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The Boy Scouts, Class and Militarism in Relation to British Youth Movements 1908–1930*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

J. O. Springhall
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In the 1960's academic attention became increasingly focused, in many cases of necessity, on the forms taken by student protest and, possibly in conjunction with this, there appeared almost simultaneously a corresponding upsurge of interest in the history of organized international youth movements, many of them with their origins in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. Such a development in historiography would seem to contradict the statement once made by an English youth leader, Leslie Paul, that “because the apologetics of youth movements are callow, their arguments crude, and their practices puerile, they are dismissed or ignored by scholars.”

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , August 1971 , pp. 125 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1971

References

page 125 note 1 Cf. A series of essays on “Generations in Conflict” published in: The Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 4, No 2 (1969), and Vol. 5, No 1 (1970)Google Scholar; Laqueur, Walter Z., Young Germany: A history of the German Youth Movement (London, 1962)Google Scholar; Hervet, Robert, Les Compagnons de France (Paris, 1965)Google Scholar; Luza, Radomir, History of the International Socialist Youth Movement (Leiden, 1970).Google Scholar

page 125 note 2 Paul, Leslie, Angry Young Man (London, 1951), p. 52.Google Scholar Paul was an Anglican philosopher who left the Scout movement on pacifist grounds, became a member of John Hargrave's Kibbo Kift, then founded in February 1925, at the age of 20, the Woodcraft Folk, a co-operative socialist co-educational youth movement which still survives in some parts of England.

page 125 note 3 Cf. Mackenzie, Norman, “Sweating it out with B-P”, in: New Statesman, 15 October 1965.Google Scholar An article based on a flippant reading of Baden-Powell's Rovering to Success (1922) which does, however, make the valid point that Baden-Powell institutionalized adolescence in the Rover Scouts in order to hold off the realities of manhood.

page 126 note 1 In 1966 new, long-trousered uniforms were introduced and even the word “Boy” was dropped from Boy Scouts. There are still over half a million Scouts in Great Britain and nearly as many enrolled in the Girl Guides, while one in nine boys is a Wolf Cub: the junior branch of the Scouts which borrows many of its rituals from Rudyard Kipling. The 1971 census showed a total strength in Cubs, Scouts, Venture Scouts and adult leaders of 556,164.

page 126 note 2 Cf. Wilkinson, Paul, “English Youth Movements, 1908–1930”, in: The Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 4, No 2 (1969), pp. 3–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Referred to throughout as Wilkinson. This pioneering article has as a general thesis that: “the interesting thing about the English [youth] movements, in contrast to the continental, is why they did not become vehicles of overt political protest or instruments of party political manupulation.” Ibid., p. 4. Whilst agreeing with him that they were not simply protest movements led by the young, this did not prevent them from becoming agencies of “protest”, manipulated in the interests of social-political groups led by the old and middle aged, against the absence of compulsory military training for boys.

page 126 note 3 Cf. for the sources of the notion of legitimation: Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Orgnization (1947), parts 1 and 3, being part of his Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft translated; Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright (Eds), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London, 1967 ed.), pp. 78–79, 294–299Google Scholar; Horowitz, Irving L. (Ed.), Power, Politics and People: the collected essays of C. Wright Mills (London, 1967)Google Scholar, particularly the introduction by Horowitz.

page 127 note 1 Cf. Morris, Brian, “Ernest Thompson Seton and the origins of the Woodcraft movement”, in: The Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 5, No 2 (1970), pp. 183–194CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim.

page 127 note 2 This article is largely based upon an examination of the archives held at the headquarters in London of the Church Lads Brigade, the Boys Brigade and the Scout Association. The correspondence between Sir Francis Fletcher Vane and Baden-Powell (1908–1914) and the Baden-Powell papers in the British Museum Mss Department have also been consulted.

page 128 note 1 But cf. Anderson, Olive, “The Growth of Christian Militarism in Mid-Victorian Britain”, in: The English Historical Review, Vol. LXXXVI (Jan., 1971), pp. 46–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; which predates the idealization of the British soldier by the religious public to the period 1854 to 1865.

page 128 note 2 This does not, of course, apply to the boys' cadet companies started in the major public schools at the same time as the Volunteers (1859–1860) but not introduced into London working class districts by Toynbee Hall and Octavia Hill until the late 1880's.

