SCOUTING THE IDEA

The post-card questionnaires sent out to many undergraduates on the subject of a "Harvard Scout Club" have caused what might be called an ebullience of intellect. The wording of the postcards undoubtedly suggested the idea that the boys of Harvard were to band themselves together into a sort of picnic club that might appropriately subscribe to the Youth's Companion and pound rocks; but, as Mr. Kennedy explains, the sponsors of the movement intended no such thing. Since the Senior Picnic has been abolished it would be a great shame to institute another such custom. The sarcasm of our communicants was well taken.

The real difficulty lay in the abruptness of the post-card attack, and the lack of a sufficient barrage of publicity before it. The trouble was, as Mr. Kennedy intimates, that practically no one knew anything about the scheme until receiving the post-cards; and then none knew much more about it than before.

There is no doubt in anyone's mind as to the usefulness of the national scout movement. A good many men have already done some service as scoutmasters through the medium of Phillips Brooks House. They have reported that all over Cambridge and Greater Boston there are hundreds of boys who are eager for scout training of one kind or another. The only difficulty lies in getting men capable of organizing and directing them. This, such an institution as the Harvard Scout Club might well do.

The first necessity, however, is to get the scoutmasters themselves interested; and, incidentally, to be sure they know more than the boys they are to teach. The best way to do this is not to ask them impersonally and vaguely if they would be interested in a "Harvard Scout Club", which might mean a club in which they were to be the scouts. Explanation and publicity should precede.

The beginning of the next college year would also be a better time to start matters. Then it might be possible to get a contingent of college men to form a sort of scoutmasters club. They could easily study the scout manual, and read the Youth's Companion even, as preparation, and then come back to their college rooms and study the more common History of Florentine Art and the Police Gazette.