The Scout Promise

On my honour, I promise that I will do my best to do my duty to God and to the Queen, to help other people and to obey the Scout Law.

The Scout Law

1. A Scout is to be trusted.
   
2. A Scout is loyal.
   
3. A Scout is friendly and considerate.
   
4. A Scout belongs to the world-wide family of Scouts.
   
5. A Scout has courage in all difficulties.
   
6. A Scout makes good use of time and is careful of possessions and property.
   
7. A Scout has self-respect and respect for others.
   

The Story of Scouting

(extracted from "The Membership Badge and The Scout Award")

The Scout Movement was started by a man called Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell (B.-P.). He was known as Stephe by his family and as a boy he enjoyed pretending to be a hunter or an Indian scout. He attended Charterhouse School and one of his favourite places there was called The Copse. It was out of bounds to all the boys - but avoiding his teachers made it all the more exciting!

With his older brothers, Stephe went on all sorts of expeditions, often on the water. They bought old boats and used them to explore the coast of Great Britain. When they were not on the water, they were learning to look after themselves as they walked for miles with their gear on their backs.

When he left school B.-P. went into the Army and travelled extensively in India and South Africa. In 1888 he was fighting in South Africa and having captured Chief Dinizulu, B.-P. was given a long necklace of wooden beads by him.

Much later on B.-P. used the beads to make the first Wood Badge, which is an Award given to Scouters when they complete their Leadership Training.

While he was still in South Africa, B.-P. became famous for his defence of a small town called Mafeking (now known as Mafikeng). He used all his cunning to hold out against the Boers who outnumbered his men by nine to one. After seven long months, food and supplies became very short. There were so few soldiers that boys from the age of nine upwards worked as messengers on bicycles. Help finally came.

Back in Britain everyone was glad to hear the news that Mafeking had been relieved and agreed that B.-P. was a national hero.

B.-P. was only 43 years old when he became the youngest Major-General in the British Army. He came home to Britain where he found that many boys in the big towns had nothing to do except get into mischief. He decided to put into practice some of the ideas he had used in South Africa for boys in Britain.

Scouting for Boys

He knew that boys enjoyed the outdoor life so he organised a camp for a group of 20 boys on Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour in Dorset. Here he taught them about exploring, camping, bating, stalking, life-saving and many of the things which Scouts still do today. An important principle of the camp was that the boys were `on their honour' and were trusted to organise themselves, which B.-P. knew they could do.

After the camp, B.-P. completed his book Scouting for Boys, which was bought by thousands of boys all over the country. They formed themselves into Patrols and did many of the things they read about in the book. Before long, they found adults to help them and Scout Troops began.

In 1910, B.-P. retired from the Army so that he could give more time to the organisation and development of the new Movement.

In 1920, at Olympia in London, the first international Jamboree was held Towards the end a young Scout declared, 'We, the Scouts of the world, salute you, Sir Robert Baden-Powell, Chief Scout of the World.'

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