition is a mixed blessing,” said the tourist.

“Have you got ambition?” asked the C.T

“I have,” said the tourist; “my pals have. We all want to make our names by writing.”

The C. T. smiled, as a parent might smile at a bright little boy.

“It is a phase,” he said. “I have had it. I thought I was Paderewski; wore my hair long; never cut my nails; starved; read morbid books; pined for love. But I got over it as I got older.”

“And now you are happy?”

“I am.”

And he was right. A man who has the cheap ambition to make himself famous or to exalt himself amongst his fellows is laying out for himself disappointment, mingled with envy, hatred and malice, against those who pass him in the race.

Ambition to do right is the only ambition that counts, and that helps towards happiness.

But the personal ambition to be thought great or exceptional makes prigs.

WANT OF HUMOUR

G. K. Chesterton pointed to the fact that the average “cuckoo” has little sense of humour.

“Few people,” said he, “seem to understand the fantastic when it is used logically upon the principle of the reductio ad absurdum. For instance, a man says there ought to be no private property of any kind: that there are none of the things that men have that they should not share. You then say to him, ‘Your proposal about a communal toothbrush, or a communal pair of trousers,’ and he replies that you are simply making a jest of the discussion. The point to insist upon is that he is the man who has made the absurd remark. He is the man who has made the joke, but the difference is that I can see the joke and he can’t. Do not think I give you that example merely as indicating partisanship on general political or other matters. Just the same absurdities are uttered on what may be called the reactionary side. For instance, when the ordinary jolly old major, or man in the club, tells you, as a man in a club told me, ‘I always like to fight the enemy with their own weapons.’ I say to him, ‘How long does it take you to sting a wasp?’ or ‘How do cannibals taste?’ or something of that sort. In these circumstances, the man in the club is liable to accuse you of fantasy, but, as a matter of fact, it is he who is fantastic.”

WANT OF REVERENCE

The Times reported some time ago: “Lord Morley has lamented the decay of reverence in modern democracy, and Lord Bryce in his recently published work expresses the same anxiety, though he believes that reverence may revive in the future. We trust that such revival will take place. Flippancy, conceit and cynicism render men selfish and contemptuous. They ask ‘Who will show us any good?’ and, finding no answer to their minds, they cease to believe in goodness. When this happens, reverence dies, and in its death all hope of moral and spiritual progress is destroyed with it.” The “cuckoo” has no respect for the views of other people.

I agree with Lord Bryce that reverence may revive, for I am sure it will revive among the improved breed of young men who are coming forward in future. It lies with you fellows to bring it about.

THEN THERE ARE THE SNOBS

The snobbishness of class against class is one of the causes of the present social unrest that is damaging our country.

You younger fellows can put a stop to it if you only have the will to do so.

It is for the better-off fellows-you who have had the luck to get a better education-it is for you to hold out a hand of fellowship and good will to your less well-to-do brothers. If you are gentlemen-as you profess-you will do it. Indeed, I am glad to believe that the best public schools and universities are already doing it, not in any sense of condescension, but as brother men and fellow- countrymen. Their elder brothers did it in the war to save the country: they made common sacrifices, and they were comrades together.

And you chaps who are not so well off, you would think it pretty low down, wouldn’t you, if, when another team had the luck to get the better of you in a game, you turned nasty and booed them? You wouldn’t do it. It would be unsportsmanlike.

Don’t be unsportsmanlike, then, in the case of a fellow who has had the luck to have more money than you have.

He is your fellow-countryman and fellow-man. He is all right at heart.

Like Chevalier’s coster –

“‘E’s all right when yer know ‘im,

But ye’ve got to know ‘im fust.”

If you play football with him, man to man, clothed alike and equally muddy, there’s not much difference between you. It clearly shows that there is no snobbishness there. It shows that class difference is only skin-deep; all are brothers below the surface and in their hearts.

I once took a very smart young officer of the Life Guards down South-east London to show him something of the other side of life from that of drawing-rooms and clubs. I had myself, when a youngster, gone into the life of those parts as a plumber.

I thought it would be a bit of an education for him.

It turned out to be a bit of an education for me. When we got into the club that I know of down there he fished out a dirty old pipe, ordered his beer, and in a few minutes had the chaps round him roaring with laughter at the yarns he was telling.

On our way home later on I lost my way in the labyrinth of alleys and back streets, and when I confessed, at last, that I was out of my reckoning for Waterloo Bridge, he at once took the lead and said, “This way, up this alley.”

I then learnt that my friend was quite accustomed to coming to these parts. He took people for what they were, not for what their clothes made them.

It was not condescension but human feeling on his part. And that is “good medicine,” as Red Indians say-for all of us.

“Superior persons” often seem to think that if a man is in a different line of life from themselves he therefore has not a human heart inside him. A “superior person” is a snob.

THE GUSH PRIG

A Gush Prig is a fellow who lets himself go in “gush”. By gush I mean something that you produce, thinking it brilliant, but which is not the outcome of knowledge or experience.

It may be talk, it may be poetry or prose writing. Self- expression is a good thing, but when it breaks out into gush-well, too often it goes to the head and swells it.

A good many young men find at twenty-two that they know practically all that there is to know-and they want other people to know that they know it.

When they get to thirty-two they find that they have still got one or two things to learn; at forty-two they are learning hard. (I am still doing so at seventy-three.)

Politicians, especially those of very pronounced views, generally become disappointing to their original supporters as they become older. The reason for this is that they have meantime been learning a lot, their outlook has be- come broadened by experience, and they have realised the great fact that there is more than one side to a question.

I used to think wonderfully fine thoughts when I was young, and I wrote them down with a poetic fervour that I felt was inspiration. My word, they were tosh when I came to read them later! I have to-day received a letter of eight sheets from a young man who is evidently in the same stage.

He talks of-well, it is hard to know what he is talking about when he says: “People like myself suffered because they saw in the spirit of Scouting a religion and a poetry more dynamic by far than myriads of golden sermons, promises and laws, and because they were willing to follow over the thorny valleys of convention and through the buffeting seas of intolerance and un-imagination that roll and seethe from shore to shore of ordinary mob-psychology.”

Fine!

It reminds me of Browning the great poet. When he was asked what exactly was the meaning intended in one of his earlier poems, he replied: “When I wrote that poem I, at any rate, knew what it meant-and God knew.

“Now-God only knows.”

I once heard a Salvation Army officer giving advice to a party of emigrants as they were starting for one of the Over- sea Dominions. He said: “Before you have been there many weeks you will be showing the people there how much better they might do their jobs; and you will be writing home to tell your people that you never saw such a God- forsaken country and such a rotten lot of people.

“My advice to you is, Write your letter, but do not post it for six months or so. Then re-open it and see what nonsense you have written and be thankful that you did not send it.”

I think the same advice might be useful to many a young man going Out into the world, namely, to write his gush, but to keep it for a few years and then look it over again, and he will doubtless be glad to tear it up before anyone else can see it.

The safeguard is to get your learning first, before you let yourself go, so that you start on right ground, and so don’t have to retract or tear up later on.

SELF-EDUCATION

SELF-EDUCATION A SAFEGUARD AGAINST CUCKOOISM

I have tried in the above paragraphs to show you the dangers of the cuckoo rock, namely those of being led astray by the persuasive call of the cuckoo or of becoming a cuckoo yourself.

The next point is what to do to get past the rock in safety. Education is one great safeguard. By education I don’t mean improved scholarship but education of mind and soul. The one enables you to pass by the danger; education of soul raises you far above it. If you expand your mind by giving yourself wider knowledge through travel and reading, through learning from the experiences of others, and from the study of nature, you will be safe against the call of the cuckoo; and if you expand your soul by giving yourself higher ideals and by giving to others your sympathy through good will and helpfulness you can never be much of a cuckoo yourself, or a “highbrow” as it is called in America; and you will find yourself a better and a happier man.

A prig is generally a prig because he thinks he knows everything when in reality he has often a great deal to learn. He tries to show himself off as more clever than other people while he presumes upon their ignorance. The philosopher Bacon said of old, “Nothing doth hurt in a State more than that CUNNING men should pass for WISE.”

The older and wiser you become the less cunning you find yourself, and the more you want to learn. Begin, there- fore, by taking in knowledge and experience; later on will be time enough for giving it out.

When you leave school you have been trained to the general standard of the rest of the class-or herd. But after leaving school some men rise above the average of the rest, many go on among the herd, while some go down into the gutter.

Success or failure largely depends on your own efforts. Those fellows that use their school knowledge to educate themselves are the ones to get on. That is where books and lectures come in to help you.

Travel and reading and Nature study are all part of self-education. Take reading. With your books around you you have a magic power; when others are fussing and losing their hair over political hopes and disappointments you are sitting content with what you have got. You can at any moment remove yourself and travel through far-off lands, dip into the history of other times, command the wonders of science, amuse yourself with good stories, and see beauty in thought through poetry.

Books are the best friends a man can have. You choose those that you like; you can rely on them at all times; they can help you in your work, in your leisure, and in your sorrow. You have them always around you at your beck and call in your home.

They are not nowadays very expensive if you only buy one now and then to make up your collection. At any rate, the nearest public library will bring almost any book to your hand without expense. But books of your very own are the better friends and companions. Don’t buy a book because it is cheap, for very cheap books are often equally nasty. Go for the best while you art about it.

If you have already read books, then you know what sorts you like. If you have never done much reading, let me advise you to begin at once-you will never regret it-and begin with something that interests you.

If you are out to instruct yourself; an encyclopaedia in a public library is a good “first aid” to a subject, and generally gives the names of other books in that particular line. And when you read, read, don’t skim; and if you study while you read, that is, if you worry out the meaning care- fully in your own mind, it will stick by you all the longer and be the more useful to you in the end.

If you read with the intention of remembering you will remember.

This is Bacon’s advice: “Reade not to contradict and compute: neither to Beleeve and take for granted: nor to finde Talk and Discourse: but to weigh and Consider. Some books are to be tasted, Others to be Swallowed, and Some Few are to be Chewed and Digested....

“Reading maketh a Full Man, Conference a Ready Man, and Writing an Exact Man....

“If a Man Reade little he hath need to have much Cunning so that he may seeme to know that whiche he doth not.”

I have found it a jolly useful practice to note down in my diary any good thing that I have read or heard that day. Some fellows do it now on a card-index system, so that you can look up any subject under its alphabetical letter.

At any rate it is as well, after storing as much as you can of good stuff into your mind, to back it up with a written reminder of this sort.

But reading without outlook is no good. You must balance literary knowledge by knowledge of the world, of men, and things. Travel is a valuable step to this, but an observant, sympathetic man can get as much knowledge of his fellow-men in a walk of a mile or so as a stodgy one would get in a thousand miles.