page 129 note 1 Smith was born near Thurso in 1854. His father died in 1867 and his uncle took him into his warehouse as a clerk when he was barely 15. At Glasgow he went with his uncle to the Free College Church and “sat under” the Rev. George Reith, father of Lord Reith the first Director-General of the BBC, who backed young Smith's ideas enthusiastically and was Chaplain of the First Company of the Boys Brigade from its formation until his death in 1919.

page 129 note 2 Secondary sources for the Boys Brigade include: Birch, Austin E., The Story of the Boys Brigade (London, 1959)Google Scholar; Gibbon, F. P., Smith, William and the Boys Brigade (London, 1934)Google Scholar; Peacock, R. S., Pioneer of Boyhood: The story of W. A. Smith (Glasgow, 1954)Google Scholar. More useful are early issues of: The Boys Brigade Gazette and The Brigadier.

page 129 note 3 Cf. Milliken, Samuel, Christian Soldiers (London, 1907).Google Scholar This was a leaflet issued by the International Arbitration League; it was a reprint of an article hostile to the Brigade that first appeared in the New York Evening Post. Copies could be obtained from Sir Randall Cremer, a well known pacifist MP, at the League's offices for 6d. per 100.

page 130 note 1 Cf. Neuman, B. Paul, The Boys' Club: in theory and practice. A manual of suggestions for workers (London, 1900), pp. 28–42Google Scholar; Russell, C. E. B. and Rigby, I. M., Working Lads' Clubs (London, 1908) pp. 329–330.Google Scholar Company parades in the Glasgow of the 1880's were subject to their share of abuse and rough treatment from the local “hooligans”, who found the Brigade's familiar uniform of pill-box hat, belt and haversack a conspicuous target which even inspired a popular ditty: “Here comes the Boys Brigade / All smovered in marmalade / A tup'ny 'appenny pill-box / And 'arf a yard of braid.”

page 130 note 2 Boys Life Brigade, Code of Rules and Regulations (London, 1900)Google Scholar, British Museum. Cf. Paton, John Lewis, John Brown Paton: a biography by his son (London, 1914)Google Scholar. Paton also started the patriotic Boys' League of Honour.

page 130 note 3 Baden-Powell believed as a young man that the British were fortunate in having “a valuable training ground for our officers in the North West Frontier of India, with real live enemies always ready to oblige in giving us practical instruction in the field”. Baden-Powell, , Indian Memories (London, 1915), p. 205.Google Scholar

page 131 note 1 Baden-Powell was ordered out to South Africa on special service to raise two battallions of Mounted Rifles and to organize the Cape Colony Police forces. Despite the mobility of his men and General Wolseley's instructions that they were to be used to defend the borders, he allowed himself to be pinned down by the Boer General Cronjé at Mafeking, where they were besieged. For a revealing discussion of the orders Baden-Powell received from Wolseley see: Gardner, Brian, Mafeking: A Victorian Legend (London, 1966), pp. 35–37Google Scholar

page 131 note 2 Kierman, R. H., Baden-Powell (London, 1939), pp. 181–182.Google Scholar

page 131 note 3 Quoted in: Collis, Henry, Hurll, Fred and Hazlewood, Rex, B-P's Scouts: An official history of the Boy Scouts Association (London, 1961), p. 25.Google Scholar

page 132 note 1 Quoted in: Wade, E. K., Twenty One Years of Scouting (London, 1929), p. 78.Google Scholar

page 132 note 2 The Church Lads Brigade Scout Patrols sometimes offered rather intemperate advice, e.g., “Here at home, if you ever hear a boy crying down his country or telling lies about the King, tell him to shut up, and if he won't then punch his head.’ From: Scout Law No 2, in: The Incorporated Church Scout Patrols Scout Message, Vol. II (September, 1911), p. 6.Google Scholar

page 133 note 1 Seton was eventually ousted from the American Scout Council in February 1915 for criticizing the nationalism behind the movement as it had been developed by Baden-Powell in England. Cf. Brian Morris, op. cit., pp. 186–188.

page 133 note 2 These two historical documents are reprinted in full in: Reynolds, E. E., The Scout Movement (London, 1950), pp. 9–13.Google Scholar

page 133 note 3 Sources for Brownsea Island include: Baden-Powell's diary, Baden-Powell Add. Mss 50255, British Museum; BBC 1, TV, 4 August 1967, “The Scouts' Jubilee: Report from Brownsea Island”; Reynolds, op. cit., pp. 21–22; Wade, op. cit., pp. 45–51.

