Boys’ Life, 1912 June (article)
Ernest Thompson Seton, Chief Scout of the Boy Scouts of America, is proud of his boys. On his return from his visit to, the British Boy Scouts, which he made at the same time that Baden-Powell was visiting this country, Thompson is bubbling over with enthusiasm for the Boy Scouts of America, and their ability to do real Scouting. He also has the conviction, however, that the English lads are superior in several ways to the American boys. The Chief Scout praises the American youths for their self-reliance and natural scouting ability, but thinks the British boys are more polite. Here is what he says:
“On my return from England, where I have spent two months among the Boy Scouts, I have been asked many times how our Scouts compared with those of the mother land. In some ways ours are ahead and in some ways ours have much to learn. I thought for example that our fellows looked rather more robust, taking them all round, but that is a mere impression.
What. I liked about the English Scouts were their manners. An illustration will show how polite the English boys are. After a Scout reunion in an English city, I was in the secretary’s office, when a gentle tap was heard at the door.
‘Come in.’
The door was opened by a Scout, who stood with four others behind him. All saluted and the spokesman said:
‘Please, sir, will you give us your signature?’
They all got it, with other embellishments, too.
Our fellows seemed to me not only physically stronger, but more self-reliant. I did not hear of any English fellow going for a hundred-mile hike, alone or in pairs, as some of ours do. I did not come across a Britist Scout who could make fire by friction, as many of our do, and I suspect that a troop of our boys left on a desert island would live long and happy after all their British cousins on another island had settled in a little cemetery of Those-who-could-not-make-it-a-go.
I have always been opposed to drill but recent opportunities to observe have made a slight change. More than once have I seen a Scout Commissioner in America struggling to bring order out of a chaos of wrangling, rollicking, riotous, yelling, disorderly Scout Troops. His efforts after half an hour were a confessed failure. The boys knew nothing of the self-conduct that is the real object of drill. But in England I saw a similar number of similarly riotous Scouts instantly silenced, made orderly and lined up by that one magic word, ‘attention.’
But the thing that left the deepest impression on me was the cordial welcome I received everywhere as a brother Scout from over the sea; and when the cheering crowds at Plymouth, Paddington, Westminster, London, Lambert, Wallesey, Liverpool and many other places stirred my heart with warmth of their reception, I realized how happily this great scheme is working for the growing of kind feelings, and the bringing together of the nations.”
