First International

Male or female, Scouts are Scouts. Boy Scouts, some 25,000 strong at their National Jamboree in Washington (TIME, July 12), spent their happiest hours swapping horned toads, pickled scorpions, live hoot owls--everything but puppy dog tails. The first international encampment in the U. S. of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides --only 101 strong--convened last week in a grove near Briarcliff Manor, about 35 miles north of Manhattan, but again the primeval urge made itself felt. Their barter, however, consisted of more appropriate articles, cotton bolls from South Carolina, scarves, tubes of powdered iron ore from Minnesota. Scout Sally Page of El Paso appeared with trade goods consisting of $2,000 worth of repudiated Mexican money.

Strictly anti-militaristic, the 75 U. S. Girl Scouts and 26 foreign young ladies pitched their tents helter-skelter--not in precise rows. No martial bugle but a huge iron dinner gong called young "Sylvias" to their meals.* Although their countrymen are at each other's throats, Ruth Sumi Sakurai of Tokyo and Hsueh Min Chang of Peiping came over on the same boat.

National President Lou Henry Hoover ("Buffalo") didn't show up, but Honorary President Eleanor Roosevelt popped into camp one day, found several girls picking goodies from their "nibble box." Slamming the lid shut, the girls leaped up and saluted. Before a pageant called "Hands Across the World," Mrs. Roosevelt made a speech affirming her interest in world peace: "Peace abroad depends on peace at home and kindly feeling for one another. . . . Learn to laugh. . . . We owe it to the world to preserve our sense of humor. 'All dictators,'" she quoted Biographer Emil Ludwig, " 'are gloomy and silent.' " No Germans, Russians or Italians being present and Mrs. Hoover being far away, this was greeted with approval.

The convention cost the 101 girls (aged 16 to 20) nothing. Its funds were provided by the Juliette Low Memorial Fund. It was the late Mrs. Juliette Gordon Low who, after she had met Boy Scout Founder Robert Baden-Powell, founded the Girl Scouts in Savannah, Ga. 27 years ago. There are now some 400,000 Girl Scouts in the U. S., one for every two Boy Scouts. Outside the U. S. may be found another million Girl Scouts or Girl Guides. According to The Girl Scout News Sheet, Mrs. Low was "handicapped by deafness and later by a fatal illness, by the indifference of many friends and the blindness of others," lugubriously and correctly predicted the year of her death, 1927.

After two weeks of swapping, cooking, costuming, supping from boxes, and tying knots, Girl Scout delegates will pack up, board busses for Plymouth, Mass., where they will visit Camp Pine Tree as guests of Mrs. James J. Storrow before returning to their respective States and nations.

*Sylvia is the Girl Scouts' "ideal" name. Unfortunately at Briarcliff the nearest thing to a bona fide Sylvia was one Solveig (Pahle) from Oslo, 18 years old, a four-language polyglot.

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