page 133 note 4 For the localized impact of the part-form publication: cf. Capt. Pearse, Colbron, “Records of the 1st. Hampstead Troop”, in: The First's Own, Vol. 1, No 1 (1 Nov., 1910), p. 9Google Scholar; [pseudon.], Iola, “Our History”, in: The First North London Troop Magazine, Vol. 1, No 1 (Nov., 1911)Google Scholar, n.p., British Museum.

page 133 note 5 Cf. E. K. Wade, op. cit., pp. 52–53.

page 134 note 1 The Daily Telegraph organized appeals that brought in £6,000 in 1909 and over £10,000 in 1910, as well as giving £4,000 a year towards the cost of upkeep for the new Headquarters; Pearson provided an office for the movement and gave £1,000 to cover their initial expenses, as well as publishing The Scout and the cheaper edition of the handbook. Lord Strathcona gave a donation of £500 to Headquarters. Baden-Powell gave lectures on Scouting all over Britain, from November to December 1907, at meetings organized by the YMCA, which were repeated in 1908 to boost the sales of the cheap edition of Scouting for Boys published by Arthur Pearson. And from 28 May 1908 the Chief Scout took a scout patrol from London on a tour of the provinces to demonstrate “Scoutcraft”.

page 135 note 1 The Patriot, Vol. III (October, 1910), p. 6. His estimate triples the number of Scouts then in existence.

page 135 note 2 Cf. A paper read on 6 May 1910, in: National Defence, Vol. 4, No 17 (August, 1910), pp. 434–447; on 29 March 1911, Baden-Powell gave a lecture to the RUSI on the Boy Scouts in connection with national training and national service; his friend Haldane, R. B., Secretary of State for War, was in the Chair: Royal United Services Institute Journal, Vol. 55 (Jan.-June, 1911), pp. 581–599.Google Scholar

page 135 note 3 Baden-Powell saw Germany in this prescient role because she “wanted to develop her trade and commerce, and must, therefore, get rid of England, which blocked the way.” The Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 4 May 1908.

page 135 note 4 Evans, I. O., Woodcraft and World Service (London, 1930), p. 32.Google Scholar Cf. Great Britain, Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 4th ser., Vol. CLXXXVIII, 13 May, 1908, cols 1122–1123.Google Scholar

page 135 note 5 Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys (London, 1908), p. 314.Google Scholar All references are to the edition published in six fortnightly parts by Horace Cox not to the cheap edition published by Arthur Pearson.

page 136 note 1 Marwick, Arthur, “Youth in Britain, 1920–1960: Detachment and Commitment”, in: The Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 5, No 1 (1970), p. 44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 136 note 2 Anon. [Mills, Elliot E.], The Decline and Fall of the British Empire (Oxford, 1905).Google Scholar Mills was a National Service League supporter. His pamphlet gave BadenPowell the final words of his text to instructors published separately as a 2d. leaflet in 1907 which formed the last chapter of Scouting for Boys. It may also have provided Baden-Powell with his favourite parallel between the Roman crowds at circuses and British crowds flocking to watch paid professional footballers.

page 136 note 3 Baden-Powell, op. cit., p. 335.

page 137 note 1 Cf. Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 14.

page 137 note 2 Cf. Hayes, Denis, Conscription Conflict: The conflict of ideas in the struggle for and against military conscription in Britain between 1901 and 1939 (London, 1949).Google Scholar Written over twenty years ago this is still the only substantial published work that deals with the League in any detail. The members of the National Service League on the Executive Committee of the Boy Scout Governing Council were: Colonel H. S. Brownrigg and Sir Edmund Elles. The other military members were: Colonel Ulick de Burgh, Deputy Chief Commissioner at Scout Headquarters, General Sir Herbert Plumer, Vice-Chairman of the Executive Committee, and Baden-Powell its Chairman. In 1921 the League was wound up, handing over its assets of £12,000 to Boy Scout Headquarters as being the body which most “successfully teaches the ideals of citizenship of which Lord Roberts' scheme was a part”. Lord Milner quoted in: The Irish Scouts Gazette, No 10 (February, 1921), n.p.Google Scholar

page 137 note 3 For biographical details see: 'Agin the Goverments (London, 1929)Google Scholar, whose title accurately reflects his career. For his ideas: the pamphlets, On Certain Fundamentals (London, 1909)Google Scholar and The Other Illusions (London, 1914)Google Scholar. Vane was accused of pro-Boer sympathies by his enemies after writing Pax Britannica in South Africa (London, 1905): a courageous indictment of British treatment of Boer civilians. Sir Francis was a curious figure who cast himself in the role of a knight errant but like Don Quixote often tilted merely at windmills.