TRAVEL AS EDUCATION

I was walking through Southampton Docks one day when I struck the scent of spices and coffee coming from one of the warehouses on the quay. I felt impelled to go inside to ask their origin. When the man told me that they were the cargoes of ships sailing from Monte Video, Rio Janeiro, and La Plata, the temptation was too great! I then and there took a ticket for South America, though I had to borrow to do it. A few weeks later I was on my way. The voyage, the variety of characters on board, the new countries visited, the insight into new peoples and a new atmosphere, coupled with the sight of the vast pampas and the glorious Andes, opened out my mind and ideas. They did for me in a few weeks what years of study could never have accomplished.

Even if one can’t manage to get abroad there is ever so much to see in your own country, and so many sides of life to be investigated when travelling with a push-bike, or even on one’s own flat feet. In one’s own town or neighbourhood, if one cannot go farther afield, there are bound to be relics of ancient history of the place and people whose experiences are worth hearing. But travel of this kind, if carried out with the view to observing and finding out all you can of men and things, all comes as an invaluable step in your course of self-education. David Grayson, in The Friendly Road, tells how he left his farm and went for a tramping tour, without money and without definite plans, merely to drink in the beauties of the countryside and to meet with other people and to find the best in them. And 80 it came about that he found great courage in the village minister, human sympathy and simplicity in a millionaire, an awakened spirit in a hopeless farmer, and large outlook in a socialist orator.

I mention this book, not merely on account of its charm and interest, but because this venture of the author gives exactly an example of what could be done by anyone desiring to educate himself through the open-road method. It is a method that is available to everyone.

I have seen a further system of self-education carried out by students of universities in Canada and America. These lads are not blessed with overmuch money with which to pay their college fees. They did not on that account give up all hope of a ‘Varsity training, but during the summer vacation they took service as stewards on board the river steamers, and thus earned enough money to pay their term expenses and at the same time extended their knowledge of men and things and spent their leisure time at congenial work.

SELF-EXPRESSION

Also if a fellow feels moved to express his thoughts and ideas, whether in poetry or writing, or speaking, or in painting or sculpture, most certainly let him do it. I would only suggest don’t be tempted like so many to rush to extreme views before you have seen something of the world. Good self-expression is a virtue, and a virtue of the highest kind.

Every man has what is know as a “gift” of some sort. One of you may be an artist or an actor by instinct, though he may be working in a grocer’s shop or as a carpenter; another may be a clever conjurer or a singer, although possibly earning his money as a waiter or a stoker; there are various “gifts” hidden away in almost every man.

Why is it called a “gift”?

Well, because it is a natural quality-a gift from God. That being so the possessor of it ought to make use of it- for Cod. He can do this by giving out again of that gift to others; let his singing or his acting be employed to cheer others who are downhearted, let his conjuring amuse them, or his pictures open their eyes to what is beautiful. Let him give his talents for the benefit of others rather than of him- self and he will be doing God’s work, he will be no humbug, and he will be finding what true happiness means.

PREMPEH’S HINT TO YOUNG TALKERS

I had the honour, or perhaps better call it the fun, of rounding up King Prempeh, the ruler of the Ashantis on the West Coast of Africa, when he had exceeded the limit in the direction of human sacrifice-but that is another story.

I merely refer to him here as supplying a hint. Being a savage monarch, he was accustomed to saying what he jolly well thought on the spur of the moment, without any consideration of what might result.

If he got angry he lost his head and let himself go; and the man with whom he was angry usually lost his head also-in another fashion.

When he was captured he realised that in discussion with the British authorities he might have to adopt a different line of talk. If he spoke without first weighing the effect of his words he might say things that he would afterwards be sorry for.

So he did what lots of impetuous young fellows might well imitate in discussion-at any rate figuratively. He carried a nut, like a big Brazil nut, between his teeth so that, if at any time he felt impelled to blurt out something untactful, he had to pause while he took the nut out of his mouth and so gained time for reflection.

A further hint that I got from this same King Prempeh was-when you have got the better of your opponent don’t think that you have entirely done with him or have got him down and out, he may have yet another weapon up his sleeve.

I have a memento of the lesson in the shape of a flint lock of a native gun on my table at this moment, and this is how I learned my lesson.

The King contemplated making a bolt for the jungle during the night when he saw we were likely to arrest him. This I had expected of him, so I had an ambush of my men laid beside the path that he would probably follow.

I hid myself in the ditch a few yards ahead of my men so that I could see, outlined against the stars, anyone who came along, and could give the signal to my men whether to arrest or let him go by.

After a time one of the King’s scouts came tiptoeing along very cautiously and quietly, and when he had arrived opposite to me he stopped and peered hard into the darkness ahead.

Something had made him suspicious, and I feared lest he should turn back and give warning of our presence. So being within a yard or so of him with his back towards me I rose up and suddenly grappled with him.

We had a fine old scurry. He got his gun round pointing into my tummy, and I caught hold of the lock. The gun must have been a very old one; the lock came off in my hand. We then embraced each other, not exactly in affection; and as we wrestled and rolled over one another my orderly chipped in like a third dog in a dog fight and just grasped my opponent’s wrist in time to prevent him from pushing his knife into my liver.

You see he had another argument besides his gun with which to press his case.

Incidentally it is worth while noting that Prempeh on his return from banishment has become the President of a local association of Boy Scouts, and his son a Scoutmaster!

I once knew a millionaire who had been a clown in a circus, but even when he had made his pile he continued to work in his shirt-sleeves in his factory. His factory was a wine-making one in one of the South American States, and I saw him working there. He explained the reason for his success was that he insisted on manufacturing the pure juice of the grape where the people had previously had chemical decoctions foisted upon them. He had learnt his lesson in the circus ring. He had found there that second- hand jokes culled from the comic columns of the papers did not go down with the public; they wanted genuine original humour. And so it was with wine. Directly he produced pure unadulterated stuff he was over-whelmed with orders and quickly made his pile.

In many young men’s clubs there are debating societies for training young politicians. But the danger about them is that the members are only imitation politicians, speaking what they have read or heard from other men’s lips and not the outcome of their own understanding. The imitation article takes no one in.

But if when you have got experience you find yourself in a position to help the community by taking a part in public affairs, you should do all you can to train yourself for it, and workup for the good of the community rather than of a section of it.

One step is to be able to grasp a point readily and its different facets, another is to be able to express yourself well in words. For young fellows who fancy themselves in debate the late Lord Bryce gave a sound word of advice when he said, looking back on his past life, “I can see my teacher in the class-room at school. He stands before me now, addressing his class of boys, and what he tells me is this-’Once you have got a good argument for a course of action, one good and sufficient argument, never look for a second; a second would only weaken the first’.”

For learning how to express yourself well in public there is nothing like taking a part in theatricals; it gives you at once the best practical training in elocution, and in getting magnetic touch with your audience. It teaches you how to express yourself by voice and gesture and it takes away your self-consciousness.

LISTENING

Now after all this talk about talking, remember always there is great value and great art in keeping silent. Often you may feel inclined to butt in with your ideas in a discussion, but it is generally best to keep quiet and let the others do the chin-wagging. You learn in this way. Talking gives away many a man to the silent watcher. On every committee there are the men who do all the talking and who get little attention.

It is the silent man, the one who only speaks when he has got something really important to say, who is the one they listen to.

He is the Sphinx to them.

“It is the silent men who do things.”

SERVICE

As you train yourself in character and efficiency, let your aim all the time be not merely the attainment of position or prospects for yourself; but of the power to do good to other people, for the community. Once you have put yourself in a position to do service for others you have stepped on to the higher rung of the ladder that leads to real success-that is happiness.

Service includes not merely personal little good turns of courtesy and kindness to other people; these are right and good; they are what every Boy Scout does every day; but I mean something higher and bigger than this-service as a citizen of your country.

It does not mean generally that you want to push yourself as a leader in civic affairs or to force your particular political ideas on other people, but to be a good reliable chap and a helpful citizen in the State, a brick in the wall. For that you have to look wide and see what is best for the State as a whole and not merely to be looking for what is best for one particular part of it. There is a place for every man in serving the common weal-the good of the community.

When you see where you can, according to your particular gifts, be helpful, chip in and help just as you would when backing up your side in a game of football. In fact a serviceable citizen is very much like a good football player; he makes himself in the first place efficient as an individual so that he can then play effectively in his place in the team.

If fellows didn’t play in their places, if one thought it more amusing to be always offside and another preferred to handle the ball in spite of the rules and another went in for punching every opponent in the stomach, it would no longer be a game of football, but anarchy and the break up of the match.

CIVIC SERVICE

The crowning good that you can do for the community as a good citizen is that of taking a share in civic service. By that I mean taking a hand in municipal and local government affairs. But for this it is well to prepare yourself if you want to be successful, just as you would prepare yourself for running a race or for passing a qualifying examination. A few fellows go in for public work purely because they have the gift of the gab or some half-baked notion of how government should be run, though they have no experience or real knowledge of the matter. A solid grounding is needed in the knowledge of Local Government and its aims methods and responsibilities.

When you come to the age of twenty-one you have, as a citizen, the privilege of voting for the member to represent your district in Parliament. You ought to make yourself competent to take this responsibility, and the first steps have already been suggested to you as those for avoiding the different “rocks,” namely:

Character and Intelligence.

Handcraft and Skill.

Manly Health of Mind and Body.

Now comes the fourth thing, viz., Service, that is, playing the game as a citizen.

In educating yourself for this a great point is to learn the history of your town and country, both past and pre- sent. Much can be learned by reading, but more by travelling and visiting historical points. Then, in order to be able to understand or give a hand in local public affairs you will need to learn all you can about the way in which Local Government is carried out. Study for instance:

Parish Councils – how appointed and what are their duties in Church and other matters.

Urban and Rural District Councils-and how they deal with parishes under their direction.

Borough and City Councils – how their officers are elected, such as Mayor, Alderman and Councillors, and what are their duties in administering poor-relief; health regulations, elementary schools, liquor control, police and fire services, etc.

County Councils – its officers, departments, and its duties over the Borough Councils; how rates are collected and expended, from duties, licences and taxation upon education, lighting, roads and bridges, hospitals, housing, libraries, markets, parks, water- works, sewage, etc.

PARLIAMENT

Apart from the Local Government of Counties each Parliamentary district sends a representative chosen by the people to speak for these in the House of Commons. Members of Parliament have the power of making the laws for governing the country. Thus nearly every man and woman over 21 has a voice in the management of the country.

Members of the House of Lords sit there by right of succession, but a proportion of them, those who have distinguished themselves in business or in national service, have been appointed by the Monarch in consultation with the Government.

