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WW4BSA > SCOUTS 07.03.24 13:25l 75 Lines 3336 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 7735_WW4BSA
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Subj: B.-P.'S OUTLOOK (PART 18) FINAL
Path: DB0FFL<OE2XZR<OE6XPE<DB0ERF<DK0WUE<PD0LPM<OK2PEN<N3HYM<WW4BSA
Sent: 240307/1217Z 7735@WW4BSA.NEFL.FL.USA.NOAM BPQ6.0.24
The Other Fellow's Point of View
OUR attitude in the Boy Scout Movement is that we do not wish to be in
conflict with any political, educational, religious, or other body, but we
are very glad to have their advice or suggestions.
Our aim is to be at peace with all and to do our best in our own particular
line.
Probably the majority of us are in sympathy with the Socialist ideal, though
we may not see with the same eye the practicability of its details or its
methods.
We, in the Scouts, desire not so much to cure present social evils as to
prevent their recurrence in the rising generation; to try to lessen the
great waste of human life now going on in our city slums where so many
thousands of our fellow humans are living an existence of misery through
being "unemployable"; this is not always from their own fault, but simply
because they have never been given a chance.
Our main effort is to attract the boys and to beckon them on to the right
road for success in life; we endeavour to equip them -- especially the
poorest -- with "character" and with craftsmanship so that each one of them
may at least get a fair start. If after this he fails it is then his fault
and not, as at present, the fault of us who are in a position to give a
helping hand to our less fortunate brothers.
The fact is, that justice and fair play do not always form part of our school
curriculum. If our lads were trained as a regular habit to see the other
fellow's point of view before passing their own judgment on a dispute, what
a difference it would at once make in their manliness of character !
Such lads would not be carried away, as is at present too commonly the case,
by the first orator who catches their ear on any subject, but they would also
go and hear what the other side has to say about it, and would then think out
the question and make up their own minds as men for themselves.
And so it is in almost every problem of life; individual power of judgment is
essential, whether in choice of politics, religion, profession, or sport --
and half our failures and three-quarters of our only partial successes among
our sons is due to the want of it.
We want our men to be men, not sheep. And, in the greater proposition of
International Peace, it seems to me that before you can abolish armaments,
before you can make treaty promises, before you build palaces for peace
delegates to sit in, the first step of all is to train the rising generations
-- in every nation -- to be guided in aall things by an absolute sense of
justice. When men have it as an instinct in their conduct of all affairs of
life to look at the question impartially from both sides before becoming
partisans of one, then, if a crisis arises between two nations, they will
naturally be more ready to recognise the justice of the case and to adopt a
peaceful solution, which is impossible so long as their minds are accustomed
to run to war as the only resource.
In the Scout Movement we have it in our power to do a very great thing in
introducing a practical training in justice and "fair play," both through
games and competitions in the field, and through arbitrations, courts of
honour, trials, and debates in the clubroom.
June, 1912.
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73
Jeff
WW4BSA
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