page 137 note 4 Vane to F. W. Pixley, 17 October 1910, British Boy Scouts Folder 2, Scout Association, London. Vane wrote to Baden-Powell that he “very much deplored the introduction into it [the Scout Council] of men who had been foremost in attempting to induce the English people to accept universal military training”, moreover he was convinced that “the advent of these officers would, as in effect it did, give the movement a military direction”. Vane to Baden-Powell, 4 June 1910, ibid. Vane was referring to the induction into the movement in December 1909 of: the Earl of Meath, both a Vice-President and on the Executive Committee of the National Service League; Lord Charles Beresford a “hard-line” navalist and Field-Marshal Earl Roberts (“Bobs”) who was actually the President of the League. In 1911 Lord Kitchener joined the Scout Council.

page 138 note 1 Elles was an old Indian “hand” and like the Chief Scout had been made a Major-General during the Boer War; from 1901 to 1905 he sat as a Military Member on the Governor-General's Council in India. On retirement from active service in 1908, he became Chairman of the Surrey County Territorial Force Association for twenty years and also sat on the National Council of the Territorials. Elles was a member of the Executive Committees of both the National Service League and the Scout Governing Council before 1914.

page 138 note 2 Vane, , 'Agin the Governments (London, 1929), p. 210.Google Scholar

page 138 note 3 In the Spring of 1966, the Baden-Powell Scout Guild commissioned Mass Observation to carry out a survey, using a nationally representative sample of 2,000 adults, which found that 44% of the middle classes among those inter-viewed had been Boy Scouts but only 25% of the working classes had joined. Those in the middle classes also tended to stay in for longer than those in the working classes and Scouting appeared to be more popular in the South of England than in the North. (Statistics showing parental occupations of Boy Scouts are not kept by the Scout Association and early warrants issued to Scoutmasters have already been destroyed.)

page 139 note 1 Between 1949 and 1964 earned income, as measured by Schedule E income tax returns, increased in relation to the national average by more than 3% in South East England and the Midlands while declining by more than 3% in the North of England and Scotland. Cf. Rawstron, E. M. and Coates, B. E., Variations in Britain: Studies in economic and social geography (London, 1971).Google Scholar

page 139 note 2 These figures were reached by using the 1921 Census of England and Wales and the relevant Boy Scout Annual Reports to calculate approximate densities. Using these results it proved possible to draw up distribution maps showing both the total number of Boy Scouts in each county for 1921 and the total number of Scouts per 1,000 of the 10 to 19 age group for this census.

page 140 note 1 Baden-Powell in: National Defence, op. cit., p. 447. Baden-Powell tended to confuse the issue when talking about social class as he would frequently make moral value judgements, e.g., “In Edinburgh they are very good class as a rule; in Glasgow they are the worst class.” Ibid.

page 140 note 2 Cf. Blakeney, R. B. D., “British Fascism”, in: The Nineteenth Century, Vol. XCVII, No 575 (Jan., 1925), pp. 132–141Google Scholar: in which the President of the first fascist organization in Britain, largely run by ex-generals, claimed rather spuriously that Fascism was “the adult growth” of the Scout Movement. I am grateful to my colleague Iain Hutchison for drawing my attention to this reference.

page 140 note 3 Baden-Powell to E. K. Wade. 25 November 1910, Baden-Powell Add. Mss 50255, British Museum. Pencilled correction in this diary replaces “North Midlands” by “the country”.

page 140 note 4 One Scoutmaster admitted that it had “proved difficult to bring the poorest class of boy into touch with Scouting, owing in great part to the expense [approx. 10 shillings] of the uniform.” JerroldW.Law, “Scouting and the Workhouse Boy”, in: The Headquarters Gazette, 14 November 1911, p. 23. The Ninth Scout Law strongly encouraged saving: Baden-Powell demanded as an incentive that every new Scout opened a banking account or had a savings bank balance of at least a shilling. Cf. Baden-Powell, The Young Knights of the Empire (London, 1916), pp. 72–79.Google Scholar

page 140 note 5 Baden-Powell declared in Scouting for Boys that: “No man is much good unless he believes in God and obeys His laws. So every Scout should have a religion.” The rules of the movement “expected that every Scout shall belong to some religious denomination and attend its services.” Scout Troop Church parades were also a frequent activity for Boy Scouts. Cf. E. K. Wade, op. cit., pp. 62 and 93.