The duty of the Lords is mainly to discuss any measure proposed by the House of Commons. They have no real power to “down” a question, though they may send it back to the House of Commons with suggestions for amendment. The question thus gets thoroughly ventilated and discussed before the House of Lords pass it on to the Monarch for his consent. This is a formality, since the Monarch has practically no power to refuse his assent to what the House of Commons has decided upon.

The different sections of political feeling thus come to be represented in Parliament under such names as Liberals, Conservatives, Labour, and so on. The party which is strongest in votes carries on the government and is criticised in all it does by the weaker parties not in power. This is a good thing so long as it doesn’t run to excess and break up national unity. A country divided against itself cannot stand.

The Cabinet consists of Ministers under the leadership of the Prime Minister and is the Executive that carries on the administration of the country under the general direction of Parliament. Each Minister has a department of the Administration under his responsible charge, such as Navy) Army, Education, Home Office, Foreign Office, Dominions and Colonial Offices, Ministry of Health, etc. The whole system has gradually grown up from early days, when kings were autocratic rulers, till 1215, when, under the Magna Carta, the power came more into the hands of the people, and was increased by the Habeas Corpus Act, 1679, the Act of Settlement, 1701, and the Parliament Act, 1911.

So Parliament has grown up by steady evolution on good foundations, and as such has earned the title of the “Mother of Parliaments”. When you travel in other countries, whether republics or monarchies or embryo States, you will find that they regard the Mother of Parliaments as the nearest approach to the ideal of Government of the People by the People, that is, of pure democratic rule.

A NEW REPUBLIC

I was once in a newly established republic talking to the Chief Executioner. He was lamenting the fact that executions were now done away with. I asked him whether they now gave long imprisonment instead of execution.

“Oh, no,” he replied, “we are a democratic republic now; prisons are done away with.”

“Then is there no crime?”

“Yes, there’s plenty of that still.”

“Then what do they do with the criminals?”

“The soldiers take them outside the gates and shoot them-till they are dead.”

(This evidently was not his idea of an execution, since he had been accustomed to do it with a chopper.)

“But what about a small crime? Suppose a man stole a pocket-handkerchief, what would they do with him?”

“Take him outside and shoot him till he was dead.” (I found later that there was a meaning underlying this “till he was dead,” because, the soldiers being trained democratically, i.e. on their own initiative, only fired from the hip and not from the shoulder, so it often took them a long time to hit the objective.)

“How awful! And what about women who do wrong? Surely the soldiers don’t shoot them till they are dead?”

“Oh, no, no. We shouldn’t do that.”

“What is done, then, to women criminals?”

“Ah I they are sent to me, and I cut them up into a hundred pieces; but we have no executions for men.”

This was where a young nation was endeavouring to run before it had learnt how to walk. There are two or three just now anxious to get away from nurse’s apron-strings and to do much the same.

I was at one time staying in a republic where the head of the government, when sitting quietly at home after his day’s work, was visited by the Commander-in-Chief, a close friend of his.

The general came very privately and unostentatiously to see him. He had come, he said, to say good-bye.

“Oh, are you going away?”

“Oh, no. I am going to stay here. It is you who had better go, because tomorrow there is to be a revolution and I am to be elected in your place as soon as you have been assassinated.”

So, to save trouble, the President went.

That is the way in which the government changed hands in those parts.

TWO SIDES TO THE EMPIRE QUESTION

One Sunday I was strolling in the Park in Sydney, New South Wales, when I was attracted to listen in turn to two different tub-thumping cuckoos. And here I got two sides of the question on the subject of the British Empire, which may be of interest as an example in that line. But for a fellow who is educating himself to realise that there are two sides to every question I would suggest studying the reports of the doings in the House of Commons and the daily press. And you will here see not merely two, but very often three or even four different views of the same point, and each of them apparently equally well founded. It is good practice, then, to worry them out for yourself and see which is really going to benefit the majority of the nation in the long run, and make up your own mind accordingly.

THE FRYING-PAN IS BETTER THAN THE FIRE

When I was promoted to command a squadron in my regiment, it happened to be my own squadron that I was posted to instead of being transferred to another.

The men did an unauthorised thing-they had a meeting to celebrate the occasion, and the sergeant-major, in addressing me in their name, said, “We all feel it is better to have a devil we know, rather than an angel we don’t know.” I’m not quite sure which way this remark might be taken to mean. Anyhow, it applies equally well to fancy forms of government, which young hot-heads sometimes clamour for.

But they find that the solid lump of Britons prefer the devil of a Government that they know to an angel-vision that they don’t know.

INTERNATIONAL

In developing our patriotism we must not forget the danger of getting it perverted into a narrow nationalism. It is right to be proud of your country, but not to gas about it to the disparagement of others, or to boost it on to a higher pedestal than it actually deserves. Your best patriotism is to help to raise your country’s efficiency so that it can take its place adequately in the team of nations of the world. The War demonstrated a thing to which people were formerly blind, and that is that all countries are now very dependent on each other in the details of their trade and commerce, that only by mutual good will and co-operation can the world be prosperous and happy.

One country may have the raw materials, but another has the means of manufacturing them, while a third can do the finishing process, and a fourth can best utilise the articles when finished. The cotton grown in India is manufactured in Manchester, finished in Belgium, and used in East Africa. This kind of thing goes on in every direction including the food supply from a producing country, through a supplying country, to a devouring country. Britain produces more coal and iron than it needs, but not sufficient beef and corn, and so it exchanges surpluses with other countries.

So the duty of the citizens in each State is to get more into mutual touch and sympathy with those of other States, through interest in their history and doings, and through interchange of visits, etc. Once mutual good will and personal friendship come to be established throughout the citizenhood of the various countries, it should be the best guarantee of all against war in the future.

So you see here lies a big opening before you as a citizen, no matter how humble may be your standing.

At eighteen you have the right to call yourself a British citizen. It is up to you to make yourself worthy of the right, and to prepare yourself beforehand to exercise and use it. It gives you the opportunity of service for the community, which, as I said before, supplies the main step to happiness.

To prepare yourself means gaining knowledge and experience, and the practice, to begin with, of small jobs for the good of the public. (See final chapter.)

If you then find that you have a gift that way, go on and take your part in civic affairs.

BE WIDE-MINDED

When I am Prime Minister, I will make it obligatory that before a man can be elected to Parliament he should have travelled round the world at least once; and also that his education should have taught him to look at both sides of a question in every case; and also that he should have learnt leadership, which means as a first step complete mastery of himself, and sinking to-day’s minor party or class ideas for the nobler outlook, the greater good of the whole community in the coming years.

So in preparing yourself keep the right object in your mind’s visage to start with. Go into public life with the humble desire to serve the community, to help the whole show along for the good of the greater number. Your reward will not lie in seeing yourself go up, but in seeing those around you go up to a better standard of living as a result of your work. And this will give you more satisfaction than any decorations or awards that can be heaped upon you.

I hope after reading this dissertation on the cuckoo rock dangers and how they should be avoided, you will not say that another specimen of a cuckoo is the retired general, whose young days were very long ago, and who now sets himself up as a law-giver on what a young fellow should do and what he should not do.

Well, you may see it in that light; but as a matter of fact the old fellow has this one point of difference from other cuckoos-he has no personal aim of his own, he has no irons in the fire or fish to fry, but he has a great love for his fellow-men, he has a very good memory of what he went through as a youngster without a father alive to advise him, and he has a very close sympathy with young men coming out into life. All he wants to do is to offer them any hints from his own experiences that may be of use to them in preventing them from being lured away on to treacherous shoals, and in helping them to live a happier and a fuller life.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

SOME ANTI-CRANK MAXIMS

A sense of humour will pull you through this danger as well as through many a bad time.

Let your ambition be not to see how much you can get out of work, but how much you can put into it.

Ambition to do the right is the only ambition that counts.

Cheerful alacrity in doing a thing that is put up to you is the best of recommendations.

A fellow who boosts himself is generally the fellow who needs boosting.

Remember you are a brick in the wall, or a player whose job is to play in his place in the team.

A balanced citizen is worth half a dozen cranks.

Lots of fellows demand their rights before they have ever earned them.

Joy cometh to him who serveth, through his brother man, his Father God.

We never fail when we try to do our duty-we always fail when we neglect to do it.

Don’t be content with the what-but get to know the why and the how.

Nature gave us one tongue, but two ears, so that we may hear just twice as much as we speak.

It is a great cleverness to know how to conceal our cleverness (La Rochefoucauld).

Notoriety is not the same thing as Fame.

There are two kinds of people who never change their opinion, and those are the foolish-and the dead (J. Russell Lowell).

(Chapter 6)

ROCK NUMBER FIVE

IRRELIGION

ATHEISM

THERE are a good many men who have no religion, who don’t believe in God; they are known as atheists.

In Great Britain alone there are nine societies of these. They are welcome to have their own opinions in this line, but when they try, as they are always doing, to force these ideas on other people, they become enemies of the worst sort.

Some of these societies directly attack the religious belief of others in a very offensive way, but I believe that by doing so they are, as a matter of fact, doing more good than harm to the religions concerned, since it makes people buck up and sink their own differences in order to combine together to repel these attacks.

Here is a specimen of the gratuitous kind of insult which they offer to the Christian religion. It is one among others which have been quoted in the public press during the last few years.

“The chief religious ceremony of Christians, known as the Mass, or Communion, which consists of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of this Jew called Jesus, is a disgusting and degrading superstition, and suggestive of a cannibal feast, which in all probability was its origin.

“Christianity has lowered and perverted the standard of truth in every direction. It is not too much to say that it has debauched the world with falsehood.”

This to every Christian who believes in his religion is an indecent insult. At the same time it is a direct call to him to action. But I am not going into that here.

Apart from the anti-religious there are lots of fellows who, though not violently opposed to religion, are not particularly interested in it. In some cases they have never been shown what it is; in others it has not proved very attractive or inspiring and they have let it slide. Mark Twain said he was averse to discussing religion since it dealt with Heaven and Hell and he had friends in both places.

On the other hand, I have known in the backwoods more than one strongly religious man who as a boy had had no home teaching in religion, but who has realised God for himself through what he has seen of His works and His wonders in the world.

Such a man has come to see that he himself was a part and a member of that wonderful creation, but equipped in higher degree than other living animals by having a mind, the power to appreciate beauty, and the sense of good will towards others, which meant also that he had something of the spirit of God inside him.

God the Creator is recognised by most denominations of religion, but their differences arise over the actual character of the connection of the Creator with the human soul.

In the Christian belief it was held that Jesus Christ came to live among men to interpret and bring home to them the fact that God is Love, and that the sacrifices of offerings to God as practised in the old superstitious religions were not what were wanted so much as the sacrifice of self, and Service for God.

