Loyal, Helpful, Kind ...

The big boom of the aerial bomb still echoed through the hills around Valley Forge Park, Pa. when a 160-piece Boy Scout band struck up the national anthem. Four Eagle Scouts stepped forward to unfurl a huge American flag. At that instant, hundreds of other flags appeared at the tops of poles scattered throughout a vast city of tents. Thus, last week, 52,000 Boy Scouts, participants in the biggest out-of-classroom educational enterprise in the U.S., opened the Fourth National Boy Scout Jamboree.

Though the jamboree was American, boys had come from as far as Brazil, Greece and Iran to take part. One group of eight Eskimos traveled 6,000 miles by kayak, plane, train, bus and automobile. The boys practiced shooting, cracked bull whips, performed Indian dances, swapped such items as leather wallets, shoulder patches and pet toads. Each region had its own camp, and each camp its own special entrance--a huge Mayflower for New England, a Mississippi River steamboat for Tennessee, a corral fence draped with antlers and animal skins for Montana. The logistics of the jamboree would have staggered George Washington's frostbitten soldiery--20 freight-car loads of charcoal for campfires, 17 miles of hot dogs, 752 tons of nonperishable food, $12,000 worth of ice cream and 559,250 quarts of milk.

Out of the Fog. The organization that has become such a vast international institution (over 6,500,000 Scouts in 62 countries) really began for the U.S. one night in 1909 when Chicago Publisher William D. Boyce got lost in the London fog. Suddenly a boy appeared before him, led him to his destination, and when offered a shilling tip snapped to attention and said:

"No, thank you, sir! Sorry, sir! I am a Scout, and a Scout never accepts tips for being helpful." Startled but impressed, Boyce decided to look into this Scout business farther, found that Lieut. General Sir Robert Baden-Powell had organized Britain's first Scout troop on Browasea Island two years before. Baden-Powell conceived his idea when, serving as head of the British Constabulary in South Africa, he found that the callow, city-bred boys sent him from home needed training in the simplest principles of discipline and woodcraft before they could be used as police officers. When Boyce returned to Chicago, he began a campaign to start the Boy Scouts of America.

Illustrator Daniel Beard already had his "Sons of Daniel Boone" with "forts" and "stockades" dotted across the country and hundreds of boys emulating the deeds of Boone, Kit Carson and Davy Crockett. There were also the "Indians" of Naturalist-Writer (Wild Animals I Have Known, etc.) Ernest Thompson Seton, who wanted boys to "discover, preserve, develop, and diffuse the culture of the Redman." Beard and Seton fell in with Boyce's booming campaign. When the Boy Scouts of America was finally launched, its first national council boasted such names as Admiral Dewey, John Wanamaker, William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt.

Brave & Tragic. The nation soon grew accustomed to having its sons disappear into the woods for mysterious campfire powwows, struggle with all sorts of exotic knots, make fire without matches, proclaim that they were trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. An occasional adult scoutmaster complained. "The man in charge of a group of boy hikers," wrote one, "has somewhat the same problems that faced Moses in managing the Exodus. There is a similar effort involved in keeping up morale and discipline. There is the same need to dispel almost universal fear of death from thirst or privation. There are those brave, tragic figures who collapse by the side of the road and gasp: 'Go on without me. I can't make it.'" But millions of boys wore their fleur-de-lis emblems proudly, millions of parents watched astonished as their sons developed knowledge and skills never taught in schools, and the international motto "Be Prepared" became a household phrase.

Today, under Chief Scout Executive Arthur A. Schuck, 62, a Scout careerman, U.S. membership is over 4,500,000. The long pull from Tenderfoot to Eagle now involves programs in electronics, mechanics and TV repair and a course in atomic energy will soon be added. But for all the changes in the official Boy Scout Handbook for Boys, the basic aims of the movement are still those stated by Baden-Powell: "To help in making the rising generation, of whatever class or creed, into good citizens."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.