Short Stories
of Science and Invention

A Collection of Radio Talks by
Charles F. Kettering

INDEX

49.   Scouts of the World - Brothers Together

     The love of games is the natural heritage of all American youth and the Boy Scouts supplement these with hiking, camping, and wood-craft - all things that mean stronger and healthier bodies - things we should never neglect in a world full of mechanical and electrical conveniences.

Scouts

      We are coming into a new world with rapid communication and transportation and will have many new problems. It will be a smaller world - a world in which formerly distant peoples of different races and customs will almost become our neighbors. And the Scouts by a practical demonstration here at home have shown us one way to meet this problem. The Boy Scouts, recognizing no barriers of race, color or creed, have been successful in fusing these elements into a great cooperative group whose members are today fighting for our country on all the World's battlefronts.

     When the war came, it threatened to destroy the scout movement in many countries because the Scouts stood for so many things which the dictators opposed. But the scouts, like so many democratic institutions, have managed to survive. They survived in the Philippines and were waiting to welcome General MacArthur when he returned. In Holland they met secretly under unknown leaders and although their activities were forbidden by the Nazis in Belgium, there was a scout group there ready to go to work when the country was liberated.


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