RELIGION IS ESSENTIAL TO HAPPINESS

If you are really out to make your way to success - i.e. happiness-you must not only avoid being sucked in by irreligious humbugs, but you must have a religious basis to your life.

This is not a mere matter of going to church, of knowing Bible history, or understanding theology. Many men are sincerely religious almost without knowing it and without having studied it. Religion very briefly stated means:

Firstly: recognising who and what is God.

Secondly: making the best of the life that He has given one and doing what He wants of us. This is mainly doing something for other people.

That should be your belief, not as a matter of thought for Sundays only, but as one to live up to in every hour and every phase of your daily life.

As steps towards gaining these two points there are two things I would recommend you to do.

One is to read that wonderful old book, the Bible, which, in addition to its Divine Revelation, you will find a wonder- fully interesting story-book of history and poetry as well as morality.

The other is to read that other wonderful old book, the Book of Nature, and to see and study all you can of the wonders and beauties that she has provided for your enjoyment. And then turn your mind to how you can best serve God while you still have the life that He has lent you.

THE BOOK OF NATURE

What I am saying here is for those who have no particular religion. Atheists say that they are against the Christian and other forms of religion because these are superstitious rather than guiding principles of life. They maintain that a religion that has to be learnt from books written by men cannot be a true one. But they don’t seem to see that besides printed books, and apart from Revelation, God has given us as one step the great Book of Nature to read: and they cannot say that there is untruth there-the facts stand before them.

Shakespeare speaks of “Sermons in Stones, Tongues in trees, Books in the babbling brooks, and Good in every- thing.” Bacon wrote, “The study of the Book of Nature is the true key to that of Revelation”.

The Koran says-”Seest thou not that all in the heavens and all on the earth serveth God; the sun, the moon, the stars, and the mountains and the trees and the beasts and many men?”

I hope I shall not be misunderstood. I do not suggest Nature Study as a form of worship or as a substitute for religion, but I advocate the understanding of Nature as a step, in certain cases, towards gaining religion.

This way is one that may appeal where other methods have failed, especially to those who are inclined to be atheists or those who have no religious ideals in particular, or who have had them and have lapsed from them. It may help them, by a new path, to find their Church again.

The following words by David Grayson a famous botanist, describe what I fancy must be the experience of a very large number of men in the present day.

“I have been a botanist for fifty-four years. When I was a boy I believed implicitly in God. I prayed to Him, having a vision of Him-a person-before my eyes.

“As I grew older I concluded that there was no God. I dismissed Him from the universe. I believed only in what I could see, or hear, or feel.

“I talked about Nature and reality.

“And now-it seems to me-there is nothing but God.”

NATURE KNOWLEDGE A SLIP TOWARDS REALIZING GOD

I know that among our young men of to-day there is an earnest desire for religion-a religion that they can grasp and act up to. During the war I had hundreds of young soldiers anxious to sign on to carry out the Scouts’ Promise and Law as something tangible in that direction.

Recently I was told of a group of young working men who had become “Rovers”. There were some thirty of them, and they asked their leader to hold a Sunday meeting to teach them something of religion. So for such fellows I hope that my suggestions may be helpful.

The spirit is there right enough, but the form is needed when once they have come to realise something of the Divine nature and of His Service.

There is the Indian legend of the energetic priest who was dissatisfied with the amount of faith in one of his flock. When charged with irreligion the man explained that he had tried hard but had found that religion was not in his line.

The priest thereupon seized him, and plunging his head under water, held him there until he was nearly drowned.

By dint of sheer strength and struggling the man at last managed to break loose. When he remonstrated against this violent treatment, the priest replied:

“If you only strove in a world of difficulties to find God’s help half as hard as you have been struggling to get breath when in the water, you would soon find Him.”

THE WONDERS OF THE FOREST

If you have never journeyed through the forest of Brazil or West Central Africa you can hardly imagine the beauty and wonder of a tropical jungle. It recalls even to the most unfeeling mind all the grace and majesty of a Cathedral. But despite this it also hides horror within its dim twilight and soggy vegetation. Through the tangled undergrowth one pushes one’s way with trees overhead shutting out the sun- shine-and the air. And high above these the giant cotton trees and other monarchs of the forest rear their heads two hundred feet above the ground. But you seldom see these heads when you are groping your way in the ooze and leaf- mould amid the creepers, reeds and bush. As you tramp day after day, and it may be week after week, through this same gloom, its beauty is forgotten in continual repetition, and the confinement becomes a horror from which you know there is no escape and no relief. A sick depression holds you in its clutch; in some cases even melancholy and madness come to men.

And then at night as you lie out in the dark, in the soft stillness of the tropical night, the forest is hushed, but there are small voices speaking everywhere. The little chirps of crickets, the song of frogs, the drip and fall of leaves, and the dim whisperings of light breezes playing among the branches away up overhead. Now and again, at long intervals, the stillness is broken by that most impressive of all forest sounds-the roaring, rending crash) as a hoary veteran among the giant trees yields up its long life and falls from its pride of place to be no more seen.

There is a moment of tense and, as it were, respectful silence, and then the little voices of the forest carry on their whisperings again.

Man seems all out of place and a trespasser here. It is mainly a plant kingdom where insects are admitted. And yet in it all there is life and sensation, reproduction, death and evolution going on steadily under the same great Law by which we in the outer world are governed. Man has his Nature-comrades among the forest plants and creatures.

For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, the forest is at once a laboratory, a club, and a Temple.

THE GREAT FALLS

Abraham Lincoln, as he stood and gazed at the Falls of Niagara, said: “It calls up the indefinite past; when Columbus first sighted this continent, when Christ suffered on the Cross, when Moses led the Israelites through the Red Sea, nay, even when Adam first came from the hand of his Maker, then, as now, Niagara was roaring here ... Older than the first man Niagara is as strong and fresh today as ten thousand years ago. The mammoth and the mastodon ... have gazed on Niagara, that long, long time, never still for a moment, never dried, never frozen, never slept, never rested.”

John Wesley Hill, in recording this, wrote: “These reflections on Niagara embraced the whole subject of creation, the existence of God, the Mystery and the power of the universe, the history, redemption, and fate of man. ... From this recognition of God in Nature it requires but a step to a realisation of the Divine in the affairs of men.”

It is very true; you will understand it if ever you stand on the edge of that stupendous gorge that constitutes the Victoria Falls, in South Africa. Here the Zambesi, half as wide again as Niagara, hurls its waters down 300 feet into the dark swirling depths below.

That roar which one hears some miles away has never ceased, since time was, to shake the air. The zigzag passage 300 feet deep which the river has cut for itself for forty miles through solid rock speaks to a grinding process not of thou- sands but of many thousands of years. One learns here something of the littleness of man, and of his transient efforts at fighting and fussing about petty things that matter not. One realises, dimly and inadequately it may be, that there is a bigness around us-that there is the Creator- God.

THE BEAUTY OF NATURE

Many town-living fellows never get to realise the beauty of Nature because they seldom see it. Their eyes are more trained to looking at shops, advertisements and other people.

But with those who have lived with Nature, and have come to recognise its beauties, they can, when they come to town, catch glimpses of it even in the dingy streets.

At one time in my life I had to cross Westminster Bridge every day about sunrise and again at sunset, and scarcely a day passed when I didn’t find myself standing to gaze at the gorgeous colours of the coming or departing of day; and in the pearly grey and lilac tints of the hazy shadows and silhouettes which, thanks to London smoke, make them particularly prevalent there.

An artist brother of mine actually went to Newcastle to paint the smoke and steam for their wonderful effects under sunlight and cloud.

Why do I love fishing? It is not entirely for the fun of catching fish. I enjoy the day whether I catch any or not. I go to FISH, not to CATCH fish.

In the rich lush grass of the meadows, with the golden gleam and the scent of the buttercups, the heavy green of shady trees, one is alone with Nature. The humming of the insects, the rippling of the busy water-voles, the weird “drumming” snipe, the blue flashing kingfisher, these and other Nature mates become your companions.

But there are other scenes than this. Shackleton had a different view when he said that country-side scenery was all very well.

“That is all right for getting your butter and roast mutton; but there’s another kind of scenery that challenges the best in a man’s soul. I can’t tell you what it means to an explorer marching through a fog in a new land when suddenly the fog lifts and he finds himself looking at mountains no human eye has ever seen.”

Well, there I agree with him too. I love the homely beauty of the English country-side as I do the vast openness and freedom of the rolling veld in South Africa.

I love the rushing waters and the nodding forests of Canada; but I have been more awed by the depths and heights of the Himalayas and by the grandeur of those eternal snows lifting their peaked heads high above the world, never defiled by the foot of man, but reaching of all things worldly the nearest to the Heavens.

HIKING

You may say “yes, but I can’t get to mountains, oceans and primeval forests. How then am I to see and under- stand the wonders of Nature and her messages?”

Well, you can do almost as much in your own country if you will come away from the town and suburb and get out into the open, into the woods and meadows.

With your pack on your back and a staff in your hand or taking with you your little canvas home, your blanket or your cooking-pot-and FREEDOM. Out in God’s open air, drinking in the glories of sky and earth and sea; seeing the colour in the woods and fields, scenting the flowers and the hay, hearing the music of the brooks and birds and the whispering wind, getting to know the animals and their ways, till you feel that you are a comrade with them all and “find yourself” as a part of the great scheme of Nature.

HUMAN BODY AS AN ITEM IN NATURE STUDY

Apart from woods or fields, you need not go farther than your own self for a beginning in Nature study. What did you come from? A tiny seed no bigger than a pin’s point, yet giving you a body formed of flesh and bone and sinew with a likeness to your own father and mother, strong, and able to obey whatever the mind tells it to do.

It has wonderful mechanism in all its parts. Look at your eye, a most delicate and marvellous apparatus beyond anything that man could devise. It gives instantaneous information to the mind of things near or far away, of their ugliness or beauty, their colours and shapes. It reads this page and from the printed letters upon it puts thoughts and ideas into your brain which the brain packs away into store for use later on when needed.

Touch this book with your forefinger and think, simple as the action is, yet how wonderful.

Eye telegraphs to brain, “there is the book at such and such a distance from you,” brain tells sinew to move arm, hand and finger to the spot at once. Nerves in finger- tip telegraph back at once to brain that the job has been done and that the book is cold or hot, rough or smooth, and so on.

Ask Mr. Atheist who it was who invented and made that wonderful machine? And not merely one specimen but millions throughout this wonderful world, alike in minutest details, yet no two exactly alike in mind, body or appearance. Put your finger on your pulse, that is the artery on the front of your wrist directly below your thumb. Or feel your heart in the left centre of your chest. There you find the wonderful performance going on of fresh, warmed-up blood being steadily pumped through your arteries.

