Previous International Youth Organizations

Perhaps the nearest approach to WFDY and IUS previously were the International Federation of Students and the Boy Scouts movement. The former, which disappeared in the war, was composed of students only, whereas WFDY organizes Christian, trade union, farming, political and student youth bodies. The Boy Scout movement is organized on quite different lines. It is mainly made up of boys from 11 to 16 or 17 whereas WFDY consists of people in approximately the 16 to 26 age group and of both sexes. The Scouts never look up the broad problems of youth, such as improved education and apprenticeship, dead-end jobs and youth unemployment, and bad working conditions and low pay, especially during slumps and in colonial countries. The Scout movement did organize large international gatherings which should have had a certain value in promoting peace but their value was completely lost as they failed to expose the main-spring of the drive to war. In fact, with its national jingoism the Scout movement directs the energies of youth as an agent of Imperialism, a fact well known to some of the reactionary politicians who work in leading position in the Scout movement.