Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate

The Boy Scouts:

Grim's Hall is an enthusiastic supporter of the Boy Scouts. I was myself a Scout--I had the honor of achieving Life Scout rank, and was within two merit badges of my Eagle Scout badge when my troop dissolved due to the Scoutmaster no longer being able to run it, and no replacement being available. I should have found another troop and kept after it, but at the time the letdown was enough that I drifted away from the Scouts.

The Scouts come in for a positive mention in Brad Miner's new book, The Compleat Gentleman:

Winston Churchill was a big fan of Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, and of the gentlemanly qualities of early scouting, which Churchill considered 'an inspiration, characteristic of the essence of British genius, and uniting in a bond of comeradeship the youth not only of the English-speaking world, but of almost every land and people under the sun.' Baden-Powell's 1908 book, Scouting for Boys, stirred sentiments of 'knightly chivalry, of playing the game--any game--earnest or fun--hard and fairly[.]'....

Baden-Powell enisioned 'a new organization that would draw on wartime scouting lore and ancient codes of chivalry to teach boys the Victorian virtues. King Arthur's Round Table, Baden-Powell understood, resonated in boys' souls, for it symbolized the marriage of strength and goodness[.]'

Today, Arts & Letters Daily links to two pieces on the Scouts. The first is from the Atlantic, by Christopher Hitchens sneers at Baden-Powell and his 'no smoking, no drinking, pro-God outfit.' The second article, written by a less stellar writer, is nevertheless the stronger: it is merely a factual piece about the Boy Scouts of Iraq:

Former Navy commander Chip Beck said contacts he made in the city informed him that local Iraqi scouting councils in the 18 provinces had survived attempts by Saddam to cut off sources of funding, meeting places and communication between brother and sister organizations. The scouts were alive and waiting for a chance to resurrect themselves, he said.

"You still have some older scout leaders in their 40s who had been trained by the world scouting organization and knew the ethics and training and maintained it. They kept it up," Beck told Foxnews.com. "They're emerging battered and tattered, but in relatively good shape."

"The Arab region wants to welcome them with open arms and [is] looking for ways to help them," said Gabr, who spoke to Foxnews.com from the Arab Region Council in Cairo, Egypt, which is part of the world organization.

The long and impressive scouting tradition for Iraqi boys and girls dates back to the 1920s. Beck, who had been working with the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Pentagon on communications systems in Baghdad, set about helping the Iraqis fix their scouting system earlier this year.

He placed articles in Arabic newspapers to garner support from the world and regional organizations and found they generated excitement among scouts in and around Baghdad.

"Unbeknownst to me, some Iraqi former scouts were gathering and planting seeds in an old camp that had been burnt down," said Beck.

Mr. Hitchens may sneer as he wishes at the ideals the Scouts offer. Here we see an element of comeradeship between the West and the Iraqi; here we see an ethic that resonated so strongly in the souls of boys that, as men--thirty years on, when the great terror ended--among their first thoughts was to rekindle its flame.