page 141 note 1 Before 1933, the Hitler Youth in Germany had to cope with the same problem. Contrary to the SA, the Hitler Youth never managed to win over parts of the working class even during the years of the economic depression. Cf. HansChristian Brandenburg, Die Geschichte der HJ. Wege und Irrwege einer Generation, Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik (Cologne, 1968), passim. I am grateful for this reference to A. V. N. van Woerden, Editorial Secretary of this journal. Walter Laqueur suggests that a fairly high proportion of Hitler Youth may have come from lower-middle-class families who had been “proletarianized” during the years of inflation and economic crisis in Germany: Laqueur, Young Germany (London, 1962), p. 195, fn. 1.Google Scholar

page 141 note 2 One sensitive chaplain in a northern industrial centre was convinced that the local coal-miners saw his Church Lads Brigade cadet company as a recruiting trick for the Army and an insidious way of instilling militarism into their boys: “In common with other industrial centres, it was not long before the company was up against the bogey of militarism. I knew how strong the local feeling was and I anticipated the accusation as soon as the fact of the company's existence became generally known.” Rev. Rogers, Edgar, The Making of a Man in the Church Lads Brigade (London, 1919), p. 72.Google Scholar

page 141 note 3 Quoted in: Reynolds, E. E., Baden-Powell: A Biography (London, 1942), p. 215.Google Scholar

page 142 note 1 Ibid., p. 216.

page 142 note 2 Cf. Barker, Rodney, “The Labour Party and Education for Socialism”, in: The International Review of Social History, Vol. XIV, part 1 (1969), pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

page 142 note 3 Sources for the Church Lads Brigade include: Rev. Wakefield, H. Russell, What is the Church Lads Brigade? (London, 1894)Google Scholar; Marshall, F. G., St. Mary, Lewisham, Church Lads Brigade: 1892–1929 (London, 1930)Google Scholar; Anon., Twentieth Century Souvenir: 1891–1911, a history of the Church Lads Brigade from its foundation (London, 1911)Google Scholar; the movement's mouth piece The Brigade, etc. A good modern history of the Church Lads Brigade remains to be written and I hope someday to embark upon such a project in terms of the social history of an institution and its members.

page 143 note 1 In 1966 an ad hoc committee headed by the Bishop of Exeter, Dr Mortimer, reported on membership in the Church Lads Brigade, which had fallen from 16,245 in 1955 to 11,944 in 1965. The report said that if the CLB was to remain “an Anglican, uniformed, military-structured, single-sex organization, it would be unrealistic, in the prevailing moral and social climate, to expect it to make a broad-front appeal to boys and to expect any dramatic reversal of existing trends in membership.” Quoted in: The Times, 8 December 1966.

page 143 note 2 Paterson, Alexander, Across the Bridges: or life by the South London riverside (London, 1911), p. 174.Google Scholar The Sunday School Union confirmed that 80% of the boys attending Sunday School were lost to the Church between the ages of 14 to 15, or at the same time as they left day school and entered the labour market. Cf. Freeman, Arnold, Boy Life and Labour: The Manufacture of Inefficiency (London, 1914), p. 264.Google Scholar This is a study of working class boys in Birmingham whose subtitle is indicative of a fashionable preoccupation with social darwinism.

page 144 note 1 From a speech made by Haldane to the 1st Cadet Battallion of the Queen's Royal West Surrey Regiment on 5 December 1908, quoted in: The Nation in Arms, Vol. IV (Jan., 1909), p. 11.Google Scholar

page 144 note 2 Smith was “adamant in his refusal to make any compact between the Boys Brigade and the military authorities”. Peacock, R. S., Pioneer of Boyhood (Glasgow, 1954), p. 108.Google Scholar Cf. Section on the Boys Brigade and the War Office scheme in my unpublished D.Phil, thesis: Youth and Empire: A study of the propagation of imperialism to the young in Edwardian Britain (Sussex University, 1968), pp. 312–322.Google Scholar

page 145 note 1 Cf. Adjutant-General (Hamilton) to Haldane, 23 February 1910 and written comments on by Haldane, 7 March 1910, War Office 32/9 Cadets/227/General Policy; J. N. Murray, Treasury letter to Army Council, 11 August 1910, ibid., 31A. Public Record Office, London.

