Scouting

from my own experience I would like to verify What Ron Smith said in recent issues of Salient concerning the scout movement.

This year, my District Commissioner, a prominent Chamber of Commerce type incidentally, found out to his horror that I had leftist sympathies. He maintained that anyone having Radical or Communist ideas should not remain in the movement because leftists did not believe in a king and could not therefore give the scout promise. I am no atheist, and belong to no political party, but the fact of having red ideas is too much for the [unclear: bourgeois] H.Q.

The right wing are scared of socialist successes, and seek to keep youth obedient and submissive. The founder was true blue Tory, and his writings show his poor grasp of politics. A glance at the annual reports shows how the heads seek to maintain the status quo, and never raise any vital issues affecting youth.

I feel that youth should discuss and make up their minds on affairs, but not, so one commissioner (the other think the same, too), who stated that scouts could not think how they liked while attached to that movement. That numbers in the association sharply taper off as the boys get older is due largely to the fact that it is like another club and, not a youth movement.