The precision with which programrnes are carried through, the order that is maintained, the costumes, the banners, and the bands, the general observance of good discipline, suggest a military organization. But this is an organization of peace and good will. There is not a lethal weapon in Arrowe Park, and this mobilization of happy representatives of the youth of the world is for fraternization, for the exchange of ideas, for the greater fostering of international comradeship. It must have, as the Duke of Connaught said this afternoon, a happy influence on the future of mankind. He saw, he said, in the faces of the Scouts the promise of a better world and in the light in their eyes that of a better day.
All day there is a great coming and going of lads, of whom many converse only by gestures.
There is the smoke of many wood fires in the morning, a great to-do with washing in buckets, a great scouring of pots after mess. The shops are never empty. Correspondence is on a grand scale, and the scout newspaper, the Daily Arrowe, has a vast circulation. It is a penny newspaper named after the park in which the Boy Scouts are assembled. The first number, among other pictures, has a portrait of the Chief Scout and his welcome in English and French to all comers.