page 145 note 2 Regulation 15b. From: Regulations Governing the Formation and Administration of Cadet Corps: Draft and offical copy issued with special Army order, provisional (London, HMSO, 1910)Google Scholar, War Office Library.

page 145 note 3 The government also threatened to revive an act of 1819 which would have made it (impossible for any religious organization to carry out military training.

page 145 note 4 Minutes of the Church Lads Brigade Governing Body Executive, 20 October 1909, Minute Books, Church Lads Brigade archives, London.

page 146 note 1 In 1911 The Church Times entered the fray by writing a vigorous leader condemning the action of the Governing Body: “The policy of the Headquarters, in committing the whole Brigade to a momentous change without formally consulting the local branches, was, we are certain, a lamentable error of judgement.” The Church Times, 31 March, 1911.

page 146 note 2 Quoted in: The Church Times, 13 April, 1911. The original document does not appear to have survived.

page 146 note 3 Reports of the Annual Council meetings held from 11–12 May, 1911, Special Supplement, in: The Brigade, Vol. XVII, No 7 (July, 1911), p. 8.Google Scholar

page 147 note 1 Ibid.

page 147 note 2 The Church Times, 7 April 1911. Prominent clergy in the Church Lads Brigade on the General Council of the National Service League included: Bishop Welldon, the Rev. Russell Wakefield, who was also on the League's executive, the Bishop of Exeter, and the Bishop of Birmingham. Those members of the Brigade who were sympathetic to the League's aims or who had spoken at League meetings in support of conscription included: Lords Methuen and Grenfell, respective Governors of the Brigade, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, on the Governing Body, and Colonel W. M. Gee, the Founder and Secretary of the Brigade. The half a dozen Majors and Major Generals on the Governing Body were even more ardently in favour of military training for the young through exploiting the potential of the Brigade.

page 147 note 3 Anon., An Historic Note of the Church Lads' Brigade (London, n.d.)Google Scholar, n.p. Leaflet in the author's private collection.

page 148 note 1 In 1924 the first blue uniform was adopted as an optional alternative to khaki but in did not become mandatory until 1935.

page 148 note 2 The lack of a representative London Scout Council in 1909 added much fuel to Vane's charges that Baden-Powell used autocratic methods but when his post of London Commissioner was temporarily abolished by Headquarters, Vane became powerless. To get rid of him, what he dubbed a “militarist clique” had recommended that London be sub-divided into five or seven District Com-missionerships focussed under Colonel Ulick de Burgh as Deputy Chief Commissioner. Not surprisingly, General Elles and de Burgh were the authors of this attempt to out-manoeuvre the troublesome Vane whom they found it impossible to work with. Cf. Report by Elles and de Burgh to Baden-Powell, 12 November 1908, British Boy Scouts, Folder 1, Scout Association, London.

page 149 note 1 Vane, “A Danger in the Boy Scout Movement”, in: The Westminster Gazette, 1 March 1910, p. 2. A Scoutmaster in Sheffield, who has formed an independent group, claims that expulsions of those who cannot or will not conform to the dictates of association headquarters are still common. The Guardian, 22 May 1971, Letters to the Editor.

page 149 note 2 Cf. The pamphlets: Noemo, Captain [pseudon.], The Boy Scout Bubble (London, 1912)Google Scholar, and Vane, , The Boy Knight (London, 1910)Google Scholar, both attacking militarism in the Boy Scouts. The Managing Secretary, J. A. Kyle, and the Headquarters he represented, were very unpopular among the London Districts. Early in 1909, the Battersea Boy Scouts had broken away to form the original British Boy Scouts. Cf. Kyle to Moore correspondence, May to June 1909, British Boy Scouts, op. cit.

page 149 note 3 More recently, internal dissensions have reappeared within Scouting proving that this is not a feature peculiar to their past. A traditionalist break-away movement called the Baden-Powell Scouts has been set up to re-instate “the basic ideals and discipline” of old-fashioned Scouting as opposed to the new look, long-trousered image of the central Scout Association which has been accused of encouraging “over-permissive normlessness” (sic) by one District Commissioner. The rebel Scouts display their protest by continuing to wear the short-trousered uniform rejected in 1966 by the Headquarter's Executive Committee as only suitable for the Cubs. The Sunday Times, 9 May 1971.

page 150 note 1 Elles to Baden-Powell, 4 December 1909, British Boy Scouts, op. cit.