These lead to all parts of your body, and the blood is then brought back, dirty, by the veins, to the other side of the heart, to be cleansed by the lungs with fresh oxygen from the air.

And that work is going on regularly all the time without your taking any trouble about it yourself; whether you are sleeping or waking, that gallant heart goes on unceasingly at his job.

If it were to go on strike and stop work, even for a minute you would be dead. It has its telegraph wires in the shape of nerves which give it messages from the brain the moment that your eyes or ears telegraph something out of the way to the brain. Thus, if there is a sudden loud bang near you or your ear tells you in the night that someone is creeping up to stick you with a knife, ear tells brain and brain tells heart, and heart at once increases its rate of pumping to prepare you for instant action.

Also if you go running or doing extra work uphill, more fresh blood is demanded and you suck in greater gulps of fresh air to replenish the blood; and heart has to get on to the job with redoubled vigour.

You owe a great deal to your heart; your health, your very life depends on heart doing its duty to you; and yet a great many people never give a thought to their hearts.

It is not good for the heart to be artificially forced to work its valves faster than Nature requires. If you force it to do so the valves get weak and cannot keep the blood freshened and so you get ill. For instance, if you drink to excess it sets heart going faster than usual and if you keep on doing it it steadily weakens it.

Also if you smoke too much it does the same, especially in the case of growing lads whose heart muscles have not yet gained their full strength for meeting the strain.

The sketch above shows the wonderful arrangement of valves that goes on working in your heart once every second.

I have copied it from Dr. Shelley’s book, Life and Health, which you should read if you care to see full information put in most interesting form about all the different organs of your body and the work that they do. It is really good reading.

Then there is your ear. Have you ever seen a model of the human ear and the marvellous machinery that it every sound to your brain?

It would take too long to go into that wonderful apparatus here, but this diagram of the section of an ear will give you some suggestion of what it is like.

If every fellow studied a little of his own body and how it works he would quickly gain a new idea of the miraculous handiwork of God and would realise how He is actually active in your body as well as in your mind.

Look at the grain of the skin of your finger-tips, with its many circles and turns, take a print of those with ink upon paper, and examine them with a magnifying glass. You may get thousands of other people to do the same, but you will never find one who has them identically like your own. Consider any part of your body and what it does at your command. You begin to realise what a wonderful living machine has been given to your charge to use properly- and you gain a reverence for your own body.

MICROSCOPIC NATURE

Take one drop of moisture from your mouth and put it on a glass slide under a microscope and you will see that it contains hundreds of little living animals or germs of delicate form and likeness to each other, endowed with life and action, and with powers of feeding and reproduction.

Go out into the garden or the nearest park and see those plants, pick a single leaf of the thousands on the tree, and study it though a magnifying glass, compare it with another of the same tree or of a tree of the same family a thousand miles away. Both will be exactly alike in form and texture, yet each will have its own little minute difference of individuality. Also each has its own power of breathing and feeling, of feeling warm or cold, health or illness. Each plant has its birth, life, reproduction and death just as any other animal on earth.

The wonders and mysteries of Nature are unlimited. There are big chances before you fellows of the next generation. So there is material value in studying them- but the more you study them the more you become humble in the presence of the work of the Creator.

TELESCOPE NATURE

Look up in the sky. That aeroplane is high, almost out of sight, but what is beyond-far, far above him?

Limitless space. Look at it at night through a telescope and you will see that those tiny points of light we know as stars are great suns having planets circling round them, just as round the sun we know this earth and half a dozen more like it are continually circling at whirling speed.

Many of those stars are so distant that the flash of light coming from them (and you know how fast a flash travels) takes five hundred years and often much more to reach us.

One of them may have gone to bits in the time of Henry V, after Agincourt, but its light would still be coming to us.

From tiny microbes seen through the microscope to vast worlds seen through the telescope one begins to realise what is meant by the Infinite, and when one realises that all things, big and little, are working in one regular order in a great set plan, the stars whirling through limitless space, the growth of mountains in the world, the life and reproduction and death in a regular series among plants and germs, insects and animals, one realises that a great Master Mind and Creator is behind it all.

THE ANIMAL WORLD

Animal life is at hand for all to study. There are the birds with their feathers and mechanical arrangements of light bones that enable them to fly, with their nesting ingenuity their migratory instincts that make some of them travel half the world over. There are the bees, where all but a few are workers for the common good with a wonderful division of duties and sense of discipline. The inner life of a hive is a miracle of organisation; some of the bees collect the pollen, others build up cells of exactly the same shape and size, others come and fill the cells with honey from the flowers for the feeding of the community. The queen bee lays her eggs in the breeding cells where they are guarded by the nursing bees; fanning bees are placed in regular lines keeping the hive ventilated with their wings; and sentry bees keep out intruders at the door.

Then among the greater animals, wild or tame, whether seals or panthers, horses or dogs, all have minds and memories for directing their powers. It is not only the human mother who loves her children. The tigress is equally fond of her cubs, or the partridge of her chicks.

And the male will protect his female, whether he be a monkey or a wild boar, just as bravely and as chivalrously as any knight of olden days.

Many creatures will sacrifice their lives to protect their young as pluckily as any soldier fighting for his home and country. You may have owned a dog who would defend you and your possessions with his life, if need be, for no reward but because he loved you.

And you can see from his actions how he enjoys express- ing his affection for you. It makes him happy to carry out your wishes and to do little jobs for you.

Man, too has all these attributes of the animals. He has the mind and the memory, the pluck and the chivalry, the affection and the happiness that animals possess; but he has them on a far higher scale. He can use them all to greater advantage.

THE SOUL

As a man you have this pull over the animal-you can recognise and appreciate both the wonders and the beauties of Nature. You can enjoy the golden glory of the sunset, the beauty of the flowers and trees, the majesty of the mountains, the moonlight and the distant views.

But there is bound to come in the thought that something more is expected of you than is expected of rooted trees or animals who have limited powers, something more than merely enjoying the sunshine as they do.

You have all this extra intelligence, with the ability to apply it. But it is wasted if you don’t use it or if you spend it badly, when all around you is the vast universe and God for you to work for.

The funny thing is that there has been more fighting and quarrelling in the world over religion than for any other cause. It is worse than funny, it is ridiculous, but at the same time true that the more we care for our own religious beliefs the more narrow-minded we seem to become towards the religious ideas of other people.

We forget that we are all sons of the same Father and that we are all striving to do His will, though it may be in different ways.

There is one thing, however, that I feel sure of myself, and that is that God is not some narrow-minded personage, as some people would seem to imagine, but a vast Spirit of Love that overlooks the minor differences of form and creed and denomination and which blesses every man who really tries to do his best, according to his lights, in His service.

CONSCIENCE

How can you best serve Him with the intelligence and power that He has given you? If you are in doubt, ask your Conscience, that is, the voice of God within you. He will tell you at once what is needed of you.

Dogs delight to bark and bite, it is their nature to, but they cannot rise to being large-minded, charitable, helpful, and kind. Men can do this when they really mean business. That is where a man attains his proper footing, namely, when he exercises the Divine Love that is in him in service for others.

LOVE

In India it is no unusual thing to see a fakir who, for a vow, holds one arm aloft and never uses it. That arm eventually withers away and dies. In the same way that spark of Love that exists in every man, if not exercised, wastes away and dies; but if put into practice it grows bigger and stronger and more exhilarating every day.

Service is giving up your own pleasure or convenience to lend a hand to others who need it. Well, if you practise service to others day by day in little things as well as big, you will find yourself developing that spark of Love within you till it grows so strong that it carries you joyously over all the little difficulties and worries of life; you rise above them; you are filled with good will towards men; and Conscience, the voice within you, says “Well done!”

That Love is like Mercy, which Shakespeare describes as having a twofold quality: it blesses him that gives as well as him that takes. That Love is “the bit of God” which is in every man-that is his Soul.

The more he gives out of Love and Charity to his fellow- men so much the more he develops his Soul.

Professor Drummond, in his work Natural Law in the Spiritual World, has suggested that it is there that lies man’s chance of what is known as everlasting life; he develops his soul from being a little bit to being part of God. It is there that he finds the happiness of being a player in God’s team. It is there that he finds the joy of heaven, here and now on earth and not vaguely somewhere later on in the skies.

There is no superstition about all this, as suggested by your atheist. It is a direct fact, and it lies open to every man, whether he be rich or poor, to enjoy, provided he paddles his way towards it.

A step to this end is to read the Bible and trace the history of God’s will among men and to carry that will out by your own good will and helpfulness to others, and you will be the better man for it-and safely past the rock of atheism on your voyage to happiness.

Now don’t think from all that I have said in this chapter that I am trying to convert you to some new form of religion, because I’m not.

I am only going on the idea that you who read this have not got any strong religious views of your own. I only suggest that the better realisation of God may possibly be got through Nature-study rather than through books. I have known it happen in very many cases among woodsmen, seamen, soldiers, and explorers, who had not otherwise grasped any religious faith.

If you find this method does not help you, the next step is to talk with a minister of religion, who can then put you on the right line for gaining the truer religious beliefs.

GUIDING THOUGHTS FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES

To be good is one thing, to do good is better.

How many observe Christ’s birthday! How few His precepts. It is easier to keep Holidays than Commandments (Franklin).

The study of the Book of Nature is the true key to that of Revelation (Bacon).

God is not a friend who thinks only of our religious side; on the contrary, we should find it a help and an encouragement if we looked upon Him as a keen friend, interested alike in our games, our work, or our stamp-collecting(The Heart of a Schoolboy).

Reverence promises freedom from hasty judgment, friendship towards men, and obedience to the gods (Marcus Aurelius).

I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon earth and be an atheist, but I do not see how he can look up into the heavens by night and say there is no God (Abraham Lincoln).

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great Commandment. And the second is like unto it:

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets (Matt. xxii. 37).

(Chapter 7)

ROVERING

THE AIM OF THE ROVER BROTHERHOOD

ROVERS are a Brotherhood of the Open Air and Service. They are Hikers on the Open Road and Campers of the Woods, able to shift for themselves, but equally able and ready to be of some service to others. They are in point of fact a senior branch of the Boy Scout Movement-young men of over seventeen years of age.

The four main aims of the Scout training in Woodcraft are to develop these points:

•  Character and Intelligence.

•  Handcraft and Skill.

•  Health and Strength.

•  Service for others and Citizenship.

These are the requirements for a happy and active life. Many young men just drift passively along and never reach happiness. With Rover Scouting they would not let slip their golden opportunities.

