The Chief Scout Yarns They are fine fellows those Roumanian Scouts, and they are very keen to know more about British Scouts. They have a strange language of their own, but a good number of them know English, so if any of you British Scouts care to write to them (you can do so through Mr. Martin at Boy Scouts’ Headquarters, 25 Buckingham Palace Road), they will be glad to hear from you. Some day, perhaps, some of you may be able to go to Roumania for a tramping camp with the Roumanian Scouts. That would be "some" fun. ROBERT BADEN-POWELL CHIEF SCOUT
1919 Yarns January 04, 1919
SCOUTS AS POLICEMEN On the great day when King Albert rode into Brussels after the Germans had cleared out, the Belgian Scouts once more proved their value. During the war the Germans had, of course, policed the town with soldiers, so that when they went away there was no police force in the place to keep order. So the Boy Scouts were called upon to do that duty, and they did it well. Two thousand of them turned out to act as bobbies, and I was told by one who was present that they cleared the route and held the crowd in order most perfectly. The streets were not lived with soldiers as is generally done on such big occasions, so that the boys had a most difficult job to carry out-but then they were Scouts, you see, and, of course, they just smiled and did it. ROBERT BADEN-POWELL CHIEF SCOUT
January 11, 1919
BOY SCOUTS AT THE WAR OFFICE One of the leading generals in the War Office has written an article in "Blackwood’s Magazine," in which he says how jolly useful the Boy Scouts were as messengers during the war. Of course, loads of people used to come there to interview officers about all sorts of useless things. The Scouts are praised for being able to spot which of these were only time wasters. So they used to put the time wasters into a waiting room and leave them there for a few hours and then take them in small parties through endless corridors and up and down stairs until they got tired and sick of the whole business, and were only too glad to get out of the building and to go home. The same general who wrote this also told me that he had one of these Scouts as his own special orderly. "He was a wonderful boy. There was very little he did not know, and nothing he could not do. He was quite an artist, among other things, and drew the maps for a report of mine on the Dardanells Campaign." Then this officer praises the work of foreign Scouts, too, for he says "in 1913 I visited the Peninsular battlefields in Spain, and I came upon two particularly smart Boy Scouts on the field of Vittoria, who knew all the history of the battle and acted as my guides." He also wrote: "A day or two after taking up my duties at the War Office I wanted to talk with a colonel in charge of one of the branches, but he, too, was a new arrival, and nobody seemed to know exactly which room was his office. One of the regular War Office messengers was sent to find him, but he returned after a long search empty-handed. Another War Office messenger sent on the same errand on the morrow Page 12