page 150 note 2 Protest meetings called by Vane of his “grass-roots” support among London Scoutmasters were held on 16 November 1909 – when the 200 present almost unanimously voted in his favour – and on 3 December at the Caxton Hall, Westminster, when over 300 were present to hear him put his case against the leadership. Reports of the latter were duly presented to Baden-Powell by his “spies” planted in the audience. Earlier, Scoutmasters were considerately supplied by Headquarters with specimen replies to Vane setting out why they refused to attend his meetings: very few co-operated. A motion of confidence in the Chief Scout was carried only with great difficulty at a meeting of the London District Secretaries, held on 22 November 1909, so far had his “credibility gap” widened in the movement.

page 150 note 3 Punch, 1 September 1909. Bernard Partridge's famous cartoon shows a Boy Scout saying to Mrs. Britannia: “Fear not Gran'ma; no danger can befall you now. Remember I am with you!”

page 150 note 3 Adams, W. S., Edwardian Portraits (London, 1957), p. 137.Google Scholar In avoiding the familiar near idolatry, the section on Baden-Powell in this book tends to verge to the other extreme with a bracing “warts and all” portraiture.

page 150 note 4 Hynes, Samuel, The Edwardian Turn of Mind (London, 1968), p. 27.Google Scholar

page 151 note 1 Howard, Michael, “Lest We Forget: ‘Oh What an Unlovely War…’”, in: Encounter, Vol. XXII, No 1 (Jan., 1964), p. 64.Google Scholar I am grateful to my colleague Dr Michael Ekstein for drawing my attention to this essay. Cf. Douglas, Roy, “Voluntary Enlistment in the First World War and the Work of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee”, in: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 42, No 4 (Dec, 1970), pp. 564–585.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 151 note 2 The Earl of Meath, for example, claimed that his Empire Day Movement “was not without effect on the successful prosecution of the world war in defence of liberty and justice” and that “a large proportion of those young men from all parts of the Empire, who rushed to the Colours during the bloody years from 1914, must have learnt at school the watch-words of the Movement.” Quoted in: The Times, 24 May 1921. Cf. my articles on: ”The Rise and Fall of Henty's Empire”, in: The Times Literary Supplement, 3 October 1968, and “Lord Meath, Youth and Empire”, in: The Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 5, No 4, (1970), pp. 97–111.Google Scholar These are attempts to examine socio-cultural aspects of British “imperialism” which remain relatively unexplored by historians and, together with this article, will eventually form the basis for a much wider study.

page 152 note 1 The Kent County Commissioner rhapsodised that the Boy Scouts under his command had “stimulated recruiting for the Army, hunted out Germans, manned several coastguard stations, [and] accounted for a good many spies; in one case they reported an aeroplane to a fort and had it stopped” (sic). Despite all this interference, he was gratified to report that they had won “golden opinions” from all with whom they came into contact. Quoted in: Wade, E. K., Twenty One Years of Scouting (London, 1929), p. 181.Google Scholar

page 152 note 2 Baden-Powell, Guarding the Coasts of Britain: What the Sea Scouts are Doing (London, 1918), p. 6.Google Scholar

page 152 note 3 The Times History of the War (London, 1919), Vol. XVII, chap, ccliii.Google Scholar This chapter is, however, careful to defend Scouting against possible charges of Germanic “militarism”. Cf. Anon., Boy Scouts and the Great War. (London, 1915)Google Scholar.

page 152 note 4 Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 23.

page 152 note 5 Baden-Powell, Marksmanship for Boys: the Red Feather and How to Win It (London, 1915), p. 62.Google Scholar

page 153 note 1 Cf. The Boy Scouts Association, Executive Committee, Sixth Annual Report (1915), pp. xvii–xviiiGoogle Scholar, British Museum. Several Scout troops did, in fact, enlist having received previous training in the Defence Corps which, we are told, enabled them to win rapid promotion from 1916 to 1918. In 1914 the average age of the Boy Scout was 15 and only 40%%of the Scouts were from 14 to 19 years old, compared with over 70% in the Boys Brigade.