The Rover brotherhood is not only a brotherhood but a jolly brotherhood with its camp comradeship, its uniform, and its “dens” or meeting-places all the world over.

Since it is a Brotherhood of wanderers, you can, as a member of it, extend your travels to foreign countries and there make your friendships with Brother Rovers of other nationalities.

This side of our Movement is not only interesting and educative but must make a real step in ensuring the future peace of the world through mutual good will.

CAMPERCRAFT

I have had the luck to camp out in a good many different parts of the world-in the Canadian backwoods, Central African jungle, Egyptian desert, Norwegian rivers, South African veld, Himalayan mountains, etc.-all have their own particular delights; but all the same, your own country has a beauty and charm of its own which is hard to beat however far you may travel.

You have there the joys of camping almost at your door, at the least possible cost in money, time and trouble.

Out of the stuffy smoke and second-hand air of the noisy town you have stepped out into the freshening breezes of the open downs and drinking deep of the pure air you gain “new blood in your veins and new life in your brains”.

And as you swing along with the untiring stride of perfect fitness you know the joy of living. Over hill and dale, with changing beauties of scenery at every step, you feel a free man. The view is yours to gaze upon, you’re free to go and free to stay and free to pitch your lodging where you feel inclined. Whether you prefer solitary hiking or tramping in company depends on your personal temperament and temper.

There is no pleasure that comes near to that of preparing your own meal over your fire of wood embers at the end of the day, and no scent like the smell of that fire.

There is no view like that from your lair on the woodland hill-side. And there is no sleep like that in the open with a warm blanket or a good thickness of paper beneath you. (“More under than above you” is the tramps’ secret for lying warm 0’ nights.)

The sound of the night and the companionship of the beasts and the birds make you feel a comrade of them all in the Brothership of Nature.

Rain? Cold? Yes, I suppose they come, but you really get to disregard them when you are in the regular swing and habit of week-end camping.

Whether you are a lone hiker or whether you camp with a companion, or in company with a Patrol of pals-it is all good.

“There is nobody under thirty so dead but his heart will stir at the sight of a gypsy camp ... there is some life in humanity yet, and youth will now and again find a brave word to say in dispraise of riches, throw up a situation to go strolling with a knapsack” (R. L Stevenson).

Then the quaint brethren of the road that you meet, and the freemasonry among out-of-doors men, give you many new ideas and a fresh and widened outlook on life from many a new standpoint.

With this opening up of a new and human side to your character you can, if you will, make your hiking into the wandering of a knight-errant, by being a doer of good turns to all and sundry as you go along.

HOW TO BECOME A ROVER SCOUT

To become a Rover Scout the best way is to join a Rover Crew belonging to a Scout Group in your neighbourhood.

Any local Secretary or Scouter (i.e. any Scout officer) of the Boy Scout organisation will advise you on the subject and help you in your desire to become a Rover Scout.

We have at our Headquarters at 25, Buckingham Palace Road, London, S.W.i., an equipment store where you can get all you want in the way of camp or hike kit. One way to become a camper, besides being a Rover, is to join the Camping Club of Great Britain. And there are corresponding Clubs in most other countries.

There are many camping grounds in the Scout Movement; Broadstone in Ashdown Forest, Great Tower in the Lake District and Brynbach in North Wales are specially suitable for Rovers. Gilwell Park in Epping Forest is the fore- runner of these and the centre of our Scouter’s training. As a Rover Scout you will have the joy of picking up the many and varied details that help you to enjoy life and Camp comradeship of the Brotherhood.

Among these will be-

•  Tracking of men, animals, wheels, etc., and the reading of information there from.

•  Fire-making in the way that a tramp or Red Indian does it and not as you would do for a jubilation on Guy Fawkes Day. A mere handful of red-hot embers will do all the cooking you need. (By the way, I had letters from more than one ex-Scout who during the war escaped from a German prison and managed to subsist and keep himself concealed largely thanks to what he had learned as a Boy Scout, especially in the matter of hiding his tracks and of cooking his grub over a diminutive fire.)

•  Cooking, with what the Red Indians call a chiploquorgan, or bent osier, to hold your “billy” over the fire, and a mulquagan, or forked stick, round which you can twist dough for bread and upon the points of which you fix slabs of meat for roasting.

•  Tent, not a canvas tabernacle, but the light-weight bivouac that is now used largely by practical campers, and can almost be carried in your pocket.

•  Knot-tying, like the use of needle and thread, is a necessary bit of knowledge for a camper.

•  The axe, and knowing not only how to use it but how to take care of it is another necessary adjunct.

•  Map-reading and finding your way by map, land-marks, compass, stars, direction of winds, etc., is as interesting as it is essential.

•  The Rucksack and its load teaches you how little you can do with and have to do with when hiking.

•  Eyesight. By practice your eyesight is strengthened to a notable degree, especially if you are town bred and have never had occasion to look more than fifty yards ahead of you.

•  Hearing is strengthened by practise in listening to sounds by night; and sense of smell is also invaluable for finding your whereabouts or the presence of other people at night.

•  Judging distance is an art developed by practice when hiking.

•  Weather knowledge is invaluable to a hiker, who soon gains it by continual observation.

•  Nature Lore becomes a second nature to the out-door man and gives him a new interest and joy in life.

•  Camp utensils and apparatus have to be improvised, and this teaches one much handiness and resourcefulness.

WOODCRAFT

There is a lot in the lore and tradition of the backwoods which naturally comes to be adopted by Rovers.

The gypsies, whether in Britain, Southern Europe or the East, all have their customs, signs and languages.

The Red Indians have their picturesque tradition and ceremonial, and so too have the Arabs, the Maoris, the Zulus, the Masai, and others-all of them interesting and worth studying, since they give romantic suggestions.

I have had to do with most of these peoples; and though the Red Indian has been the most imitated, the present-day specimen is not as a rule the inspiring figure that his forefather was. Excepting the few Indians who still go trapping in the woods, the Arab (of the right kind) is the greater gentleman, the Zulu the braver warrior, the Indian gypsy the better hunter, the Maori the better sportsman, and the Australian black the better tracker. All of them have their points until they come under the deadening influence of civilisation and gin.

A true Woodcrafter loves and adopts much a of the picturesque meaning of the savage arts and crafts of all such tribes.

The history and world-wide significance of Totems is a study in itself; and the practical usefulness of the Signs makes a universal language that is adopted and understood throughout the brotherhood of out-door men.

BE PREPARED

“Be Prepared” is the motto of Scouts.

I have only briefly sketched these points in camping and hiking as a general indication, because alter all, enjoyable and health giving as they are, they are only steps by which you go on towards your further aim-that is, to be prepared for manhood. Of course, if you have the good fortune to be in a newly developed or uncivilised country, they are of direct value to you.

Anyway, through their practice you gain the handiness and knowledge and the self-reliance of the backwoodsman, which makes you the more efficient for your life’s work in whatever direction it may lie; you gain the appreciation of the wonders and beauties of Nature; and, more especially, it makes you efficient for doing service for others as a good citizen.

A bad citizen is the man who only looks out for his own good; the good citizen is he who is ready to lend a hand for the community at any time.

I say “ready,” not merely willing; lots of people are willing, but when it comes to the point it so often happens that they have never learnt how, so they are useless.

The Rover’s business, therefore, is to learn how to be ready and how to be able to do the right thing in an emergency for the good of the rest.

I will therefore give you the further steps by which the Rover fits himself for this through the organised method of the Boy Scout Movement. These might look a bit formal and complicated when set down in black and white, but don’t be put off by that. As a matter of fact ours is a simply4ormed fraternity of young men.

ROVER ORGANISATION: THE CREW

For full details see official handbook THE POLICY, ORGANISATION AND RULES OF THE BOY SCOUTS ASSOCIATION issued by order of the Committee of the Council of The Boy Scouts Association.

THE CREW AIMS

Rover Scouting is a brotherhood of the open air and service, the purposes of which are:

(1) to continue the training in citizenship given to Cubs, Scouts and Senior Scouts, but with a wider outlook appropriate to the age of Rovers; and

(2) to encourage Rovers to make useful careers for themselves and to render service to the community.

Rover training covers the period during which the young man is “finding himself”, i.e., developing his character and his powers, and endeavours to help him to put into practice in a wider world the principles of the Scout Promise and Law.

STAGES

The Rover Crew is divided into two stages as follows:-

(1) The Probationary Stage-Rover Squires.

(2) The Training Stage-after investiture as Rovers.

This structure of the Crew is designed so as

(1) to prepare a Rover Squire for his investiture and to ensure that he attains certain standards of Scoutcraft.

(2) to provide a programme of activities for Rover Scouts.

THE ROVER SQUIRE: CONDITIONS OF MEMBERSHIP

Before a young man is admitted to a Crew, the following conditions must be observed:-

(1) He must be approved by the G.S.M. and R.S.L. and by the Crew.

(2) He must either be recommended by the S.M. as a Scout, or by the S.S.L. or S.M. as a Senior Scout, who is trying to act up to his Scout obligations, including the doing of good turns, or if not previously a Scout, or Senior Scout, he must be willing to learn practical Scouting, pursue the open-air life, and accept the way of life set forth in the Scout Promise and Law.

(3) The age for admission is necessarily dependent on the physical and mental development of a boy in his progress to manhood. He must be at least 17 years of age.

(4) A Squire must not have attained his 22nd birth- day at the date of his admission. On admission to a Crew, he is known as a Rover Squire until such time as he is invested as a Rover.

ROVERS-ROVER SQUIRE

A Rover Squire who has been a Scout (or who has passed the Tenderfoot test and made the Scout Promise) wears uniform as for Scout, Sea Scout, or Air Scout, as the case may be, but the shoulder knot will be green and yellow.

A Rover Squire who has been a Senior Scout, wears uniform as for Senior Scout, but with green and yellow shoulder knot instead of a shoulder patch.

ROVERS AND ROVER AIR SCOUTS

A Rover or Rover Air Scout wears uniform as for Scout, or Air Scout, as the case may be, but with the following differences:-

Shoulder knot. Red, yellow and green.

Garter tabs. Red

Thumbstick. In place of staff.

Trousers. Lovat, or dark blue. Long trousers may be worn as an alternative to shorts by Rover Scouts, subject to the following conditions:-

(1) The trousers must conform to the shade and pattern approved by H.Q.

(2) All members of the Rover Crew must dress alike on any given occasion (i.e. all in long trousers of the same approved shade and pattern or all in shorts).

(3) Socks should be of an appropriate colour to match the trousers.

(4) Trousers for Rover Air Scouts will be dark blue.

DEEP-SEA SCOUTS

DEEP-SEA SCOUTS-ENROLMENT

(i) Deep-Sea Scouts are those who are members of the Royal Navy, the Merchant Navy, the Fishing Fleets, or crews of ocean-going yachts and who have attained the age of 16, or where not possible to belong to a Scout Group, at the age of 15. They are registered as Deep-Sea Scouts by H.Q. Registration is for one year only and must be renewed annually.

Those who have not previously been members of the Movement will be invested by a Port or Fleet Commissioner, should one be available, otherwise by any Commissioner on the recommendation of the Headquarters Commissioner for Deep-Sea Scouts. On investiture they will make the Promise. Port Commissioners may be appointed at the discretion of H.Q. in certain Ports in the United Kingdom.

(ii) Full particulars of organisation, registration, uniform, training and badges will be found in the pamphlet “Deep- Sea Scouts” obtainable from H.Q.

WARRANTS FOR SCOUTERS

The following appointments to warranted rank are made by H.Q. at its discretion:-

(1) Fleet Commissioner.

(2) Port Commissioner.

(i) Fleet Commissioners are appointed by, and are directly responsible to  H.Q.

(ii) A Port Commissioner receives a warrant as A.D.C. (for Deep-Sea Scouts) for the district in which he functions.

CIVIC SERVICE

I don’t want to alarm you with a big-looking job, but this chart (see Appendix) is merely to explain to you the various directions into which you can explore, if you want to, as a Rover Scout; and these lead directly to good citizenship and service.

You are not expected to do them all, but they are alternatives so that you can take up some or others which happen to suit your circumstances.

ACTIVITIES

Service is the practical outcome of Scouting for Rovers.

All Rovers should be encouraged to help in every possible way in the running of their own (or other) Troops, or Wolf Cub Packs: thus gaining the practical experience in training Scouts which helps to fit them for becoming Scout- masters and fathers in the future: they should be given responsibility for definite departments in helping the Scouters of the Group.

Co-operation and inter-patrol activities, by means of conferences, games and work are necessary so that Groups may get to know one another, thus encouraging friendships and emulation.

Activities naturally fall under two heads:

(a) Scout Service; (b) Public Service.

(b) Patrols can be formed and trained as “Local Aid Detachments” for service, such as that opposite:

Accident First Alders (for dealing with accidents of every kind, crowds, etc.).

Assistant Welfare Officers in factories, play centres, etc.

Coastwatchers or Assistants to Coastguards.

Cyclist Despatch Riders and Motor.

Assistants or Instructors in Scout Troops, Play Centres, Boy’s Clubs, etc.

Fire Brigade in village, town, factory, hospital, etc.

Life-saving Rocket apparatus men.

Lifeboat men or launchers.

Special Constables or Assistants to Police.

(a) Service in their own Groups, as Cubmasters, Secretaries, Games Organisers, Instructors, Badge Examiners, Committee Men, Assistant Scoutmasters, etc.; service in helping other Groups; Sea Scouts; Scouts in hospitals and homes; helping at Rallies, Sports, Camps, etc.

TEAM RECREATIONS

(Corporate, Physical and Moral Health)

It is important that camping and outdoor games should be carried out to the utmost (and appropriate recreation and rest for Sundays should not be lost sight of). “Parlour Scouting” to be avoided. The following are examples:

Outdoors-

•  Athletics

•  Walking Tours

•  Coasting Voyage

•  Football

•  Cycling

•  Scouting

•  Cruises on Canals and Rivers

•  Hockey

•  Hare and Hounds

•  Swimming

•  Nature and History Rambles

•  Baseball

•  Gymnastics Display

•  Boating

•  Tree and Rock Climbing

•  Camping

•  Tracking

•  Visits of Instruction to Municipal Offices, Courts of Justice, Museums, Factories, etc.

•  Tours abroad to visit foreign Rovers, etc.

Indoors-for mutual improvement, such as-

•  Lectures by experts on any subject, vocational or social

•  Choral Society

•  Dancing

•  Debating Society

•  Dramatic Troupe

•  Folk Dancing

•  Indoor Games

•  Gymnastics and Free Exercises

•  Judo

•  Orchestral Society

•  Scouts Own

•  Sing-Songs

•  Social evenings

•  Sketching Club

•  Study Circles (for Civic Instruction, etc.)

It is a valuable help to get experts to come and hold informal talks and demonstrations or to conduct rambles.

CLIMBING

I have mentioned in the above “climbing” as one of the activities for Rovers.

I know no better physical exercise than this, since it not only trains and develops every muscle in the body, but also encourages healthy living, moderation in eating and drinking and smoking, and the development of nerve, endurance and resourcefulness, besides being a most healthy, most enjoyable and manly form of recreation.

It is best done in teams, such as Patrols, working generally with a mountaineer’s rope. It includes tree climbing, which in itself becomes a highly interesting sport, mast climbing, rock climbing, cliff climbing and mountain climbing.

There are many more facilities in all parts of the British Isles for this sport than is generally suspected. There is also more danger about it than may be at first thought. It therefore needs careful practice and instruction to begin with. But when once a man is good at it, it has a tremendous attraction, offers never-ending variety, and cannot fail to keep him fit and happy.

SERVICE FOR OTHERS

AN EMERGENCY CORPS

When in Copenhagen a few years ago I was shown the organisation and working of the Accident Brigade in that city. I believe it is a voluntary organisation that exists in other parts of Denmark also, of which we have no exact counterpart in Britain. It is in the nature of the Fire Brigade and St. Johns Ambulance combined, and it offers to Rovers a particularly valuable form of public service both in towns and villages.

A good instance of the value and variety of its duties occurred at the time when I was visiting its Headquarters in Copenhagen. A call came by telephone to say that a man had been run over by a tram-car and was badly injured. They had not been able to extricate him, and the car was partly derailed. Within a minute three detachments had left the Headquarters for the scene of the accident in motor-cars equipped with all the necessary apparatus for dealing with the situation, including a gin for hoisting the tram-car, ambulance equipment for dealing with the man, and including such details as a wire basket into which to put his remains if he were too far mangled for the ordinary stretcher to be of use.

Also, there were the necessary implements and insulating gear to enable them to work safely where electric currents had to be dealt with.

The Corps was trained to deal with accidents arising out of explosions of the various kinds of gases, chemicals, etc., suicides by poison, strangulation and so on; ability to track murderers by the smallest signs; knowledge of securing damaged aeroplanes, and dealing with railway accidents, collapse of houses, falling trees, and the many minor accidents to which men are liable through machinery in factories or agricultural work, mad dogs, bulls, etc. In fact, the range of their activities is almost unlimited, varying according to the locality and the nature of industry, etc.

But the field for work is wide, and the training for it involves various kinds of study and activities, which are not only interesting, but useful to the men who take them up. He would be a strange man who could not find amongst these varied activities one which at least would prove to be a hobby for him when once he had acquired it. A fellow with hobbies is never likely to find time hang on his hands, or to feel that life has not got some enjoyment in it.

POLICE SERVICE

“At the recent tragic fire in Newhaven, Connecticut, in which seven persons lost their lives, and more than seventy-five were injured, Scouts did noticeable service.

“At three separate street crossings Scouts saw congestion of traffic with no traffic police officer on duty, and in each case stepped out into the street and directed the traffic in the pouring rain for more than two hours.

“Other Scouts did good service in aiding the orderlies in the hospitals in quickly transferring the patients from the emergency wards to the beds, making quicker handling of cases possible.”

This suggests a form of service for which Rovers or Scouts would do well to prepare themselves in co-operation with the police officers and the Hospital Authorities in their districts.

They can learn the work of con-trolling the traffic, and of dealing with crowds, where the Scout uniform will give them the necessary authority.

Scouts are not allowed to use police whistles for the Scout work, for fear of creating confusion, but there is nothing to prevent them from carrying a police whistle as part of their equipment, so that on an emergency, where police help is needed, they can at once call for it. A cyclist scout must of course be always ready to act as orderly or messenger to police officers.

SAMPLE OUTLINE OF ACCIDENT FIELD DAY FOR ROVERS

Hike or bike, map reading and observing for several miles.

(1) Halt near railway. Imagine railway accident, collision and train smash. Detail patrols to various duties. Each Mate to state how he would carry them out with materials on the spot. Improvising gins to raise wreckage. Extinguish fire. Rescue and First-Aid injured. Policing their property. Sending for help.

(2) Imagine aeroplane crash on landing in south-west gale. Overturns. Aviator pinned underneath and injured. Petrol tank takes fire. Rover Scout Leader gives duties to patrols. Each Mate describes how he would carry them out with the material available on the spot. Orders should include reporting the accident, and alter righting the machine securing it properly, etc., etc.

ENJOYMENT OF LIFE

For sheer enjoyment give me the open air, and the country- side, even if you cannot get the backwoods and the mountains. Unfortunately, most of us are restricted as regards our holidays and cannot all go far afield. None the less there are week-ends, giving the opportunity for hikes and walking tours which, though they may be short, can yet be arranged to include a great deal of solid enjoyment. The Right Hon. H. A. L. Fisher, Warden of New College, Oxford once stated some rules for those about to arrange a holiday. They are well worth careful study.

1. Plan your holiday carefully, but be ready to abandon your plan on the slightest provocation.

2. Never go north when you can go south.

3. A change of work is itself a holiday.

4. Never drive when you can walk, and never walk when you can ride.

5. In a cross-country walk there is seldom time for short cuts.

6. A goed holiday is like eternity-there is no reckoning of time.

7. One of the best fruits of a holiday is a new friendship.

8. Stay where you are happy.

9. Soak yourself in the atrnosphere of a new place before you study the details.

10. The best holiday is that which contains the largest amount of new experience.

11. Holidays come up for judgment before the next term’s work.

12. In the choice of holiday books act on the principle that one of the main uses of leisure is to feed the imagination.

13. The principal experts in the art of taking holidays are painters, naturalists, travellers and historians; the worst person to consult is a golfer.

14. On occasions a very good holiday can be taken at home if you change the hour of breakfast.

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF A ROVER SCOUT

Remember that as a Rover, besides making yourself a better man and a better citizen, you are, whether you know it or not, being looked up to by boys in your Scout Group and your neighbourhood. Boys are awful imitators, and I use the word awful advisedly, because it fills one with awe when one thinks what harm or what good one might be doing for the boys in the examples we set them.

They are very apt to make a hero for themselves of a fellow who is older than them, and who has won their admiration by his own personality, or by something that he has done. I was asked only the other day what it was that induced me to take up football with the energy that I did when I was a boy. I can trace it directly to the influence of one boy older than myself. He was ultimately a well-known Association player, but at that time, when I had only just come to school, I was his fag and had the honour of holding his overcoat while he played, and of cleaning his boots and his muddy garments and giving him his hot water after the game was over. But I see him now in my mind’s eye, running with that easy gait which never seemed to hurry and yet always put him in the right spot for taking possession of the ball.