page 153 note 2 Cf. Middlebrook, Martin, The First Day on the Somme (London, 1971), pp. 10, 14, 217, 236.Google Scholar

page 153 note 3 Sources for these figures: Cf. The Times, 31 January 1919; Evans, op. cit., p. 37; Macartney, D. H., Boy Welfare (London, 1917), p. 39.Google Scholar

page 153 note 4 Hamilton, Ian, National Life and National Training (London, 1913), pp. 19–22.Google Scholar This pamphlet was based upon an address delivered in the Central Hall, Birmingham, on 24 September 1912. The publisher's blurb advertised it as a “stirring plea for the universal military training of boys”. Hamilton was Adjutant-General when the Army Council's Cadet Regulations were first published in 1910.

page 154 note 1 Cf. Annual General Meeting of the London Scout Council, in: The Trail, Vol. IV, No 37 (Febr., 1921), pp. 49–50.Google Scholar

page 154 note 2 Hargrave was one of the main formative influences on the German Bünde in the 1920's. For his later career in the 1930's as an exponent of Social Credit and the fascist Green Shirt movement, see: Finlay, J. L., “John Hargrave, the Green Shirts, and Social Credit”, in: The Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 5, No 1 (1970), pp. 53–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For information on the histories of the small woodcraft movements of the 1920's, such as the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry, the Kibbo Kift Kindred and the Woodcraft Folk, see: Allen, Leslie, The Republic of Children (London, 1938)Google Scholar; Paul, Leslie, The Folk Trail (London, 1929)Google Scholar; and Evans, I. O., Woodcraft and World Service (London, 1930)Google Scholar. All of these movements produced their own cyclostyled literature.

page 154 note 3 Cf. Hargrave, , “The Words of White Fox”, in: The Trail, Vol. III (Sept., 1920), p. 272Google Scholar, and “What I'm Driving At” (Nov., 1920), pp. 353–354, which concluded that Scouting was still “very strongly political on the Imperial side” and backed by people who are “naturally anxious to keep the Scout movement very distinctly imperialistic in its methods of training British boys”. Hargrave also wrote an article on: “The Demilitarization of the Scout Movement”, in: Foreign Affairs, Vol. II (August, 1920), pp. 26–27.Google Scholar Among the members of the Advisory Council of The Trail (which became a Kibbo Kift publication) were Norman Angell, Havelock Ellis, Maeterlinck, Romain Rolland and Anatole France.

page 155 note 1 Samuel Hynes, op cit., p. 27.

page 155 note 2 The concept of “cultural codes” used briefly out of context here can be found more fully developed in the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Cf. Lévi-Strauss, , Totemism (London, Penguin ed., 1969)Google Scholar, particularly the introduction by Roger C. Poole; Leach, Edmund, Levi-Strauss (London, 1970)Google Scholar; Lévi-Strauss, , La Pensée Sauvage (Paris, 1962)Google Scholar; tr., The Savage Mind (London, 1966).Google Scholar

page 155 note 3 C. Wright Mills believed that “the relation of such symbols to the structure of institutions” was “amongst the most important problems of social science”. Mills, Wright, The Sociological Imagination (London, Penguin ed., 1959), p. 37.Google Scholar Although, as David J. Rothman has pointed out, the historianap;s task is to test and even to formulate theory rather than to search for examples that coincide neatly with sociological constructs. Cf. Rothman, , “Sociology and History”, in: Past and Present, No 52 (August, 1971), p. 132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 156 note 1 Cf. Annual General Meeting of the London Scout Council, loc. cit., p. 50.

page 156 note 2 As far as I have been able to ascertain, research into the history of the National Service League is at present being conducted by: Michael Allison of St Osyth's College, Essex, and James Rosenbloom of the University of California (Berkeley), America. There was probably no other pre-war propaganda organization which permeated the social life of England to the same extent as the National Service League. But of the 130 MP's who favoured the League in the 1910 House of Commons, of those whose names were published, 102 were Conservative Unionists and only 3 were Liberals. Working class support was minimal: cf. Reynolds, Stephen, Seems So! A Working Class View of Politics (London. 1911), p. 82.Google Scholar

page 156 note 3 Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 16. For Baden-Powell's exaggerated fears of “bolshevism” see: W. S. Adams, op. cit., p. 142.

page 157 note 1 Cf. Vane, The Boy Knight, op. cit., p. 14.

page 157 note 2 Although it could be argued that there were a limited number of Edwardian “patriots” who were prepared to give up their time, money and energy for such causes it would seem to me that this interlocking power élite shared both a common military ideology and social background which together gave shape to the Boy Scout movement.

page 158 note 1 Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 4.

page 158 note 2 Playne, Caroline E., The Pre-War Mind in Britain (London, 1928), p. 162.Google Scholar