From the first I longed to emulate him, and, though from that day to this he has never known of the influence he had over me, it was thanks to his example that a good deal of my life at school was fashioned.

So it is that, as a Rover Scout or older boy among your younger brothers, you have a responsibility on your shoulders which at first you may not realise. You may be guiding many a boy to good or to bad according to what you do or say yourself.

“To be good is noble-but to teach others how to be good is nobler and much less trouble.” That is what Mark Twain said, but I am doubtful about the last phrase, since the teaching is largely through personal example; so you have to be careful.

Be careful, if not on your own, at least on their account. You can see for yourself that you have here a tremendous opportunity if you like to use it for doing a great good for your younger brothers. You can set the line for them to follow by your own behaviour in the direction of cheery and manly friendliness and straight living and clean talk.

Think for yourself whether you have any failings which you would not wish others to copy, and try and replace these with something better. Here are a few instances of the more usual weaknesses.

SHORT TEMPER

Do you get annoyed when things go wrong or people pin-prick you?

Force a smile and then laugh at the comparative smallness of the irritation. “If you are in the right, you’ve no need to lose your temper. If you are in the wrong, you can’t afford to.”

SMOKING

Remember boys copy you, and smoking is bad for their health.

Don’t smoke when among them.

BAD LANGUAGE

Do you use swear words in moments of irritation, or dirty ones in moments of thoughtlessness?

Try whistling-and drop it.

SLACKNESS AND SHIRKING

Are you inclined to “leave it to George, “to look on at others doing the work or playing the game, or to anticipate difficulties before they arrive?

Sleeves up and lead the way. “Look at the worst, but see the best.” Follow Saint George and tackle the job.

BACKBITING

Are you given to talking of other people’s failings and seeing only their bad points?

Go on the principle that there is 5 per cent of good in the worst. The fun is to find it.

IMPATIENCE

Do you catch at sunbeams and hanker for the moon -and curse your bad luck when things don’t go as you wish?

“Softly, softly catchee monkey.” It’s dogged as does it. “Stick to it and you’ll win through.”

“Patience is the secret to success in any career.”

STOGINESS

Want of humour.

As there is at least 5 per cent of good in everything, so there is also another 5 per cent of fun. Recognition of this will carry you through many otherwise hopeless troubles. Show your boys how to laugh while you work.

INTOLERANCE

Are you a possibly over-keen upholder of your own particular social class, political party or form of religion?

These distinctions are sunk in the brother-hood of Scouting. Practise tolerance-teach your boys to study both sides of any question before making up their mind on it.

SELF-DETERMINATION

This term is often used to cover disobedience, want of loyalty and lack of discipline.

Develop responsibility and self-discipline in the free spirit of playing the game for your side, not for yourself.

SELFISHNESS

Is the worst failing of our race, causes short- sighted outlook and contributes to personal as well as industrial discontent.

Practise selflessness, i.e. others first, self second.Look wide.

DISCONTENT

Generally the result of self-centredness and taking life too seriously.

Make others happy and you will be happy yourself.

Recognise the good in what you have got, the fun in life, the glories, wonders and beauties of Nature.

Sink personal ambition.

PESSIMISM

Do you let the difficulties or dangers of a venture overshadow its possibilities?

“See the worst, but look at the best. “Optimism is a form of courage that gives confidence to others and leads to success.

NARROWNESS

Do you pride yourself on your view of a question happening to be the right one?

Look wider-and then look wider still.

KNOWALL

Are you convinced that you know Scouting from A to Z?

Take in - in both senses of the word - the “Scouter.”

A HIGHER SERVICE FOR ROVER SCOUTS

Amongst the various forms of service that have been suggested, that of helping to run Scouts or Cubs may seem at first sight to be rather a small one. But when you come to look into it, it is really one of the greatest, if not the greatest among them all. It is the most easy of all to take up, since the opportunities for it lie close to your hand as a Rover, but at the same time it is one in which you can obtain big results in making men out of boys, results which are visible to you as they grow under your hand. And those results can be of the greatest value to your country.

As I have before shown, the Nation badly needs voluntary help for its Education. There is so much outside the actual reading, writing and arithmetic that is necessary for the boys of to-day to know if they are going to make successes of their lives; and the shortage of school time and of school teachers is a great handicap to them in learning these things; so the help of voluntary “elder brothers” is therefore urgently needed.

Rovers, who will lend a hand in the training or management of their Scout troops or Wolf Cub packs, and especially in their camping, will be doing an immensely valuable service. It is one, at the same time, which will bring honest satisfaction to themselves. Everyone who has trained a dog or a horse to be obedient and to perform tricks knows the interest and gratification, but how much greater this is in the case of the young human animal when you see his character changing and forming on right lines for life I Then you feel indeed that you have done something worth while.

FATHERHOOD

There is another point to it.

Some day you yourself will be a father. You will be responsible for bringing boys and girls into the world, and for giving them a helping hand to starting successfully in life. If you fail in this and merely let them drift into wastage or misery you will be guilty of a despicable crime.

For other responsibilities in life, such as managing a business, running an engine, or laying bricks, you go through a special training. And yet for this, the greatest and most responsible of all duties, that is the fashioning of the lives and happiness of your own offspring, you do not prepare yourself in any definite way, but leave it to chance And that is the rule of the herd. Yet what a great thing you could do them had you only the knowledge and practice of the training of the young.

Through Rovering, however, you can get your opportunity of actually practising some of the best and most useful work of a father. You can give out the right aspirations, and the healthy activities that teach the boy ultimately to “paddle his own canoe,” and you will be in a position to warn him of the rocks that will lie in his course in his turn.

A HOLE IS ONLY MADE TO BE MENDED

Now if you who read this are one who has bumped on one of the “rocks” already, I want to tell you that I was once voyaging across a lake in Canada, in a birch-bark canoe with another fellow, when we bumped on a snag. It was not a very serious bump, but birch bark is very thin and the water began to come in through the hole, and to save ourselves we had to paddle for dear life to the nearest islet, having plugged up the hole as best we could with an old hat.

It was a pretty close race. We paddled for all we were worth, and we just got there in time as our craft was sinking.

We hauled her up on a flat, smooth rock, and got our gear out of her and rolled her over, bottom upwards.

We then set to work to repair damages by getting some of the natural gum of some fir-trees and made a little fire in which we melted it. Then, having patched the hole with some old rag and a bit of fresh bark, and the hot gum, we very soon had the boat pretty nearly as sound as ever; and before long we were on our way again, but with our eyes more acutely on the look out this time, to avoid snags and rocks in future.

Well, that is the same with you, who may have run on a rock in your time.

Don’t think that on that account you are done for. Hurry in before you sink and get your bark repaired. It may be hard to do, but put your back into it and you will probably succeed. Use the remedies I have suggested in the foregoing chapters according to the type of rock that you have run upon, mend your ways and resume your voyage with stout heart and a good look out. Having once touched a snag, you will know all the better how to avoid them; and you can make your voyage just as big a success as any of the other fellows.

Even if you have bumped on more than one Rock, remember how General Foch, at the battle of the Marne, in the Great War, reported to Joifre, his Commander-in- Chief: “My right has been thrown back; my left is in retreat ... I am attacking with my centre.” And he won!

And so can you. Your right may have been smashed, your left may be in disorder, but you still have your centre; attack with that and you’ll pull through.

ONE WORD MORE

Now I can picture to myself you who are reading this- but you are not the fellow that I want!

You have already been taking an interest in your own future, and you want to know how to “Rove to Success”. So my ideas will only come on top of others that you may have already formed. Mine may corroborate yours, or they may be disappointing to you. In either case I hope you won’t feel any the less of a friend to me.

But if you have already prepared yourself for your future, you’re not the fellow I really want, as a reader of this book!

I want the chap who has never thought for himself, or planned out his future.

There must be many and many a fine young fellow in our nation being dragged down by bad influences around him, because he has never seen the clearer way; he has not known that by a little effort of his own he can rise above his surroundings and paddle his way to success.

And that is where you come in. Will you help me to get hold of that other fellow? You must know several of him in your circle of acquaintances. If you can get him to read this book I shall be grateful.

Possibly you might even go further and get a study circle of three or four of your friends to go through the book chapter by chapter, one for each evening, and discuss among you the questions I have suggested.

I don’t say that you need agree with me, but I do say that the consideration of these ideas, whether you agree with them or not, will at any rate make you think a bit about your future, though I hope it may do more than that. And if you lead others. on to join in their study, you will be doing a bigger thing-you will be doing Service for Others.

So far as those who are already members of the Scout Brotherhood are concerned- and others too for that matter-I would lay stress on the possibility and necessity of “service” in the ordinary surroundings of the Rover Scout’s life and point out that he must first of all try to apply his ideals in his ordinary life. This seems to me to be a better crown of Scouting experience than sending the fellow on to find new special fields in which to function. In this way I hope we will consolidate the whole idea that lies behind Scouting and emphasise what we really want, which is to bring the ideals of Scouting into our everyday life, and thus to bring it to pass that other people are touched by its magic and helped by its ideals.

For me it is ten o’clock in the evening of life. It will soon be bedtime. For you it is eleven o’clock in the morning -noon-tide; the best part of the day is still before you.

For myself I have had a most enjoyable day of it. It has had its clouds and its showers-but it has had also its glorious sunshine.

But for you-what are you going to do with your day? It can be an equally happy one if you only choose to make it so. But not if you are going to laze through it waiting for something to turn up, or are going to sleep away part of it.

Wake up! Get busy! You have only the one life-day to live, so make the best of every minute of it.

You will sleep all the better when bedtime comes if you have been busy through the day.

The fellows who have restless, sleepless nights, are those who have lazed away the sunshine.

Happiness is yours if only you paddle your canoe aright. With all my heart I wish you success, and the Scouts’ wish – GOOD CAMPING.

“SONGS OF A SOURDOUGH”

BY ROBERT W. SERVICE

They’ve cradled you in custom, they’ve primed you with their preaching,

They have soaked you in convention through and through;

They have put you in a show-case, you’re a credit to their teaching,

But can’t you hear the wild ?-it’s calling you.

Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betides us,

Let us journey to a lonely land I know;

There’s a whisper on the night-wind, there’s a star agleam to guide us,

And the wild is calling-calling.... Let us go.

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, grovelled down yet grasped at glory,

Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?

“Done things” just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,

Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?

Have you seen God in His splendours, heard the text that Nature renders?

(You’ll never hear it in the family pew)

The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things? –

Then listen to the wild – it’s calling you.